Leete-Leet Ancestors in Europe

Draft- 2009-11-22

Introduction

Studying the ancestors of the North American Leete/Leets is both rewarding and challenging. It's rewarding because the Leetes appear to have made some important contributions to British history; challenging because there's a lot of mis-information and "tantalizing" bits of history suggesting Leetes made substantial contributions to European history. On these pages I'll provide the extant information on the Leetes (and Leets) in Europe and, in so far as is possible today, separate fact from fiction.

In terms of scope, I don't intend to regurgitate the work of Michael J. H. Leete, who has written an important book on Leete/Leet genealogy that covers the history of Leetes/Leets in Europe. The book is "The Family Face," published by Long Lee, Rowarth in 1994 (LC Classification: CS71.L4858 1994). On the other hand, where relevant to Leetes in North America, and relevant to separating fact from fiction, I will quote from and reference the book.

In general, I'm going to use this page as an index to the data, discussions concerning the veracity of the data, and my conclusions. The Attachments section below will be "the data." In some cases, the documents will point to web pages containing data and will be a critical review of those web pages. In other cases, the documents are historical documents I have received and electronically copied or they are documents already available on the internet. In the latter case, I have "brought" those documents over to this site's database to avoid losing the links to the documents as web pages come and go.

The Comments section below can be used by you to comment or ask questions on anything relevant to North American Leete's ancestors in Europe.

Maps

Michael Leete says the earliest references to the Leete family are in the triangle of Huntington, Royston, and Cambridge. A Google map showing this:

Genealogies on the Web

Genealogies That Go Back To William the Lionhearted

An example of a web page that demonstrates ancestry to William the Lionhearted is The Leet Family of Susan J. Dorey. Susan is related to Barbara Dorey, who has provided genealogies that are erroneous with respect to the Leete/Leet family.

The errors in this particular genealogy are:

• William Leete- there's no primary document that shows his middle name was Logan. Primary documents do not mention a middle name.

• William had 11 children, not 9.
• Andrew #66 in the 1934 "The Descendants of William Leete" book, spelled his last name Leet before he left for NS. Canada.

This is about as far as we need to go. I will be working back from the " International Society of the Descendants of Charlemagne" as well as the William the Lionhearted claim as time permits.

The web site also has a link to some of the female lines of Leete/Leet. I'll be verifying these as well. The results will be included in the relevant genealogic trees.

Pictures