Are you the Chief of Maxwell?

If you are a Maxwell by birth and if you are your fathers eldest son, you may be on the way to proving yourself to be the Chief of Maxwell. There are however many stumbling blocks to overcome before you can don the three eagles feathers.

The Lord Lyon, King of Arms, would require you to provide proofs positive of your pedigree linking you to the last Chief and more importantly, proving that your lineage is the most senior surviving line of all Maxwells.

Within the proofs, you would have to prove legitimate marriages and births and evidence of continuity of line. Any submitted pedigree with a basis in supposition will fall at the first hurdle.  Researching a three hundred year pedigree is not for the faint hearted and will require a great deal of work and a good knowledge of genealogical resources.

The Maxwell Chief could now be any nationality. Whether he is Scots, English, American or Antipodean is not important because his roots will be in the South West of Scotland with those Maxwells who descend from the late Lords Maxwell. Equally the Chief may believe that his family were from England or Ireland and thereby think that he cannot possibly be the heir, but as is evident from information elsewhere on this site, the Maxwells have proved to be a highly mobile family.  There is no evidence to say if the Chief will be a Catholic or Protestant, the last five Chiefs were the latter, but as their male lines have died out, the chiefly line could well have devolved on to an earlier Catholic line.

If you wish to prove either you or someone in your family is the male heir, then you will have to start researching your family tree. Equally you may be a shy or retiring type of person who my wish to prove that you are not the male heir and the same pedigree will be required. Modern genealogical research has been made easier by the efforts of researchers who have indexed and recorded the whereabouts of information about our forefathers. There are genealogical researchers who can help you trace your lineage or indeed they can do all the work for you. On the one hand, there are of course no guarantees that they will produce a three hundred year pedigree or of course that it will lead to the chiefship of the name, on the other hand, there is a chance it will.