Charles S Romanes

This is a family album gone bigtime. Too big, probably, for counterfeiters.

This is important because when the original was produced, in the 1920s, only three hundred copies were printed, for members of the family it is about. Recently, the make-a-cheap-scan-and-print-on-demand companies have gotten their hands on it. You probably don't want one of those, because one of the features of the original volume is a large-format genealogy of the Call(e) family, from the fourteenth century to the early twentieth. Given the way the book is constructed, it's a necessary item, but it is printed on oversize paper in smallish print. Also, if you can somehow find a copy of the original, it's likely to include additional notes about later members of the family. (Mine does, although they are in an unreadable hand.)

As for why you should care about this book -- there are two reasons. One is that you might be a member of the extended Call family. There are probably hundreds of such by now (although most of them perhaps don't know it), so there is a modest market right there.

The main market, though, is probably those who are interested in fifteenth century life, because Richard Calle -- who is not the earliest known member of the family, but is the one who is the ancestor of most of those traced in this book -- was a servant of the famous Paston Family of Paston Letters fame. Indeed, he covertly won their daughter, so Margery Paston Calle is just as much an ancestor of most of the later Calles/Calls as is Richard. He also was the first known owner of a book about Robin Hood: The only known copy of "Robin Hood and the Potter" is a volume containing his name and merchant's mark; this is why I wanted to find out about Richard Calle.

This book doesn't perhaps tell absolutely everything there is to know about Richard Calle, because the best edition of the Paston papers (Norman Davis's) would not be published for another half century, so there might be a few Paston/Calle facts not available to Romanes. But it gathers everything we know from outside the Paston letters, and traces the family both forward and backward, down through the family of Charles S. Romanes (himself a descendant of Richard Calle in about the eleventh generation) down to his great-granddaughter, who must have just been born when the book was published and whose children (if any) might well be alive today.

It's not an exciting read -- most of the first part is based on little more than birth notices, burial notices, relationships, the occasional tax record. Not much fun. It gets more detailed as it gets closer to modern times, but it also gets less important; these are decent people, middle class, respectable, but not world-shakers. (If you want the part about the recent members, you could probably get by with the print-on-demand version.) But if you want to know about Richard Calle -- admittedly a specialized branch of information! -- there is still no substitute for this book.… (més)