Revision 4

March 2004

Laurence Van Kleek

lvk@demarests.com

Marc Demarest

Demarest Genealogical Society

marc@demarests.com

ABSTRACT

A narrative tracing the origins of the Demarest family through a line of nobility stretching back to one Jean, Lord of Bousis, has been accepted as fact by members of the Demarest family in the United States, as well as by genealogists inside and outside the family, as evidenced by, among other things, its uncritical recapitulation in the genealogical records of many other families inside and outside the United States.

The narrative, on close examination, does not appear to be supported by any evidence, suffers from significant internal contradictions, and appears to have its documentary origins in the research of an early twentieth-century genealogy hunter whose work on other families has been demonstrated to be materially incorrect, and who is held by some genealogical researchers to have engaged in deliberate ancestry fabrication.

In this article, we examine the conventional, oft-repeated “Crusader narrative” of the origins of the Demarest family (Narrative B), focusing in particular on the way in which the most commonly-used version of this narrative elides and simplifies a more complex and earlier narrative (Narrative A). We then examine that earlier, more complex version of the “Crusader narrative” in its context, breaking it into its three constituent components and examining the grounds for accepting each component narrative as a matter of historical fact. We close with some observations on the implications of our findings for members of the Demarest family, and some suggestions on research required to resolve the outstanding issues surrounding Narrative A.

The Crusader Narrative Of Demarest Family Origins

A search, in Google, using the search phrase:

"Cambray" and ("Demarest" OR "desMarets")

reveals just how widely spread and oft-repeated, in both GEDCOM data sets and in text, is the familiar narrative locating the origins of the Demarest family in a line of Crusaders, knights and magistrates stemming from one Jean of Bousis in the early eleventh century.[1]

The origin of the GEDCOM version of the narrative appears to be a single GEDCOM database uploaded to GEDCOM bulletin board sites by T. H. McPartlin, M.D in 1996.[2] This database is a loose transcription and elaboration, by an amateur scholar, of the “Early Genealogical Records” section of Voorhis Demarest’s 1964 work, The Demarest Family, from whence the McPartlin GEDCOM database derives its warrants, and in which text is found the version of the Crusader origin narrative (the version we shall refer to as Narrative B) that appears to be the most widespread these days.[3]

Narrative B is a simple, almost matter-of-fact description of seventeen generations of desMarets stemming from Jean of Bousis, and culminating in one David desMarets, the son of Huguenot refugees who, in 1663, set sail with his family for the New World, and founded a branch of the Demarest family in the United States. Despite some textual oddities – for example, the use of phrases like “in the mouths of the Turks”, and the reference to obscure medieval texts – Narrative B is presented, textually, as a self-contained and absolutely unassailable set of historical facts (without any authorship attribution) in Voorhis Demarest’s work, in large measure because Voorhis Demarest’s 1964 text was concerned with the Demarest family in America (and not with their European origins) and also because Voorhis Demarest himself believed the narrative, as he published it, was a set of settled facts.[4]

Narrative B is in fact a redaction, concatenation and summary of several sections of the predecessor to Voorhis Demarest’s 1964 work: Mary and William Demarest’s The Demarest Family (1938),[5] specifically the sections entitled “The Des Marets Family of Cambray And The Land Of Cambray” (which we shall refer to as Narrative A1) and “The Des Marets Family of England” (which we shall refer to as Narrative A2). These two components of the 1938 Mary Demarest text we shall refer to, collectively, as Narrative A.

Where Narrative B is presented as uncomplicated, issue-free, and so matter-of-historical-fact as to require no authorial attribution, Narrative A is complex, presented out of sequence, and filled with equivocation, speculation, special pleading and reference to unverifiable source and to historical tradition. Equally importantly, Narratives A1 and A2 are, in the 1938 text, both presented as the work of one author: Louis P. De Boer, whom we identify with Louis Piers De Boer, the well-known “genealogist and heraldrist” associated with genealogical research circles in New York and New Jersey in the early decades of the twentieth century.[6] De Boer’s work, as any web search will demonstrate, has been invalidated in numerous cases by subsequent research, and there are some indications that De Boer may have engaged in deliberate fabrications from time to time.

