Burke’s offer Reagan service to all

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 17

Burke’s offer Reagan service to all

The “Who’s Who” of British bluebloods and the discoverer of Ronald Reagan’s ancestry, is updating its elitist image to capitalise on the fact that everyone has ancestors and curiosity. “Interest is booming in genealogical research and in peoples’ own pedigrees,” says Harold BrooksBaker, publishing director of “Burke’s Peerage.”

He believes the company is particularly well placed to meet the demand for ancestral knowledge because it has been doing research on British nobility and advising on lineage since 1826. Burke’s recently traced President Reagan’s forebears to his Irish ancestral home of Ballyporeen. It also announced that the President has royal Irish roots and may be distantly related to several European monarchs, as well as to President Mitterrand of France, and President Castro of Cuba. The company now plans to capi-

talise on its fashionable name and mass-market itself, Mr BrooksBaker says.

While Burke’s will continue to publish its “flagship” reference guide, containing the names of all peers and baronets of Britain, it will also produce a range of lighter, if suitably snobbish, publications on the interests and activities of the aristocracy and very rich.

The next edition of the standard “Burke’s Peerage” reference work, due to be published about next June, will spell out ancestral links between many current leaders and ancient rulers. It will also include a list of the wealthiest and most eligible young men and women in Britain. It should become the upper classes’ directory to matrimony and a must for all debutante ball planners, Mr Brooks-Baker says. The company is also expanding its detective services for the track-

From

STEN STOVALL,

Reuters, in London

ing of ancestors. “The reason we tracked President Reagan was in part to prove that Burke’s can trace the average man as well as prominent lines,” says Mr . BrooksBaker, a former American journalist who has lived in Britain since 1967.

It was Burke’s chief genealogist and leading pedigree bloodhound, Hugh Peskett, who traced Mr Reagan back to his great-great-great grandparents in Ireland, and then established a link with the eleventh-century Irish king, Brian Boru, through a sixteenth-century document found in an English duke’s stately home. He also found that a century before Mr Reagan’s own branch of the Irish O’Reagans emigrated to the United States in the 1850 s,

another branch went to Cuba via France and Spain and could be traced up to Fidel Castro’s mother. Burke’s separately found President Mitterrand to be a descendant of the Emperor of Hanover who had links with the Irish King Boru. “The credibility of our research into Reagan is underlined by the fact he now is receiving letters from royal families in the traditional greeting of ‘Dear Cousin’ as opposed to ‘Dear Mr President’ or ‘Dear Ronald’ as previously,” Mr Brooks-Baker says.

“Vindication was also seen in the fact no-one collected the $266,000 offered by the ‘Sun’ newspaper to anyone who could prove us wrong,” he added, with a smile. Burke’s says the names con-

tained in its reference book represent 48 per cent of the wealth in Britain. Mr Brooks-Baker says it is impossible to study history correctly without it, and that anyone selling to the ultra-rich would be well advised to use a “Burke’s Peerage” for guidance. Those whose ancestry, is currently being investigated by the company include the American evangelist, Billy Graham, the black leader, Jesse Jackson, and VicePresident George Bush. One subject that especially intrigues Mr Brooks-Baker is the pedigree of Grigory Romanov, one of the favourites to succeed Konstantin Chernenko, the Soviet Union’s 73-year-old leader. “We have a good case to make that he belongs to a bastard branch of the Tsarist Romanov family which ruled imperial Russia,” says Mr Brooks-Baker.

For $1330, Burke’s can offer a search into a person’s past going

back as far as 15 generations or as few as three, depending on the case.

To expand, the company needs to strengthen its financial base. It has considered issuing shares but Mr Brooks-Baker says that a takeover by a larger firm would be more likely. Burke’s also plans to allow its name to be used by franchisers who will market products for the upper classes, such as “Burke’s Peerage champagne,” as well as claret, reproduction Victorian wallpaper, and furniture. Mr Brooks-Baker says that some 40 per cent of Burke’s genealogical inquiries come from North America and 40 per cent from Britain.

“The great breakthrough of interest in genealogy came in the wake of Alexander Haley’s ‘Roots’,” he adds. “Haley made the point that it is important to know who one’s ancestors are.” .