Huguenots

Before I begin let me explain the lack of blog posts for a while. I put my house on the market and it sold really quickly and so I ended up having to move a lot sooner than I had planned. Things have now settled down somewhat so I guess I'll get back to blogging more regularly now. (I hope)

A while back I blogged about a research problem I was working on that might need DNA to solve. Just as an update, I haven't been able to get any of the male descendants to agree to be tested but I haven't given up trying.

I am now currently continuing work on this same research problem in an attempt to identify the origins of the immigrant who came to Virginia in the 1600s. Herein lies the Huguenot question. One of his known sons married a woman from a Huguenot family. The immigrant's family lived in the area near Manakintown where Huguenots began to settle in 1700. Is it possible that the immigrant was also a Huguenot?

One of the factors I looked at today was whether or not you had to be a British subject to receive headrights. Headrights was the right to free land based on the number of persons you brought into the Virginia Colony. You could receive it for yourself and for anyone else you might have brought with you. After reading this article, it would seem to me that anyone could receive headrights, British or not.

Now my problem is proving or disproving he was Huguenot and if so how much time, if any, did he spend in England or Ireland before he came to Virginia. I found several instances of others with the same surname (which I can't share here because it's a client) who were Huguenots but I am still left with my mystery.

A check of the DNA chart of the ancestors of those who have been tested doesn't show any connections to what I found today to be a known Huguenot line of the same surname. I guess more DNA test volunteers are needed. Who knows if this will get solved? We can only hope.