Thus, popular contemporary “Crusader narrative” origins for the Demarests and associated families are, for the most part, the result of the repetition of an authorless, factually-presented narrative about Demarest family origins that appeared in 1964 in Voorhis Demarest’s text on the family in the United States (Narrative B). That text, in turn, was a redaction and simplification of two related sections of the 1938 Mary Demarest work on the family (Narratives A1and A2, collectively Narrative A), which were themselves either written by or based on work-for-hire or independent research performed by Louis Piers DeBoer. Narrative B is thus entirely derivative, incorporating no new information or evidence about the origins of the family, and eliding much of the details in Narratives A1 and A2, and it is with those narratives that we must treat if we are to understand whether there is any basis in fact for claiming that modern-day US Demarests are descendents of Jean De Bousis and his posterity.

Figure 1 – Narratives and Their Origins

Narrative A1 – Louis De Boer’s desMarets of Cambray Narrative

An inspection of Louis De Boer’s “The Des Marets Family of Cambray And The Land Of Cambray” which occupies pages 550-555 of Mary and William Demarest’s limited-edition 1938 work, reveals much of interest that is absent in Narrative B of 1964.

First, De Boer cites his authority for the entirety of the narrative:

“An account of the des Marets genealogy as commonly accepted as that of their common ancestry by Jacques Joseph de Maretz as representing the Roman Catholic, South-Netherland branch, and Louis Trip de Marez, as representing the Protestant, North-Netherland branch.” (p. 551).

Whether De Boer worked directly with either is an open question; the phraseology of the sentence fragment seems deliberately designed to suggest direct contact between De Boer and the men he names without explicitly stating it.

Secondly, Narrative A1 terminates with Jean des Marets, Esquire (numbered XIII in Narrative A1, and in Narrative B). The remainder of the numbered descendents of Narrative B, leading to David, do not appear in this article at all; however, De Boer does write that:

“Son of Jean des Marets and his third wife Catherine Gerardel, according to the above-named Jacques Joseph de Maretz de Sancourt, was Jacques des Marets, who became father of the two Protestant refugees Jean des Marets (born 1518) and Jacques des Marets (born 1519), founders of the branches who follow and the genealogy of whose descendents has been derived from more modern sources of information.” (p. 554).

Jacques Joseph de Marez de Sancourt is referenced by De Boer as an authority elsewhere in his narrative (but not in this titled section, interestingly enough)[7], as is – implicitly – the De Marez-Oyens family of Amsterdam, who De Boer asserts are in possession of original documents that verify the details of some parts of his narrative.[8]

So, Narrative A1 – contributing the matter of Narrative B up to the thirteenth generation from Jean of Bousis – is presented as historical fact by De Boers in Mary and William Demarest’s 1938 work. And, indeed, there is little to suggest, from subsequent reception and research, that Narrative A1 is not substantially accurate. Modern scholarship on the Crusades confirms the existence of many of the figures in the narrative (if also presenting them in a less than admirable light from time to time), and ample evidence exists, on the ground in Cambrai and elsewhere in Northern France, that many if not most of the people in narrative A1 did exist where and when De Boer’s text suggests.[9]

Our conclusion is therefore that there is nothing obviousl about the content of Narrative A1[10]in this narrative to disturb the modern genealogical researcher, but that equally there is nothing – not one item – in this narrative to suggest that this line of Crusaders, knights and French civil administrators are in any way related to the Demarests descending from David desMarets of De BonteKoe and the French Patent on the Hackensack.

Narrative A2: The Norwich Narrative And The Supposition Of Return

It is in De Boer’s second narrative, “The Des Marets Family of England”, occupying pages 545-551 of the text, immediately prior to De Boer’s Cambray narrative, that we find the putative linking narrative between the “Crusader narrative” and what we might call the “BonteKoe narrative” or Narrative C, which has its beginnings in the records for 1643 of the church at Middleburg, Zeeland, with the arrival in January of that year of one Jean desMarets and his family “from Calais” and, in July of that same year, the marriage of David desMarets, born in Beauchamps, with Marie Sohier, born in Nieppe.

