Huguenot searches

[kathy15185]

Did anyone see the Who Do You Think You Are? programme on Julia Sawalha (series 3)? She was helped to trace her mother's family, the Dubocks back to France in the 17th century. Having missed the programme myself, is there anyone out there who can tell me what facilities the researcher used to trace the Dubocks to France?

Any info would be gratefully received. My father's family are likely to have been Huguenots, as the name would appear to come from a French village, and they are nearly all based in Kent.

Kathy

[hughar]

Details of the programme are at https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/familyh...llery_09.shtml

[Copper]

This might help you

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/f...ia-sawalha.asp

This is the site for the Huguenot Library at UCL

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/huguenot.shtml#pub

If you scroll down there is a link to the French Huguenot hospital in Rochester, Kent. Maybe your ancestors were admitted there in the past. They would have had to prove that they were huguenots.

I am still trying to prove that my Cursue ancestors were Huguenots. I seem to remember that Julia was fortunate that her Huguenot ancstors were weavers. My earliest Cursue was a shipwright in Stoke Damerel.

[Peter Goodey]

Kathy

I don't claim to be an expert but I've recently been doing some Huguenot research so feel free to pick my brains as you wish (it probably won't take long)

I think the most important thing to do is to dig back in time using normal standard research techniques. Eventually you may reach a point where you can feel certain you've got a Huguenot family. There were certainly a number of Huguenots in Kent; there's a Huguenot chapel inside Canterbury Cathedral.

Unfortunately, just having a French sounding name doesn't really mean anything. Don't let assumptions and wishful thinking cloud your judgement. A non-Huguenot ancestry can be just as interesting.

[Ruth1]

Copper - you say that they needed some proof that they were Huguenots. Do you have any idea of the sort of proof required? It might solve a puzzle about a document from the C18 which has been handed down within my own family. I have managed to establish a Huguenot line but this French baptism document we have is puzzling as although the baptism took place in 1739, the document is a copy made in 1766.

[bwarnerok]

I've found it a real brickbanger when chasing my Hugenots. They resettled in Kaiserlauten mid-1650s and filled the graveyard with lots of their descendants. (Dedreux). It has been thought that they came from Dreux although Sedan is also a town that has been mentioned. We pick the Dreux family up in Dreux eventually but there's about a 200 year gap that is lacking in information despite other descendants searching in France. I imagine in some way they might be related to the Dedreux in the UK, but nothing has come from that search, same with some Dedreux in New Orleans in the US. Mine came to the US in the mid 1800s, dropped off a few in New York then carried on to Cleveland, Ohio.

-b-

[Peter Goodey]

this French baptism document we have is puzzling as although the baptism took place in 1739, the document is a copy made in 1766.

Do you mean in the French language or from France?

In this country, in the absence of birth certificates, copies of baptism certificates issued several years after the event were not uncommon.

[Ruth1]

Good question, Peter. The orignal copy doc we have is written in French and there is a 'proper' signature on it, not just the ordinary cursive script of the body of the document. Can we assume from the fancy flourished signature that the document itself was written in France? Or could it still have been copied in England?

The document itself is, as you can imagine, extremely fragile and where it has spent years folded up, is quite hard to read along those folds. My cousin had it translated a few years ago. What could be made out was the following:

Extract from the Register of Baptisms, Marriages, Burials etc of the Parish of St Honorinne La Chardonne for the article which follows.

In the year 1739 on the first day of October Margueritte Soucher, wife of Jacques Martin, presented us with a (son) boy who she said had been born to Charles Martin and Ann Colin, born on the previous day, who was baptised by us, the undersigned, Jebre, cure (priest) of this place and named Louis by Louis Jehanne (a Jehanne) accompanied by Marie Marchand who have declared – indecipherable

We the undersigned, cure of the parish of St Honorinne la Chardonne swear that the present extract conforms to the original in all its contents in the belief / essence of which we have signed it for its value as well as for its cause (reason?) at St Honorinne La Chardonne this end of Sep seventeen hundred and seventy six.

Have you seen anything like this before?

[Copper]

I don't know what proof they had to provide but I would think a baptism would be the obvious document.

If an exiled huguenot needed some help in this country from a French huguenot charity or similar, I guess they would try and get a copy of their baptism. Exiled huguenots who went to the French churches here would have their children baptised in the French church here. Their offspring would have no difficulty in proving that they were entitled to help from the Huguenot charities/hospitals here.

To cut a long story short two people in different generations of my Cursue tree traced back to huguenots. They escaped to Ireland and then arrived in this country, so I am told. It is a great pity that the researchers did not leave any paperwork. Ireland is a bit vague!

The only way to research is back in the usual way until you find somebody born in France. Even then you have to know where in France as the records are not centralised.

I am back to Stoke Dameral, Devon in the early 1800s. I have a large gap to fill. My lot were happy to marry and have their children baptised in the parish churches.

I am reading a book about huguenots and it says that in France the wives did take the name of the husband. In records they would be found under their maiden names.

[Peter Goodey]

Have you seen anything like this before?

I'm afraid French isn't my métier

Ste Honorine la Chardonne is in Normandy. The document clearly isn't Huguenot but I'm afraid I can't guess what its significance might be in your family.

You say that you "managed to establish a Huguenot line". If Kathy doesn't mind us digressing, may I ask how you did that?

For the family I was researching, I flagged them up as Huguenot when I tracked them back to an entry made in 1678 in the Livre des Tésmoignages de l'Eglise de Threadneedle Street. I don't know whether that would satisfy the Huguenot Society.