A whole season has passed since DORIS kicked off its popup exhibit 400 Years of NYC Government Records, 1636-2025, featuring some of our favorite items from the Municipal Archives and Library. We also included a “mystery item” from within the Old Town Collection. It looked like a genealogical chart, but its presence generated questions such as, who were these people and how did we end up with it? We put it on display and asked attendees for opinions—and we received some great answers—and some laughs. And, as promised, we’re back with updates.
Our “mystery item,” believed to be part of the Old Town Records. NYC Municipal Archives.
A few days after the exhibit, digitization specialist Matthew Minor (who has an interest in heraldry) emailed archivist Alexandra Hilton asking if she had more information about the mystery item. She thought that perhaps they could join forces to learn more. Matt made high-quality scans of the bifold document, a side for each of the four lineage charts, to help with the analysis.
Now, Alex and Matt share their exploration of the origin and meaning of our mystery item.
Alex: With the magic of digitization, the document suddenly became a lot easier to read. Scanning it over, something caught my eye, and my heart stopped for a second. Was that “Tudor” I just read? I took a second look—yes, yes it definitely was Tudor. Feeling a little faint with excitement by this discovery, I start doing the Tudor genealogy in my head as I glanced at the bottom of the chart, verifying the names I was expecting to see—Queen Mary I of England with her husband, King Philip II of Spain, beside her.
I didn’t want to spoil the fun for Matt but couldn’t resist sending him a message to get excited, promising him that I wouldn’t spoil anything until he had a turn. Meanwhile, I discovered the four couples whose lineage is charted in the document.
King Philip II of Spain (1527–1598) & Queen Mary I of England (1516–1558)
King Francis II of France (1544–1560) & Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587)
Philibert II, Duke of Savoy (1480–1504) & Margaret of Austria (1480–1530)
King James V of Scotland (1512–1542) & Margaret of Valois (1523–1574)
Annotated sheet showing the ancestors of Philibert II, Duke of Savoy and Margaret of Austria.
Matt: My background is in art, so I was struck by all the vivid, finely drawn heraldry. Preferring not to work on a screen, I printed a poster-size copy and pored over it. Eventually, I recognized a few names, and by using online resources, came to the same conclusions as Alex.
“So, someone was trying to marry a hypothetical child of Mary, Queen of Scots to a child of Mary I and Philip II?” I asked her.
She noted that such a marriage would be a way of preserving Catholicism in Britain. We discussed this and other possibilities (all while exchanging funny memes about royalty). Alex’s knowledge of European royalty is quite a bit more extensive than mine.
Annotated sheet showing the ancestors of King James V of Scotland and Madeleine of France.
Alex: Luckily, I knew the perfect British person to pepper with all my questions. She’s a DORIS alum and current archivist at The London Library, the one and only—Nathalie Belkin! Likely laughing at my American excitement for finding something “old,” she told me that “these types of things were commonplace around that time” but if we could figure out the type of paper it was on and its dimensions, she’d share it with a contact.
Matt: I took the document to one of the conservators, Nora Ligorano. Examining it over a lightbox, Nora told me that it was handmade paper, most likely linen fiber. We also noticed that the paper had two watermarks. One was a shield with three fleurs-de-lis, the coat of arms of French royalty. The other we couldn’t quite make out. Since the document was found in an American archive, Nora checked the watermarks against a catalog of historical American watermarks but did not find any matches. This lends weight to the idea that the document (which we measured at 31.5 x 41.5 cm) was made in France, perhaps for official use.
Alex: Nathalie’s friend got back to her and suggested that we send close-up images of the watermarks to the British Association of Paper Historians.
Watermark, visible when viewed on a lightbox. Old Town Records. NYC Municipal Archives.
Watermark, visible when viewed on a lightbox. Old Town Records. NYC Municipal Archives.
She also recommended checking out Briquet Online, a watermark database containing the works of noted Swiss filigranologist Charles Moïse Briquet (1839–1918). The idea is to compare a watermark to the images in the database to come up with an estimated date of creation. It’s tedious work but we’re dropping the images of the watermarks here in case you want to try your hand at searching and comparing!
Matt: In the past, I had studied basic heraldry, so I noted a few interesting things on the document.