In full fairness to all concerned, Narrative A2 – the Norwich Narrative – may or may not be an accurate transcription of research by Louis De Boer; it is presented as

“Record of Louis P. De Boer. References to Dr. H. J. Koenen[11] and others.”

And it appears just after an authorless section entitled “The Name In Church Records, England” that reads very much like a Victorian lady’s commonplace book, filled with disconnected snippets, notes and memoranda, and an entirely different “Possible Descent of David desMarest The Pioneer” that we will discuss in a different essay.

As such, a reader is immediately presented with the annoyingly unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable question: who is speaking?

This is an important question, because this narrative covers the lineage of the 1964 Narrative B from Jacques des Marets the Senior (XIV in Narrative B and in Narrative A1) through to Jean desMarets (XVII), the father of David desMarets the Pioneer whose marriage begins Narrative C. It is, in other words, the crucial linking narrative between the Crusader narrative, and the BonteKoe narrative, and its veracity is all that holds the two together into a seamless story of US Demarests’ descent from Cambray nobility.

Narrative A2 begins tentatively, with

“Jacques des Marets, Sr., is supposed to have been a son of Jean des Marets, magistrate at Cambray, and his third wife, Catherine Gerardel, or at least one of the named Jean’s thirteen children, from either (sic) of his four marriages.” (p. 545).

The source for this crucial bit of historical linkage is none other than the Jacques Joseph de Marez de Sancourt, mentioned later in Narrative A1, and his contention is one “of which we have not found complete proof, although there are many indications to make it acceptable” (p. 545).

Jacques the Senior, we are invited to believe, lives and dies in Cambray, and it is his son, Jacques the Younger, who, born in 1519, “fled during the religious and political persecutions by the Inquisition and the House of Hapsburg in the Netherlands[12] with his family to Norwich in England. This probably occurred in 1567.” (p. 545). Jacques the Younger lives until 1604, dying at the age of 85. The supporting evidence for this is a power-of-attorney sworn out by his widow in 1604, which ‘was, in 1732, in hands (sic) of Jacques Joseph de Marez se (sic) Sancourt, in the Land of Cambray.”[13]

Jacques the Senior, of Cambray, begets Jacques the Younger, of Norwich, who in his turn begets Francois[14], around whom so much of the real motive of this crucial linking narrative clusters.

“Francois de Marets, or de Mares, as his name appears, was born about the year 1555. At Norwich he was a lieutenant of the Walloon Militia[15], a body to which the colonists were entitled. He probably lived the last twenty years of his life in London, where most of his children are found registered in the French Church (in Threadneedle Street). Francois de Mares married twice. His first wife, Elizabeth Herbecq, died between 1601 and 1604. On December 24, 1604, he remarried at Norwich with Phebe De Rieu. Of the first marriage there were five, of the second, six children. Only the last children of the first marriage and all the children of the second marriage were baptized in the Walloon Church of Norwich.” (pp. 545-546).

Already, the narrative is beginning to creak and groan under unsupported (and in some cases unsupportable) assertions. Keeping in mind that Francois, in Narrative A2, is the father of Jean (born 1592), who is the father of David (born 1620, in Beauchamps, Picardy), we have before us Francois, who left Picardy with his father Jacques the Younger in 1567 at the age of twelve, and who (possibly after a stay of some years at Sandwich[16]) settles in Norwich, almost certainly before his twentieth birthday and equally almost certainly before his marriage. Therefore, unless he was married in his mid-teens, he was married to Elizabeth Herbecq at Norwich (or at the very least, somewhere in England) and had all of the five children that De Boer claims were issue of the first marriage (including Jean[17], supposed father of David) at Norwich. Yet De Boer claims no such records exist at Norwich.

Francois is not only crucial as the father of Jean and grandfather of David in linking narrative A2, but is also the source of the motive for the most implausible part of this narrative: his son Jean’s return to Picardy. The narrative says:

“On September 10, 1605, Francois de Mares transferred for himself and for his minor children, named Jacques, Jean, Elizabeth, Anna and Esther [the children of his marriage to Elizabeth Herbecq], represented by their guardians, Nicolas de Mares and Philip Carlier, to Jean de Mares, son of Nicolas, residing in the Land of Cambray, the fief of Cauroit, near Cambray, inherited by him from his father, Jacques (the Younger) de Mares, in 1604. Witnesses to this transaction were Nicolas de Mares and Louis de Mares, brothers.” (p. 546).

