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NEW!! Details
on the 2012 Annual Meeting
Charleston,
South Carolina
The 2012 annual meeting will be held October 5-7, 2012, in
Charleston, South Carolina, at the Holiday Inn
Riverview. The business meeting will be on
Friday night, October 5. On Saturday morning
there will be a tour of Charleston, to include a visit to the French Huguenot Church where several
early Fontaine and Maury family members are named on memorial plaques on the wall. Members will then have a luncheon in downtown
Charleston. The afternoon will be free for
touring Charleston or to participate in genealogy break-out sessions. On Saturday night there will be a reception in
Mount Pleasant. Please check back for
more details and registration information closer to the event!
UPDATED!! Join or
Renew Your Society Membership for 2012!
All membership
renewals or new memberships paid since the annual meeting in August 2011 will be for 2012! For members who are renewing, please remember
to contact the Society’s Membership Secretary with any address changes, death
notices, or other changes in membership status. You
can use the form on our Membership page and send to:
Membership
Secretary
The Fontaine
Maury Society
116 Oakland
Drive
Piedmont, SC 29673-9005
The Society would also like to create an
e-list for our members. Please be sure to
provide your e-mail address when you join!
Report on The Fontaine Maury Society’s 2011
Annual Meeting
Charlottesville, Virginia
Almost 60 Society members representing descendants of three children of Jaques Fontaine met on August 12-14, 2011, in Charlottesville, Virginia, close to a number of colonial Fontaine sites and home of many Fontaine and Maury family documents in the Special Collection of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia. The Society last met in Charlottesville in June 2001.
The Alderman Library provided Society members a rare opportunity to see Jaques Fontaine’s manuscript and other Fontaine documents on Friday afternoon. The business meeting on Friday night included reports from the officers, the election of a new trustee and recording secretary, and agreement to hold the 2012 annual meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. The meeting hosted a rare visit from the past by the Reverend James Maury (1717-1769) (also known as Society president emeritus Dr. John May), famous for the Parson’s Cause, Patrick Henry’s first famous court case. The Reverend Maury was one of the first of our ancestors to settle in the Charlottesville area in the 1700s.
On Saturday Society members visited Grace Episcopal Church in Keswick, Virginia, where the Reverend James Maury was the second rector of the church. The Reverend Maury had provided Thomas Jefferson with his early education and Thomas Jefferson served on the vestry of the parish from 1767 to 1770. After the visit at the church we had a group luncheon at Michie Tavern in Charlottesville. The tavern has been in operation since colonial times. It is located about a mile from Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, and close to Jefferson’s vineyard.
The Executive Committee met in the afternoon and made a number of decisions. They agreed to do more research for possible Mississippi sites for the 2013 annual meeting with Pontotoc and Oxford both as options as descendants of both the Reverend Peter Fontaine and the Reverend Francis Fontaine settled in those areas. Agreement was also reached to seek an additional Society member who descends from the Reverend Francis Fontaine to participate in the Fountain/Fontaine DNA study. Society members who descend from the Reverend Peter Fontaine and John Fontaine, brothers to the Reverend Francis Fontaine, have already participated in the study. It was also agreed to research creating a Maury DNA study.
Saturday night the Society had a reception at the hotel. Displays were available the entire weekend of historic family items and all items available for sale from the Society’s library.
Input Requested:
Fontaine and Maury Sites in Mississippi?
The Society is considering Mississippi as a potential meeting place for the 2013 annual meeting. Descendants of siblings The Reverend Peter Fontaine, The Reverend Francis Fontaine (1697-1749), and Mary Anne Fontaine Maury (1690-1755) settled in various areas of Mississippi, including Clarksdale in Coahoma County in northwestern Mississippi, Pontotoc in Pontotoc County in northern/central Mississippi, and Claiborne County in southwestern Mississippi. If you have Fontaine and Maury family locations (homes, cemeteries, etc.) that you can recommend for visiting by the Society, please contact the Society’s librarian at FontaineMauryLibrary@verizon.net.
New Book
Published of
The Confederate Diary of Betty Herndon Maury
The Central Virginia Battlefield Trust has published its 9th in a series of annual historic journals, Fredericksburg History and Biography, that is a new annotated version of Betty Herndon Maury’s diary written during the Civil War. Betty Herndon Maury was the daughter of Matthew Fontaine Maury. The new 2010 volume, annotated by Carolyn Carpenter, is accompanied by a Who’s Who identifying people mentioned by Betty in her diary. The volume is available from the Central Virginia Battlefield Trust. Note that the book is not available from the Fontaine Maury Society Library.
An earlier published edition of the diary was published by Alice Maury Parmalee in Washington, D.C., in 1938.
Herndon Maury wrote the diary (June 3, 1861, through February 18, 1863) chiefly in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It contains detailed comments on the progress of the Civil War, especially in the local area, hardships suffered by Confederate soldiers, and military activities of Mrs. Maury’s father, Matthew Fontaine Maury (including the abortive attempt to capture the U.S.S. Pawnee), her cousin, General Dabney Herndon Maury (1822-1900), and other members of the Maury family. The original diary was a gift of Mrs. James Parmelee to the Library of Congress/Archival Manuscript Collection in 1928.
