ACADIAN-CAJUN-L Archives

From: Gordon Bonnet <>
Subject: retraction...
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 20:47:00 -0500

Hi all,

I'm afraid that I must post a retraction to my previous post about the
ancestry of Bernard Morvant. New evidence has come to light which
contradicts some of what I posted.

A paper by Juliana Barr of Rutgers University on the relationship
between the French, Spanish, and Natives in the south and southwest
presents documentation that Francois Morvant married an Apache woman
named Anne Marie, and after his stay in Nachitoches made his way to
Nacogdoches, Texas, where he was living with Anne Marie in 1805.
Bernard Morvant is documented to have died in St. John the Baptist
Parish, LA in 1784. They can't be the same person, despite the fact
that Francois is called "Francois dit Bernard" in some of the records.

I still believe that the only possibility is that Bernard was the son of
Jean Morvan(t) of Quebec and a Native woman, and that the great
likelihood is that the infamous Francois Morvant was his brother. We
still have the remarkable similarity between Bernard's children's names
and the siblings of Jean of Quebec as circumstantial evidence. But, of
course, without any records substantiating Bernard's early years, this
connection is more tenuous.

Sorry if I led anyone astray. I really thought I had it nailed down.

cheers,

Gordon Bonnet
Trumansburg NY

This thread:

• retraction... by Gordon Bonnet <>