The documents in this section of teh DGS web site are provided, in most cases, for their historical interest, and not for their accuracy. Documents that should not be included in personal genealogical databases, or treated as matters of historical fact, are so indicated.

Riker's Harlem (1881) contains the earliest sets of references to David Demarest's life in Harlem and modern-day New Jersey. A primary source of information for David D. Demarest and Mabel Boyce Spell, Riker's book was difficult to obtain until Cornell University converted it to electronic form for its Making of America project. Photofacsimile sections relevant to David Demarest (4.2 MB) are available in PDF format, and the entire text is available in machine-readable form (410 KB).

David D. Demarest's Huguenots on the Hackensack (1886) is the first print treatment focusing on David Demarest, and is noteworthy today largely for (a) its transcription of the marriage record of David and Marie Sohier and (b) its assertion of David's birthplace as Beaucamps-le-Vieux and his birthdate as 1620. Full of local color and special pleading, the text is fun to read. All genealogical records contained in this text have been superceded. Demarest's essay is available in photofacsimile reprint in PDF format (4.5 MB), an annotated edition with notes by the DGS in PDF format (3.1 MB), and HTML annotated form.

Between 1886 and Louis Piers de Boer's research for William H.S. Demarest, little if anything was written on David Demarest. William H.S. Demarest, still president of Rutgers when he commissioned de Boer -- a Dutch genealogical researcher -- to research David Demarest's ancestry, clearly had in mind the work he and his sister Mary would produce, beginning in 1938: The Demarest Family. The DGS annotated edition of Louis Piers de Boer's report to William H.S. Demarest, in PDF format (1.6 MB), with our introduction, clearly demonstrates that de Boer's work is the origin of the Cambresis-Norwich-Beaucamps myth that surrounds David, and that has misled David's descendents since the late 1930s. All genealogical work in this report is suspect, and some of it is demonstrable false.

Louis de Boer's report to William H.S. Demarest, along with other notes of de Boer's the sources of which we have not yet located, made it in virtually unchanged form into Mary and William Demarest's 1938 text The Demarest Family, in very peculiar places in the back of the volume, under two separate headings: The Des Marets Family of England and The Des Marets Family of Cambray. The Des Marets Family of Cambray section, in PDF format (810 KB), clearly is the work of de Boer, and brings the problematic Jacques Sr. and Jacques Jr. into relief. The Des Marets Family of Norwich section, in PDF format (1.2 MB), focuses on Francois, putative father of Jean, and contains all the speculation and special pleading that the DGS has discussed in detail in its Notes On The Origins Of The Demarest Family.

The 1838 text's misinformation is summarized and reproduced, in simplified form, by Voorhis Demarest in his 1964 The Demarest Family, largely we believe because, by Voorhis' time, the myth of the Cambray origins of David Demarest was taken as a matter of historical fact by most Demarest researchers. In Voorhis Demarest's Early Genealogical Records, in PDF format (1.2 MB), we can see how what was for de Boer an extreme over-reaching speculation becomes, a mere 30 years later, historical fact, presented in almost chronology-like starkness.

Also in Voorhis Demarest's 1964 text, we find Mabel Boyce Spell's now-famous Narrative, which is noteworthy for elaborating on Riker and David D. Demarest, and for yet a different transcription of the marriage record of David Demarest and Marie Sohier, as well as for, intertextually, several important David Demarest artifacts: deeds and his will in particular. This photofacsimile edition of the Narrative, in PDF format (7 MB), includes high-resolution images of those artifacts. Mabel Boyce Spell's Notebook, referenced by Franklyn Frick and other Demarest researchers, is the DGS's single most-sought-after historical artifact.

Finally, in 1984, Franklyn Frick, a researcher based in South Dakota, published a series of works elaborated and detailing portions of the Early Genealogical Records found in Voorhis Demarest's 1964 volume. Since it is fairly certain that the desMarets of Cambray were not the forebears of David Demarest of the French Patent on the Hackensack, we do not intend to reproduce Frick's researchers into these medieval and renaissance figures here. However, Frick's 1984 The Demarest Family Chart does contain a stunning piece of Demarest family myth-making: the linking of Marie Sohier, David's wife, with the Vermandois, and thus with Charlesmagne himself. Frick's research is almost certainly wrong, as we have recently obtained Marie Sohier's father's marriage record from Sohier researchers in France, and that primary evidence indicates Frick's work to be incorrect. Nevertheless, we provide this photofacsimile edition of the section on Marie Sohier's ancestry, in PDF format (1.3 MB), which we believe indicts itself.

1881 - Riker's Harlem

1886 -- Demarest's Huguenots on the Hackensack

1928 -- Louis Piers de Boer's report to William H.S. Demarest

1938 -- Mary and William H.S. Demarest's The Demarest Family

1964 -- Voorhis Demarest's The Demarest Family

1984 -- Franklyn Frick's The Demarest Family Chart