NOE-L Archives

Archiver > NOE > 1997-08 > 0870627655


From: Bruce Noe <>
Subject: Origins of NOE family
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 10:00:55 -0700 (PDT)


Hello NOE family researchers,

My name is Bruce Noe, and I just recently discovered the NOE
Discussion List. I am an American, but I now live in Strasbourg,
France. Over the last few months I have been trying to research the
origins of my branch of the NOE family. I know that my great-great
grandfather Francis NOE came to the USA in the 1850s from
Alsace-Lorraine and settled near Cornwall, NY.

I have long wondered about the origins of the name, its various
spellings and pronunciations. I have learned that, in French, No is
the biblical name Noah and No refers to a pond. There are two
villages in France bearing the name No. One is a very small village
near Toulouse in the south of France, and the other is a very small
village near Sens in the north central part of France near Paris.
There are no families with the name NOE listed in either of these
villages. There are also several villages with La No or Les Nos (La
No-Blanche, La No-Poulain, Les Nos, and Les Nos-prs-Troyes),
which I assume all refer to ponds. There is a Chateau la No which
produces a very good Muscadet wine, but there is no connection with
the NOE family name.

This past June, I visited the "Centre Dpartemental dHistoire des
Familles" in Guebwiller which is a village in the southern part of
Alsace. They were very helpful, but told me that the name No is not
an Alsacian name. While there we consulted several books looking for
references to the NOE family. There are no NOEs listed in either
volume of the two volume reference "The Alsace Emigration Book" by
Cornelia Schrader-Muggenthaler. There were no NOE families listed in
an historical index to Alsacian families. However we did find a
reference to a NOE family from Villing in Moselle, which is one of the
four departments (counties) of the region of Lorraine.

Next I visited the Archives Dpartementale de la Moselle located in
Saint-Julien-ls-Metz. Stored there, are the original civil records of
all births, marriages, and deaths in the department of Moselle since
1793, as well as microfilm copies of the church records going back to
the 1600s. Amazingly, researchers can examine these original documents
going back to the French Revolution, most of which are still in very
good condition. There I found references to many NOE families. They
also have a very useful book "Viva America, Emigration Mosellane vers
les Etats-Unis Au XIXme Sicle", by Marie-Jose Marchal, which lists
all of the people who emigrated from the Moselle region to the U.S. in
the 19th century. I found a Franois No and a Marguerite No (brother
and sister) who both emigrated to the U.S in the mid 1800s.

I have traced Franois No and his ancestors back to the 1600s. The
family originated in Creutzwald, France in the 1600s and has lived in
Longeville-ls-St-Avold since 1700. It is interesting to see that the
name was spelled several different ways: No, No, Noe. Since many of
them could not read or write, the spelling was dependent upon the
clerk who was making the entry. In all of those cases however, the
name would be pronounced like No-ay in English.

I have since met some of the Nos who live in Longeville-ls-St-Avold
now, and they told me that there are numerous NOEs in the Lorraine
region of France and the Saarland and Palatine regions of Germany.
Until recently, the primary language of the family was a dialect of
German.

If anyone is interested, I will be happy to send the info on the six
generations of Nos which I have researched, going back from Franois
No.

Bruce Noe

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