We have reason to believe -- based solely on the transcription of the marriage record of David Demarest and Marie Sohier -- that David was born in Beauchamps, in what is today France.

The birthdate traditionally accorded David -- 1620 -- is, we believe, an educated guess on the part of David D. Demarest in 1886. Although he states 1620 as a fact in the text of his Huguenots on the Hackensack, in the appendices to that address, he is less saunguine, saying: "David des Marest (son of Jean), born in Beauchamp, in Picardy, about this year." (p. 20, or 18 in the Demarest Genealogical Society's annotated edition).

The idea that this Beauchamp was in Picardy seems to be something David D. Demarest gathered from Riker's Harlem. On page 114 of that book, Riker suggests that "the family Des Marets was of the old Picard gentry, and was also prominent in the church at Oisemont, of which David des Marets, the Sieur du Ferets, was an elder....Our David des Marest, who wrote his name thus, was born in Picardy, and, as is strongly indicated, was of the same lineage." Riker does not tell his reader how he obtained this information, and no independent corroboration of Riker's information has been found.

Thus, we are faced with a problem when identifying David's birthplace, for there are at least three possible Beaucamps or Beauchamps on maps of modern-day France for which a case can be made as David's birthplace: Beauchamps-sur-Bresle, Beauchamps-le-Vieux, and Beaucamps-Ligny.

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We know with virtual certainty that David married Marie Sohier at the French Church at Middleburg, that he and Marie and children moved from Middleburg to Mannheim, then a town in the Palatinate at the confluence of the Rhine and Necker rivers ruled by the Elector Charles Louis, some time around 1651, and that the family remained in Mannheim for much of the time between 1651 and the family's departure for North America in 1663 (although there are some indications that the family may have returned to the area around Lille between their time in Mannheim and their departure on the Bonte Coe in April of 1663).

The first thing we have to come to grips with, when looking at the region of David's birth, is just how fluid the boundaries that criss-cross this region are from 1600 until 1648 -- roughly, from the truce between Spain and the Dutch Republic until the end of the Thirty Year's War and the Peace of Westphalia.

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Today, the region lies in Northern France -- and depending on your theory, in southern Belgium as well -- and looks like this:

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There are three possible birthplaces for David -- none of which, we need to point out, is particularly close to the ancestral desMarets of Cambray -- as indicated in the map below.

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But First, A Detour Into Cambray

As we have discussed elsewhere, there is no real evidence for the theory that David Demarest was a descendent of the Crusader-knights desMarets of Cambray. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at a map from the same general period -- in this case Rigobert Bonne's map of 1785 -- to get a sense of the lay of the land there in the period we are discussing, because place-names there bear both on David's story and on the larger story of the desMarets family as recounted in Voorhis Demarest's 1964 genealogy.

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Beauchamps A: Beauchamp-sur-Bresle

The major argument in favor of Beauchamp-sur-Bresle is that it is (a) on the maps of the period of David's birth, (b) clearly in Picardy throughout the entire time period under discussion, (c) close to "Calais" from which we believe David's family left for Middleburg, arriving in 1643, and (d) very close indeed to a small town called Marest, named no doubt for the marshy area (marais) within which it sits.

Today, on a map of modern France, this area appears as follows, with Beauchamps and Marest (now Oust-Marest) both appearing:

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On the Jannsen Heirs map of the locale, done in roughly 1660, the area looked like this. Both Beauchamps and Marest (then spelled Marais) are clearly visible.

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On other maps of roughly the same period -- Rigobert Bonne's 1785 map, for example -- neither location appears.

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Beauchamps B: Beauchamp-le-Vieux

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We have yet to find a map from the 1600-1750 period that includes Beauchamps-le-Vieux in its mapping of the area south of Abbeville and west of Amiens, but we have no reason to doubt its existence around the time of David's birth.

As we have indicated elsewhere, Mary and William Demarest, authors of the 1938 genealogy, and Voorhis Demarest and Mabel Spell after them, all believed that this Beauchamps was David's birthplace cannot be doubted. There seems, however, no reason to favor this Beauchamps above the other two, beyond tradition and Riker's unsubstantiated linking of David Demarest with the desMarets of Oismont, which may in fact be an error on Riker's part, in mistaking Oisment for Ossiment near Cambray.

Beachamps C: Beaucamps-Ligny

The arguments in favor of Beaucamps-Ligny as David's birthplace are: (a) the fact that Beaucamps and Ligny are separate places around the time of David's birth, (b) this Beaucamps is very close -- less than 20 kilometers -- from Marie Sohier's birthplace of Nieppe (often called Niepekirke in the period under discussion) and her father Francois' birthplace of Estaire; (c) that, in the event that the woman Marguerite deHerville who witnessed David's birth was indeed his mother, this Beaucamps is close by her likely birth place, Herville, which is south and west of it; (d) this Beaucamps is very close -- 25 kilometers or so -- at the time to the other Calais an inland village in what is today souther Belgium; (e) perhaps purely happenstantially, this Beaucamps is close by the ancestral desMarets-of-Cambray possession of Fleurbay/Fleurbaix. And finally, as mentioned above, this Beaucamps looks interesting because we have some indications (perhaps not reliable indications) that David and his family may have returned to this area, settling near Lille, prior to their departure for North America.

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Today, the area looks like this.

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Conclusions: Theories, Not Answers

It is not possible, in the absence of reasonable documentary evidence, to decide which of these three plausible sites for David's birth is the actual site of his birth, if indeed he was born at any Beauchamps at all. Until such time as primary records at the the three locations are sifted for evidence of David or his family in the period from 1615 or so until 1643, all we have are theories about where David was born.