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The Eltweed fraud
Thanks to author of the Great Migration Begins Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, V. 3, P-W page 1489-90, Mr. Robert Charles Anderson, I looked up his reference to the Ancestry of Colonel John Harrington Stevens and his wife Frances Helen Miller by Mary Lovering Holman, pub. 1948 when I was researching at the LDS Family History Center in Salt Lake City. On page 392 The Pomeroy Line, Ms. Miller states that
"Richard Pomeroy, probably born in Dorsetshire, about 1650, died, probably in Beaminster, Dorset, before 1635. He married Mary -----, who died after 1635.
"Little has been learned of this Richard Pomeroy but his family seems to have been the only one in Beaminster at this time. The late J. Gardner Bartlett, discovered the marriage, in the registers of Crewkerne, Somerset, of Eltweed Pomeroy of Beaminster and published it in the NEHGS's Register, 59:215, stating that he believed it to be that of the immigrant to New England.
In 1913, finding that a claim had been made that Richard, father of Eltweed, belonged to the ancient armorial family of Pomeroy, of Berry Pomeroy, Devon, he had the Beaminster transcript searched; the Registers of this parish do not begin until 1684; but the transcripts commence in 1585 (with numerous gaps between 1585 and 1638). This was done by Mrs. Bartlett, formerly Elizabeth French. The Pomeroy items were published by Mr. Bartlett (ibid. 67:261) and show that Eltweed and others were children of Richard Pomeroy, who apparently died before 1635.
At the time the Pomeroy Genealogy was printed, some unscrupulous person, examining the records of the family of Pomeroy, of Berry Pomeroy, found in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum (Harleian Ms., 1091) a pedigree of the family, in which is entered the name of a Richard Pomeroy and assumed that this man was Eltweed's father. This manuscript was photographed and the name of 'Eltweed' added as a child of this Richard and then re-photographed and used as a frontispiece for the genealogy!
The fraud however was obvious to anyone conversant with old writing, the name of Eltweed not only being an evident attempt to copy the writing of the period, but also, it does not appear in the least the same as the rest on the pedigree. Mr. Bartlett seeing the fraud, had further work done and found the will of the Richard, of Berry Pomeroy, the supposed father of Eltweed, which will, with others of the family, shows that Richard died childless, and was of Cornworthy, Devon.
These discoveries were published (ibid., 68:47), together with a plate of the Berry Pomeroy pedigree, as it appears in Harleian Ms., 1091, and if this true photograph is compared with that in the Pomeroy Genealogy, even a novice can see the falsity of the addition."
(Note: The compiler of the Pomeroy Gen., was unwilling to accept Mr. Bartlett's work and a controversy followed.)