Page:Genealogical Memoir of the Chase Family.djvu/13

Rh of papers were submitted to Mr. Somerby for classification and to enable him to take full notes for investigations to be pursued by him on his return to England in the spring of that year. Mr. Somerby's investigations, which were very diligent and thorough, and which led him among the records of every county in England, continued at intervals for some years, until he had noted the names and dates of birth of all of the name of Chase during the latter half of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries. From them we extract the following pedigrees, and the facts relating to them.

In the Herald's Visitation of Buckinghamshire in 1634, the Coat engraved at the head of this article is found, with the note, "This coate is testified by a letter from Mr. Robert Calvert, dated at Whitehall, July 18, 1634," together with a pedigree entered by Matthew Chase, which we copy, as follows:—

As Aquila Chase was supposed to have come from Cornwall, no importance had ever been attached to this pedigree by the American genealogists, and Mr. Somerby, influenced by the traditions that Aquila and Thomas Chase were mariners, had searched in vain for some