de La Chaumette, Bourgeois, Fourgeaud, Reynaud, de La Clarvellion, Bourthouneyron, Couturier, De Marques, Hardouin/Hardin…..

So this long , 40 odd year search for my grandfather and that part of my family, has been a long strange trip, fer real. My apologies to my friends and fam amongst the Pranksters, the Deadheads, and indeed, the Dead themselves. I am not stealing it… can I say I taped it? lol

anyhow, this research, has taken me across history and time itself!

Especially since actually solving the mystery 2 years ago, on what would have been my father’s 75th birthday. I had narrowed the possible fathers down to two men, a father and a son. A DNA match, to a member of the father’s wife’s family, made it clear the son was the culprit. One Earl Shumate.

So this family name, Shumate, turns out used to be De La Chaumette. Given that we have DNA matches, not only to many Shumates, who also have record of the change De La Chaumette, but to some Delashmutts of Canada. Also, all of these matches have corresponding genealogies that do indeed match up, as many as 10-12 generations back. So the DNA proves that the veracity of the name change from Chaumette to Shumate is legit. 

but now…. Where were they from? Where were my paternal roots? The earliest, most basic dna analysis of my data, the info we had early on indicated that my ancient paternal ancestor came out of North Africa, approximately 2000 years ago. With more data coming in over the years as dna testing for genealogy became more popular, i was able to start to kind of see a ghost map, based on where my dna matches were, or were from, as to the possible travels of my male progenitors.

 I mean, two years ago, I could take my paternal line back to 1942, the birth of my father, that was it. what made that more frustrating, than it did before I had dna tesing, was that I knew where they had been, my ancestors, 2000 years before, North Africa now. So How did they get to North America? My early matches indicated it went through Europe before they got to ther New World, but what route?

That is what I am going to start tackling in this series of essays. The data and info that I have been able to gather, surmise or extrapolate, to bring detail to this ghost map

So wait… my paternal ancestors, from Arizona, to Oklahoma, Tennessee, back to Virginia, Martinique. Then England, Switzerland, and lastly, France? Going back 500 years, my ancestor was french? Not Spanish? Not some Mexican or half Native American, as the family stories told us for 75 years?

Granted, I knew my Grandmothers family were bigots. Not necesarily well educated either, and they were coming from Texas roota and sensibilities… So, anybody dark skinned, was a freakin Mexican. I knew that.

I knew that early findings from my Dna results did see alot of matches for me with origins in Spain, so we thought maybe the family stories werent all inacurate. I mean, the DNA said North Africa for origins 2000 yrs ago. And , indications were that 250 tears ago, this ancestral line seemed to be in Virginia. How else would you get to the American Colonies from North Africa? I mean, had to be some sort of stop in Europe, and Spain and Portugals proximity to North Africa, along with the Islamic Conquest of Iberia, made Spain a likely departure point, or at least a stop along the way.

and yet…. As data came in over the years, it didn’t seem to be working out that way. Yes, I had plenty of matches in Spain, but they were all pretty distant. My early, intriguing matches were, in Italy and France. They seemed to be closer matches to me than any of the Iberian Peninsula. More intriguing, i had more matches, of a closer sort, percentage wise, in the Carribean, than Spain. 

In fact, I had higher numbers of matches in numerous territorial regions of Spain, than in Spain itself. It seems, that those of my ancestors or distant cousins that did sojourn in Spain, decided, for the most part, to leave. That is curious, and , given the timeline lends one to believe that they may have been part of one of Spain’s expulsions, either of Jews or Moors. 

But it seems that while most of my distant cousins seemed to be heading for the Wilderness, the territories, other Spanish speaking regions less, Inquisitive, shall we say, my direct ancestors went North, to France. Now, I still can’t determine for sure yet, when and whith whom, they went into France, I know they did.

and I think I really have to dig deeper, in French records I suppose, to break thru past 1500, where my paqternal genealogy ends now. I need to dig further into the past and politics of theregion at the time, in order to understand what sources migbht be available, to know the politics, the war, the religious or ethnic pwersecutons that were going on at the time in question.

I also need to look further into all the other, lines, up the maternal lines. Need to see who they were, learn more about them. Gleen som clues about the Chaumettes by learning more about the people they lived among and married, who they did business with, worshipped with, etc.

So that means, I am going to be digging into the history of Acquitaine, Poitiers, Rochouchart, and the rest of Southwestern France. Likewise, Cantabria, Pamplona and Navarre on Spanish side of the border region. 

And some of the French surnames I will be digging into are, Bourgeois, Fourgeaud, Reynaud, Dela Clarvellion, Barthouneyron, Couturier, DeMarques, Hardouin/Hardin… and of course, Dela Chaumette. Anybody out there have any sources for me? Anybody out there have any of these French surnames in their genealogy? Wanna figure out if we are cousins?