The evidence for this detailed but convoluted assertion is not forthcoming; we do not know whether records of such a transaction do exist, and if so where they are today. But, whether the information is accurate or not, it is crucial to the coherence of Narrative A2, for it seeks to establish that:

That one Jean was, in 1605, a minor child of Francois. If born in 1592, Jean would have been 12 or 13.

That, as late as Francois’ time, the family still held transferable property in “the ancestral homeland” of Cambray.[18]

It is worth restating, at this point, what is at stake in the narrative, if only to contextualize what follows. Jean, father of David and son of Francois, is a minor child of 12 or 13 in 1605, when his father transfers a property in Cambray to a relative then living in Cambray. We have only 15 years to get this Jean married and situated somewhere near a Beauchamps, in France, in order for David the Pioneer to be born. The move back to Picardy is unlikely, time is short, and

“Jacques de Marets and Jean de Marets, or de Mares, born respectively about 1590 and 1592, were minors in 1604 when their father inherited Cauroit (on the death of Jacques the Younger, his father) and in 1605, when, also in their name, he transferred this property to his Continental de Marets relatives. The fact that all their other brothers and sisters after 1625 had left Norwich and settled in London, but that there is no trace of them [Jacques and Jean] or of their half-brother Simon de Marets [third of six children of Francois and Phebe de Rieu], makes us believe they had ventured to go back to the continent. It would have been easy for them as soon as they have grown up to go there. Those portions of their ancient ancestral country which were under the house of Hapsburg, the so-called Spanish Netherlands, in 1609 had concluded a “truce” of twelve years with the free or Northern Netherlands, the Dutch Republic, and returning refugees or their offspring in Belgium were not molested during that period by the Spanish authorities. In the French section of their ancient home up until 1610 that benevolent prince, Henry IV, rules, the promulgator of the Edict of Nantes, which edict also in the first years after him kept its full strength. Could it be possible that they went there so as to recover some of the estranged ancestral possessions? In the Land of Calais there is a region named “Le Cauroy”. Could it be possible that this “Cauroy” is identical with the fief named “Cauroit” which their grandfather, the refugee to England, had possessed and which their father had disposed of in 1605?” (p. 546).

There, in less than 300 words, is the rank supposition that forms the only link between the Crusader-knight-administrator des Marets of Cambray, and David des Marets of the BonteKoe narrative. On the strength of no evidence, some suspect historical interpretation, and some geographical errors, someone – we do not know who, only that it is a “we” – supposes that Jean (as well as Jacques and possibly Simon), pursuing property interests in his ancestral land, returns to Picardy during a period of truce just at start of the Thirty Years’ War, and remains, to marry, have a child, and subsequently migrate to Middleburg. The reference to Le Cauroy[19] in Calais is almost certainly incorrect, since a Cauroy/Cauroir (probably but not definitely the ‘fief’ in question) was and is easily locatable on maps of Cambray, just to the north and east of Cambray itself – but is also necessary, in the narrator’s view, since the point at which this narrative must link to Narrative C, the BonteKoe narrative, is the line in the records of the church at Middleburg, indicating that Jean, his wife and son David, arrived “from Calais”.[20]

So, Narrative A2 proves to be, at best, a theory unsupported with evidence, at worst a lie, and certainly nothing better than a supposition. In Narrative B, all of this supposition and complexity is elided, and the descent from Jacques the Younger in Norwich through Francois to a son Jean who lives in Picardy where a son David is born is presented as seamless, uncontroversial…and factual.

That is not the case. There is no evidence to support Narrative B (the 1964 Voorhis Demarest narrative) in Narrative A1 (which deals only with the Cambray des Marets) or Narrative A2 (which is a farrago of supposition) in Mary and William Demarest’s 1938 text. Additionally, and as importantly, none of the narratives can actually establish that Jean, the father of David, is one and the same person as Jean, the son of Francois – therefore, there is no basis for linking either Narrative A1 or Narrative A2 to Narrative C, the story of the David desMarets who arrives in the new world on De BonteKoe, occupies the French Patent on the Hackensack, and fathers the US Demarests.

