For a person familiar with the various myths surrounding the Demarest family in the US, it is sometimes difficult to grasp the single most essential facts of research into the US Demarests:

1. Not all Demarest family members living in the US and Canada now descended from David Demarest of the French Patent on the Hackensack.
2. There is no evidence whatsoever that David Demarest of the French Patent on the Hackensack was in any way related to (a) the de Mares family of Norwich, England or (b) the desMarets of Cambray, in modern-day France. We literally know nothing about David's life with any certainty before the day in July of 1643 when he married Marie Sohier in the French Church at Middleburg, Zeeland, in the presence of: (1) David's father, Jean, (2) Marie's father, Francois, (3) a woman named Marguerite or Margrieta Serville, deHerville, or d'Herville who may or may not have been related to Jean and David, and (4) Marguerite or Margrieta Sohier, who was almost certainly Marie Sohier's sister, and not her mother. David's birthplace, Beauchamps, is evidenced only by his marriage record, and there are at least three candidates for that Beauchamps: Beauchamps-sur-Bresle, at that time well within the territory of the French king, Beauchamps-le-Vieux, and Beauchamps-Ligny, which is close by (a) Marie Sohier's birthplace, Nieppe, as well as close to hereditary possessions of the desMarets family.

The fact that some -- and perhaps as many as half -- of the Demarests living in the US and Canada today are not direct descendents of David Demarest is a problem the DGS will be tackling as it moves Voorhis Demarest's path-breaking Demarest Family genealogy from a paper-based to an online format, and begins the process of adding and correcting that monumental document.

The question of the European origins of David Demarest remains very much a central research concern of the DGS and our single most important active research project.

European Origins

Laurence Van Kleek and Marc Demarest on The Crusader origins myth of the Demarest family

The Origin of the Myth" Louis deBoer's report to William H.S. Demarest (1928)