'Burke's Peerage World Book of Wessels' A compilation of public information by Halbert's Family Heritage (USA) in 1995 (pag. 2.11) + separate colour printed version. This book lists of addresses of WESSELS (NOT van Wessels) world wide and a basic introduction to history, genealogy and heraldry. Although the address lists have helped many people to find family members all over the world its is useless as a source for serious genealogical or heraldic data. (see below).

The publishers of Burke's went into liquidation around 1995/6, leaving two more or less intangible items to be continued by others. The first of these, the name and logo, were acquired by a partnership that planned to exploit the Burke's reputation through licensing the use of the name to other enterprises. The most public and controversial result of this has been the appearance of the "family histories" produced by Halbert's Family Heritage in the form of, for example, The Burke's Peerage World Book of Dafts. These contain some introductory pages of general history, a few pages of heraldry that are superficial, pretentious and inaccurate, and a very large number of pages of names and addresses extracted from telephone directories. This reappearance of the once revered name of "Burke's Peerage" inflamed the tempers of many family historians, and a flood of e-mail complaints were uploaded onto bulletin boards. The BBC Watchdog television programme also publicised the anger the Halbert's operation has aroused. (Source: Baronage website) Please take care!

The Halbert's Family Heritage Company of 3687 Ira Road, Bath, Ohio 44210, used a highly sophisticated network of computer sources. Over 150 million records were searched to find all the names and addresses listed in the "World Book of Wessels". The data banks searched listings from electoral rolls, telephone directories, and automobile registrations and cross street directories.

See also: Burke's Peerage , Burke's Peerage & Gentry