We therefore have today three unconnected narratives: the narrative of the Camray desMarets, the narrative of a deMares family in and around Norwich in the late 1500s and early 1600s, and a narrative about David desMarets and his wife Marie Sohier, that begins (in terms of documentation) with their marriage in Middleburg, Walcheren, Zeeland in 1643.

A Sidebar: The Search For Beauchamps

Interestingly enough, Narrative A2, after bending itself so tortuously to make the plausible case for Jean’s return to Picardy, bobbles the transition to Narrative C quite plainly:

“Thus far we have not found the source of the statement that David de Marets was born about 1620 at Beauchamps, which is a small town west of Amiens and south of Calais, just on the Picardy border.” (p. 547).[21]

One piece of evidence for the assertion that David was born in a town called Beauchamps (though not for the assertion that he was born in 1620) is in the church records at Middleburg:

“Assiste de Jean Marets et Francois Sohier, Marguerite deHerville and Marguerite Sohier; David desMarets, files de Jean, natif de Beauchamps et Marie Sohier, fille de Francois, natif de Nieppe, et le 19 Juillet. Marie le 29 juliet (sic).”[22]

There are three Beauchamps or Beaucamps that fit in the context: Beauchamps-sur-Bresle, a small town on the Bresle near the French coast, a few miles up river from a town called Marest; Beauchamps Ligny, near Nieppe, Marets and Fleurbaix (at one time a des Marets possession) and shown on maps of the seventeenth century simply as Beauchamps; and Beaucamps-le-Vieux, near Amiens.

Interestingly enough, the US Demarests involved in genealogical work in the period immediately prior to the 1938 Mary Demarest text thought they knew which Beauchamps David called his birthplace. For example, in a small section of the 1938 text (p. 540) entitled “Notes Of Present Day France” one Elmer W. Demarest is quoted (from 1929) as follows:

“I spend several days in Beauchamps and the vicinity, succeeding in finding and taking a number of photographs of the ancestral estate, found some people with our name still living on it and have collected considerable history and tradition relative to the numbers of the Demarest family who may or may not have been closely related to David Demarest, the pioneer. The Mayor of Beauchamps gave me every attention and turned me over to the town archiviste (sic) who showed me the records of Beauchamps which, unfortunately, begin in 1627. They contain many references to the family but are of course too late to identify David Demarest and his ancestors. The same archiviste is examining at (sic) Calais, Amiens, Oisemont and Cambrai at all of which places there are records.” (p.540).

This note, combined with an earlier, somewhat bizarre parenthetical observation in the midst of a biographical sketch of Maresius, the Huguenot theologian (p. 536), indicate that, in Mary’s time at least, the Beauchamps of David’s birth was considered to be Beaucamps-le-Vieux, less than five kilometers from Oisemont.[23]

We can find no information in the 1938 text itself to suggest why this Beaucamps, rather than Beauchamps-sur-Bresle or Beauchamps Ligny, was settled on by the early Demarest genealogists as David’s Beauchamps.[24]

Conclusions: Three Different Narratives, With No Connections

Based on the foregoing, we conclude that there is no basis whatsoever at present for claiming any of the following:

That David desMarets of the BonteKoe narrative is a descendent of the Norwich de Mares and particularly of Francois de Mares.

That David desMarets of the BonteKoe narrative is a descendent of the desMarets family of Cambray and environs.

This means, among other things, that US Demarests have no provable right to show any of the desMarets-related coat of arms, and in particular no rights to show the oft-used “ex fide vivo” crest.

We also conclude that, effectively, all of the research on David desMarets and his ancestry that speaks to any time earlier than January of 1643, when David and his family arrive in Middleburg “from Calais” must be set aside as suspect, and that even the period in Middleburg must be re-researched to obtain copies of the Middleburg records pertinent to the family prior to David’s departure for the Palatinate in 1651 or thereabouts.

Additionally, several useful lines of research suggest themselves.