First, several of the escutcheons (heraldry speak for shields) had what looked like collars underneath them. By enlarging my scans and doing a deep dive online, I figured out that the collars show membership in orders of chivalry—specifically, the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Order of Saint Michael. These are the two most prominent Catholic orders, the former founded by a Holy Roman Emperor, the latter by a French King.
Second, it was fascinating to look at how the different shields were combined in successive generations to show family heritage. It was also interesting that both men and women have escutcheons on the chart, rather than the traditional shield for men and lozenge (diamond shape) for women.
Our “mystery item,” believed to be part of the Old Town Records (verso). NYC Municipal Archives.
Finally, some of the shields showed the French arms with white fields instead of blue. There were multiple variations for certain families, such as the Tudors. This isn’t strange, and in most cases, I could find a record of them somewhere, but a few stood out. Specifically, the arms used for Elizabeth Woodville (Queen of England and wife of King Henry IV) were unusual. Elizabeth used several coats of arms throughout her life—the Woodville arms, her first husband’s arms, and her own version of the royal arms of England—but none of them look like the shield on the document.
Having hit a wall, I contacted the College of Arms in London to ask if they could help. I got a response from John Petrie. Sir John is the Windsor Herald, the royal family’s official authority on British heraldry. He told us that unfortunately he could not add much information, although he did note that the pedigrees from this period in the archives of the College of Arms usually don’t have this much heraldry on them.
Our Findings
Why was it created?
While we don’t know for sure, the presence of both the House of Burgundy and the House of Bourbon alongside the Habsburgs, Tudors, Valois, and Stuarts suggests that this document isn’t merely a diplomatic artifact or a marriage chart. Rather, it likely has dynastic, genealogical, and possibly propagandistic significance, meant to trace or emphasize the convergence of major royal bloodlines.
Dynastic display and propaganda: Charts like these were often created to demonstrate the legitimacy, nobility, and interconnectedness of royal bloodlines. The presence of so many recognizable arms—Burgundy, Bourbon, Savoy, Castile, Aragon, Valois—suggests a deliberate effort to underscore shared ancestry among Europe’s Catholic monarchies.
Catholic dynastic unity: These charts visually affirm the intermarriage network of Europe’s Catholic ruling houses at a moment (mid-16th century) when the Protestant Reformation fractured traditional alliances. The selection of these four couples highlights the Catholic dynastic web uniting Spain, France, Scotland, England (via Mary I), and Savoy.
Heraldry as genealogical proof: Before printed genealogies became widespread, heraldic genealogy served as visual proof of lineage. Each shield isn’t decorative—it encodes descent. Blue fields with golden fleurs-de-lis signal France; the red-and-yellow quarterings denote Castile and Aragon; the white cross on red signifies Savoy.
Political statement: By linking these lineages, the document could have served a courtly or diplomatic purpose—perhaps created for a Habsburg or Savoy court—to illustrate how Europe’s greatest royal lines were intertwined and how legitimate claims to multiple thrones (Spain, France, England, Scotland, Savoy) derived from common ancestry.
What do the four lineages have in common?
All descend from or marry into Burgundian and Bourbon bloodlines.
All represent Catholic royal houses interconnected through diplomacy and marriage.
All reflect dynastic consolidation efforts through intermarriage rather than conquest.
Each marriage carries political symbolism: union of realms, alliance against Protestant England, or reinforcement of Habsburg-Valois power balance.
What are its origins?
The document’s characteristics strongly indicate that it’s of French origin, created sometime during the 16th to early 17th century:
The language is primarily early modern French, with some Latinized forms for titles and connective words (e.g., ex, uxor, filius, filia).
The handwriting is a French humanist cursive typical of courtly genealogical manuscripts from about 1550–1620.
The mix of Latin for formal lineage notation and vernacular French for commentary was standard for genealogical charts produced for noble patrons in this period.
And why is it at DORIS?
We’re still not sure. It’s not an organic fit for either the Old Town or Dutch records collections but could be part of the early Common Council papers. It would be an unusual gift to the Mayor, but that is a possibility as well.
Our research has concluded for now, but we’d love to hear your comments! Share what you know below.
