Huguenot-L Archives

Archiver > Huguenot > 1998-07 > 0901705343


From: Eve McLaughlin <>
Subject: Re: [Huguenot-L] Request for basic Huguenot info
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:42:23 +0100


In message <>, Tanya
Hein <> writes
>Hello. I'm new to this list. I don't know a lot about the Huguenots and I
>don't know anything at all about Huguenot research. So I have a few
>questions that I hope some kind person can answer for me.
>
>First, what makes a person a Huguenot? Would a modern day person, like
>myself for example, qualify to join a Huguenot society merely by having a
>Huguenot ancestor centuries earlier but none after that? That question is
>based on my premise, perhaps in error, that a Huguenot is identified
>according to a particular religious belief system.
>
>Second, how or where does a person find out if a person or family name is
>Huguenot? My mother's maiden name is Oligny. Her Oligny ancestors are
>French-Canadians who we have traced to Jean Oligny in the early 1700's in
>France. He was married in St. Martin en Limousin, Diocese de Tulle,
>Limousin: Department du Correze. I don't know if he was a Huguenot. My
>aunt insists that our Jean Oligny must be related in some fashion to the
>great French Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspard de C'Oligny -- drop the C
>which denotes landownership and you have Oligny --- and therefore, we must
>be Huguenot. Interestingly my aunt was at a Huguenot church in Germany and
>they introduced her as an aristocrat because of her name. (HA - too bad we
>don't have the money to go with it!) The same thing happened to my cousin
>in the Provence of France.
>
>Would somebody please help straighten me out on all of this or refer some
>sources of information to me? It would be much appreciated! Thanks in
>advance.
>
>Tanya Hein
>Madison, WI
>
>
Basic premise here is astray - it is the de prefix in de coligny which
means `of Coligny', and it seems unlikely that the C would vanish too.
Given the area, M. Oligny might be a straight from France import and it
would be as well to pursue that line as well.
--
Eve McLaughlin

Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians
Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

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