The French and Dutch desMarets-descended families cited in Narratives A1 and A2 must be located and, if possible, copies of the documents cited by De Boers must be obtained, along with any other materials related to the immediate ancestors of David desMarets.

The records at Middleburg must be viewed by a contemporary researcher and if possible photographed or at least transcribed.[25]

The correct Beauchamps must be identified, and records related to Jean desMarets, Marguerite deHerville[26], and David sought.[27]

The fates of Francois’ children by Elizabeth Herbecq must be uncovered, either to refloat the “return to Picardy” story or put it to rest permanently. In researching this area, it is worthwhile questioning, we believe, whether in fact there were two Francois deMares, each of whom married one woman, rather than one, who married twice. Similarly, it is worthwhile examining the possibility that the Jan deMares, born of Francois’ marriage to Phebe, may also have been recorded or referred to as Jean deMares. [28]

David’s travels from Middleburg through the Palatinate and back to Amsterdam need to be retraced and documentation with proper citations, transcriptions and photographs gathered.

Provisionally, four possible theories may be held about the immediate ancestors of David desMarets:

They are commoners, and unrelated to either the desMarets of Cambray or the deMares of Norwich.

They are the deMares of Norwich, and Jean father of David is also Jean son of Francois, but no evidence exists to support this claim at present.

They are a different (and perhaps separate) line of desMarets, possibly

(a) of the line of Maresius, the Huguenot theologian (as Riker and David D. Demarest effectively imply) or

(b) of the line of Pierre des Marets of Cormon/Cormont en Boulenois, who married at Canterbury about 1575.[29]

The Demarest Genealogical Society will be maintaining research projects on each of these theories. Meanwhile, any claims about Demarest descent from the line of Jean de Bousis, and any presentation by modern-day descendents of David Demarest[30] of that lineage or of the “ex fide vivo” heraldry of the Cambray desMarets (or indeed any heraldry whatsoever), must be held in abeyance. There is no evidence to support the first, and therefore none to warrant the second.

[1] Photofacsimile versions of the published versions of Narrative A and Narrative B are available at the Demarest Genealogical Society website: www.demarests.com.

[2] http://www.genealogyforum.rootsweb.com/gedcom/gedr4129.htm

[3] Narrative A contains a typographical error – “Indquisition” for “Inquisition”. A Google search on the word Indquisition is instructive.

[4] Any suggestion that Voorhis Demarest knowingly perpetrated a fraud, or allowed to be published a document he himself knew to be suspect, is unacceptable, given the rigor with which he edited the 1964 volume.

[5] Photofacsimile versions of the published versions of Narrative A and Narrative B are available at the Demarest Genealogical Society website: www.demarests.com.

[6] It is entirely unclear, in the 1938 Mary Demarest text, whether DeBoer’s contributions were crafted specifically for the Mary Demarest text or were being reprinted by Mary and William from other published sources. As the Demarest Family Association records, which might have shed some light on this and other questions about editorial intent, have been at least misplaced, if not lost, we may not be able to resolve this issue. It is also unclear as to whether Louis De Boer was a poor scholar, a fabricator of genealogies for nouveau-riche Americans, or both – what is clear is that most if not all of De Boer’s work is either suspect or has been overturned by subsequent genealogical research.

[7] This misplaced reference, combined with several intratextual references to something called “Appendix 1” but not found, as such, in Mary and William Demarest’s 1938 text (which has no numbered appendices whatsoever), leads us to speculate that Mary and William Demarest were reproducing work of De Boer’s first published elsewhere.

[8] We wonder whether this family is still extant and, if so, whether they remain in possession of the documents De Boers claims they held at the time he did his research.

[9] The tomb of Baldwin VII, in the nave of the church at Cateau Cambresis, as well as the desMarets house at Hurtebise, are easily locatable by any tourist today.

[10] It is worth noting however that in many GEDCOM databases and textual genealogical summaries on the web, various desMarets mentioned in narrative A1 are described as “Count of Flanders.” This is incorrect, and leads to false connections between desMarets figures and members of several major French nobile lines.

