The Huguenots

Many thanks to Anne Mordel of the French Genealogy Blog for her introduction to the story of the Huguenots in France in her recent post Huguenot Genealogy-A Bit of Background.My Mauzy ancestors, referenced in a Surname Saturday post recently, were members of this Protestant group, and made their way to North America as a result of the persecution. Anne's chronology of the events is fascinating, and her links to online resources are very helpful. If you also have ancestors from France, be sure to pay her a visit!

Surname Saturday

Mauzy, Mauzey, Mauze, Moze
For many years, Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Henry Mauzy, A Huguenot Refugee, the Ancestors of the Mauzys of Virginia and Other States from 1685 to 1910, by Richard Mauzy, 1911, was the definitive work on this family. It boasted responses from Mauzys all across the U.S., 105 pages on the descendants of Henry Mauzy. But it was only breadcrumbs showing the way, none of it supported by documents. Still, it was something.

Since then other researchers have taken up the search. It is generally thought that John Mauzé, born in England about 1675 to Michael Mauzé of France, is the common ancestor for the Mauzys of the U.S.

Dr. Armand Jean Mauzey published his research in 1950 in an excellent article for the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography¹. He believes the Mauzé name might have come from the Arabian word “Mauz”, a plantain tree, and may have been adopted during the Crusades. He documents 10 Mauzé families that left France for the British Isles between 1681 and 1724, Huguenots who fled France on the repeal of the Edict of Nantes. The family appears to have come from lands near LaRochelle.

The Mauzys undertook the hardship of escape from France, travel to the British Isles and then to the New World in search of religious tolerance and freedom. How proud and grateful we should all be for their courage.




1. Armand Jean Mauzey, M.D., D.S.C., “The Mauzey-Mauzy Family”, Virgina Magazine of History and Biography 58 (1950), 112-119.

Vive la France!

I haven't spent a lot of time researching my husband's family. I should. Someday my daughter or granddaughter may take an interest in all this, and I want to have the information for them. But I usually get distracted by the hunt for my elusive DeHoritys.

One thing about researching my husband's family is that it is so darn easy! Until his generation, every one of his ancestors, with one exception, are of French-Canadian stock. Information seems to just fall from the trees! Preserving family history seems to be coded in their DNA. My mother-in-law, God rest her, gave me a family tree that went back a couple of hundred years. I know, not sourced and hearsay and all, but when I started to verify the information, with very few exceptions, it was correct. Amazing!

Another thing that is wonderful about researching these hardy folks is that their wives kept their maiden names. No guesswork here! The Catholic Church records in the Drouin collection are a tremendous resource --"Benjamin Beaulieu, son of Francois Beaulieu and Marie-Louise Rapideaux (marries) Aglae Legault daughter of Dominique Legault and Marie Deguirre". Amazing!

The same sort of luck seems to happen on the Internet. I was browsing for new blogs the other day and the search engine calls up L'Association des Charron et Ducharme, a web site dedicated to the family history of my husband's grandmother's ancestors. The research and information available there is, well, amazing!

If all family history research were this easy, we would all need another hobby to fill the time.

I love the French!