A Register which shall contain "Biographical Memoirs, Sketches, and Notices of persons who came to North America, especially to New England, before Anno Domini 1700; showing from what places in Europe they came, their Families there, and their descendants in this country;" which shall give "full and minute Genealogical Memoirs and Tables, showing the lineage and descent of Families, from the earliest dates to which they can be authentically traced down to the present time, with their branches and connections," cannot but be invaluable. If properly conducted, if the severest scrutiny is exercised by the writers over the materials which come under their notice, in the preparation of genealogical articles, the Register will become an authority in our courts, and will save immense amounts of money to the large number of individuals, who are attempting to trace their descent from European families. The policy of the law which invests, first, lineal descendants with intestate estates, and in the absence of lineal descendants, carries the estates to collateral heirs, in preference to an escheat to the State, is generally admitted. Were it not so, one great incentive to industry would be destroyed. The desire of securing their offspring against want, is a prevalent characteristic of New England parents. Assiduity and energy in the pursuit of wealth, which have overcome so many obstacles in our inhospitable climate, have their origin in the desire to advance the interests of posterity. How desirable, then, in order to carry out these views, does the Genealogical Register become! Such a publication affords the only permanent depository for such records as will serve to insure the correct distribution of the property of deceased persons; and no parent who wishes the avails of his labors to be transmitted to his remote descendants can fail to perceive the utility of such a work, or can decline to furnish such information for its columns, as will enable those who come after him to prove their descent.
The frauds continually practised by those who assume to be heirs to every unclaimed estate, have become a matter of notoriety in English legal practice; and though there are many estates now in abeyance in England for want of discovered legal heirs, the bar and the bench in England are exceedingly distrustful of the evidence forwarded by claimants in this country. No doubt many of these claimants are sincere in the belief that they are true heirs to those estates; but the evidence upon which that belief is founded generally proves to be of too unsatisfactory a character to procure a judgment of the English tribunals in their favor; whereas, had materials been previously collected and given to the world through the columns of an authoritative periodical, the evidence thus furnished would be almost irresistible to any court of law.