[11] Possibly H. J. Koenen (1809-1874), involved in the schism in the Dutch Reformed Church in 1834. No information in Narrative A2 is attributed directly to H.J. Koenen.

[12] In the event that decent historical evidence is produced to support the Crusader origins theory, there will be need to return to this De Boer narrative and reset the Huguenot tone a bit. Flight from Picardy or Cambray in 1567 would in all probability not have been a response to active oppression at the moment, so much as it would have been a response to widespread Huguenot conspiracy theories, current at the time, that a Spanish-led “ethnic cleansing” was imminent in the area, as well as to the so-called March of the Iconoclasts in 1566, in which Protestants desecrated Catholic churches from St. Omer to Ypres, leading to reprisals from the Spanish.

[13] This statement at least settles the question of whether De Boer can have had personal knowledge of, or sight of, the evidence he conjures with. If this date is not a misprint, he cannot have had any direct knowledge of the evidence or authorities he cites, at least not those of de/se Sancourt. The question remains: if this evidence is proferred genuinely, where did De Boer encounter records mentioning se/de Sancourt? We can find no modern record of any published work by a person of the name se Sancount or de Sancourt.

[14] Laurence has reviewed the materials at the Huguenot Society in London, and will be publishing his findings in a separate article. Suffice it to say that it is not possible, viewing those records today, to determine how De Boer – or another researcher – could have constructed the genealogy of around this Francois as we find it in the 1938 text.

[15] The Francois (or Franchois, as the records show) who was a lieutenant in the militia is in all probability another, different, Francois. Laurence has found data in the Norwich records suggesting this is the case.

[16] At some point around 1600 that we have yet to pin down specifically, Elizabeth I ordered at least a portion the French Huguenot colony moved from Sandwich, near the coast, inland to Norwich. Possibly Jacques the Younger and his family were at Sandwich for some time before moving to Norwich.

[17] Laurence points out that Francois clearly fathered a documented son, Jan, and that Jan may be one and the same person as the undocumented Jean.

[18] Precisely what this property was is completely unclear. It was not a fief, which was not owned by the tenant and could not therefore be transferred. If such a conveyance took place, we believe it was a house, rather than any significant amount of land, that was involved.

[19] Hilariously, some of the GEDCOM-based genealogies on the web list Jean, father of David, as being born in “Le Cauroy”, the “family’s ancient homestead”.

[20] The authors are themselves in disagreement as to this point. “From Calais” may be taken as a designation of prior residence, in which case we need to be looking for the Beauchamps closest to a Calais as the likely birthplace of David, keeping in mind that there are at least two towns of Calais in the Spanish Netherlands during the 1600s: the famous seaport, and the tiny village some 2 miles from Nieppe (or Niepekirk, as it is frequently labeled on maps of the period). Or it may be taken merely as the designation of a port of embarkation – Middleburg is on an island, and was accessible only by sea, and Calais is a sensible place to begin a sea journey north, whether one lived in Calais, or in Cambresis. That theory presumes, of course, that David would have traveled with his parents from the modern-day French coast to Zeeland by boat, rather than overland. Maps of the period are ambiguous with respect to overland routes available from any of the possible “Beauchamps” to the Dutch mainland towns closest to Middleburg: Oostburg, Ysendyck or L’Ecluse.

[21] Who is “we” in this sentence? The birthplace of David does not seem problematic, in that David D. Demarest’s 1886 address “Huguenots on the Hudson” reproduces, in its printed form, what purports to be a transcription of the record of David’s marriage, in which Beauchamps is named, and also makes extensive references to Riker’s Harlem (1881), in which the link between David and the “Oisemont” deaMarets is asserted pretty clearly (Riker, p. 114). The year – 1620 – has no attribution that we can find earlier than David D. Demarest’s text, which is the first to assert that date.

[22] Mabel Boyce Spell, “Narrative”, in Voorhis Demarest. The Demarest Family. V1. Hackensack, New Jersey: 1964. p. xxi. Spell is almost certainly quoting from David D. Demarest’s text without attribution. The text is variously represented, and there is wide variance in the name of the woman who stands as a witness for David: Margriete, Marguerite, Margue and deHerville, d’Herville and deServille. We have no reason to believe this woman was David’s mother; the convention at the time would have led to the text “fils de Jean et Margue” were that the case. We have significant reason to believe that the Marguerite Sohier who witnesses for Marie at the marriage is Marie’s sister, rather than her mother, who was probably Sara Sayes or Saeyes and who died prior to Marie’s marriage. For more detailed information, see www.demarests.com/documents/sohier_tree.pdf.