New Book Available from Library:
Francis Fontaine the Builder 1721-1785
The Library has a new addition available for purchase or look-up service! A definitive history of Francis Fontaine, Jr., and his descendants, correcting mistakes in this line of the Fontaine family that originated with Ann Maury’s misreading of a letter from the Fontaine family of Columbus, Georgia, and added incorrectly to her 1853 Fontaine/Maury chart. Published for the authors Hubert McAlexander, Richard Douglas McCrum, and Dan Morse Woodliff by Otter Bay Books in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2009. Sources woven into the text, fully indexed. Reproductions available with the gracious permission of Society member and author Hubert McAlexander. 278 pages. Available in bound copy for $30 and PDF on CD for $8. Visit the library for ordering information and other available items.
UPDATED!! Any James or Reverend Francis Fontaine Descendants to Participate in Fountain / Fontaine DNA Study?
A group of Fountain family researchers has initiated the Fountain / Fontaine DNA study to determine if various Fountain and Fontaine families share a common ancestor. The study included descendants of Solomon and Israel Fountain, who both lived in the late 1700s in Edgecombe County, North Carolina.
There has long been conjecture that these Fountain families descend from the Fontaine and Maury families’ common ancestor, Jaques Fontaine (1658-1728), but there is no definitive evidence to prove this. This DNA study could provide the physical evidence not yet located in documentation.
At the Society’s annual meeting in October 2006, it was agreed that the Society would recruit an eligible family member to participate in the DNA test. Since most Society members are documented descendants of the Jaques Fontaine family, a Society member’s participation in the DNA study should help other Fontaine and Fountain researchers in determining if they are part of this extended French Huguenot family.
We are pleased to report that in the first half of 2007, we had two members of our Society take the 37 marker test. The men match each other, but their results do NOT match anyone else currently in the study, so this means that his DNA does not match that of the descendants of Solomon and Israel Fountain. These results mean that Solomon and Israel Fountain do not descend from Jaques Fontaine as long believed.
As in all DNA studies, there is a 5 percent error rate. For optimal study design, we had two male descendants of two different sons of Jaques Fontaine to take the test. One of our Society members who took the test is a descendant of Jaques’ son, the Reverend Peter Fontaine. The other member who took the test is a descendant of Jaques’ son, John Fontaine.
We would welcome a male descendant of one of Jaques’ two other sons – James Fontaine and the Reverend Francis Fontaine – to take the test, to further verify the current results. At the August 2011 annual meeting in Charlottesville, the Executive Committee agreed that the Society would underwrite another test participant. If you are interested in learning more about the study and possibly participating to assist you in your research, please contact the study administrator listed on the DNA study’s webpage. If you are a descendant of James Fontaine or the Reverend Francis Fontaine and are interested in taking the test on behalf of the Society, please contact the Society’s librarian at FontaineMauryLibrary@verizon.net.
Maury DNA Study?
At the 2011 annual meeting in Charlottesville, the Society’s Executive Committee discussed the possibility of creating a Maury DNA study. To do so, we need two volunteers. First, we need someone who would be willing to serve as the administrator of a study. This would involve creating the free study with Family Tree DNA and maintaining a study webpage, which is easily done using a template provided by the company, answering queries from potential study participants, and contacting new members when they purchase a test kit and join the study. As examples, we recommend reviewing two study pages, the Fountain/Fontaine study and the Bruton/Brewton study.
Second, we need a male Maury who is willing to take the test. It is simple, using a large swab inside the cheek and returning it to the company for testing. The Society will pay for the test kit. For more information or to volunteer, please contact the Society’s librarian at FontaineMauryLibrary@verizon.net
Wanted: Descendants of James Fontaine and Elizabeth
Fontaine Torin
Jaques Fontaine and his wife, Anne Elizabeth Boursiquot, had eight children – of these, six lived to adulthood and had descendants. Of these, we have descendants of four who are current members of our Society. We are seeking any descendants of the remaining two, James Fontaine and his sister Elizabeth Fontaine Torin.
James Fontaine was the eldest child, born 10 October 1686, in Barnstaple, England. He married twice, first in 1711 with Lucretia Desjarrie in the Diocese of Cork and Ross, Ireland, and second ca. 1737-1738 with Elizabeth Harcum in Virginia.
Elizabeth Fontaine was the youngest child, born 3 August 1701, in Bearhaven, Ireland. She married on 31 October 1729, with Daniel Torin in London. She died around 1764.
If you are a descendant of James or Elizabeth or have information on their families, please contact our Society!
Suggestions?
Should you have suggestions or requests for postings on our Society’s Announcements page, please contact the Society’s Librarian at FontaineMauryLibrary@verizon.net
Revised October 2011