[23] In fact, both Riker and Reverend David D. Demarest’s narrative effectively name Beauchamps-le-Vieux as David’s Beauchamps: Demarest writes that “He was a native of Beauchamp, a little village of Picardy, in France, about 22 miles west of the City of Amiens.” (p. 5). A survey – admittedly incomplete – of maps of the region produced in the 1600s and 1700s fails to show a Beaucamps or Beauchamps at the location of modern-day Beaucamps-le-Vieux, which does not mean it was not there, only that it was not considered cartographically significant. The other two candidate Beauchamps, however, appear regularly on period maps. David D. Demarest was clearly of the opinion, however, that David was in some way related to the DesMarets of Oisemont – perhaps because of The Reverend Demarest’s intellectual affinity for Maresius, the Protestant theologian, or perhaps because he was following Riker, who offers absolutely no evidence for his position other that David the Pioneer’s religious rectitude (later, Riker describes David the Pioneer’s penchant for brawling and legal wrangles with far more evidentiary detail).

[24] Neither of the authors is at present betting that Beaucamps-le-Vieux is David’s Beauchamps. Laurence is focusing his research on Beauchamps-sur-Bresle, on the premise that there is no connection between either the desMarets of Cambray or the De Mares of Norwich and the David desMarets of the BonteKoe narrative, while Marc intends to focus on Beauchamps Ligny, in order to prove or disprove (to the extent possible) that the “return to Picardy” thesis may be accurate in essence, and wrong (in the 1938 text) in detail. In any case, if Beaucamps-le-Vieux proves to be David’s birthplace, the fact that the records begin in 1627 does not in any way make them useless, since Jean and his family presumably lived in the area until their move to Middleburg in 1643 – a move possibly occasioned by the fact that the Thirty Years’ War had moved at least one of its active fronts into the neighborhood at roughly that time.

[25] Strictly speaking, we have no documentary evidence for the claim that David was born in a town called Beauchamps, or in 1620. We have David D. Demarest’s (possibly transcribed) record of the marriage of David and Marie Sohier, and Spell’s restatement of that information. We do not have copies of the records. It is possible that any records at Middleburg may have been destroyed by Lutfwaffe bombing.

[26] The modern French town of Ervillers, south of Beauchamps Ligny between Arras and Bapaume, and due east of Crevecoeur and other historical desMarets possessions, is shown on maps of the area as late as 1760 as Herville. If this is indeed the birthplace of of David’s femal marriage witness, and she is indeed his mother (she is listed, according to the Reverend Demarest, as Margue de Serville, not Marguerite or Margriete DeHerville, in the Middleburg records), then traces of the deHervilles may give us clues to the lives of Jean and Marguerite and David prior to their departure for Middleburg.

[27] Marc and Laurence have begun this process, but Beaucamps-le-Vieux remains at this point uncovered.

[28] Laurence has uncovered evidence to suggest that the diaspora from Norwich after 1620 or so was as much to other parts of England as to London, and therefore we may find records of Francois’ children Jacques, Jean and Simon, as well as Francois himself, elsewhere than London. In the case of Simon, it seems likely that he died; the Norwich church did not have its own cemetery, so burial records are spotty.

[29] This descent theory is noted, without explanation, source or elaboration, in a stand-alone section of the 1938 Mary Demarest text.

[30] One wonders why the truly impressive achievements of David the Pioneer are insufficient to meet the needs of his modern-day descendents for historical grounding. Although Hurtebis stands, and we can visit Baldwin VII’s tomb, and the primary Cambray desMarets Holy Land possession is still extant (the town of Kahramanmaras in Turkey, due north of Aleppo in Syria), the impact of David the Pioneer on our collective history, regardless of his ancestry, seems to us to overshadow the impact of the Cambray desMarets, certainly in the US.