LOUISIANA ANCESTORS

When I first began to study our genealogies, I started with the branch of our collective family for which I had the most information already - my father-in-law's Louisiana ROME family. The database quickly grew to many thousands of people, since I didn't confine myself to the immediate family. It's as right as I can make it, but I'll continue to fix blunders as I can. My goal in this effort, besides cataloguing the ancestors and relatives of Irvin ROME, was to document as many of the early (through about 1800) residents of the French colonies in what became the United States as I could - Louisiana to Arkansas and up through Detroit. Canadian records had already been well studied. I hope that all Louisiana genealogy researchers will find something here that is useful.

More about Irvin ROME and his ancestors is given at ANCESTORS of IRVIN JOSEPH ROME.

Pictures of the family of Irvin ROME are shown at ROME FAMILY PHOTOS.

Cemetery photographs are shown at ROME CEMETERY PHOTOS.

One of Irvin Rome's sisters married Joseph Emile (JEB) BLUM. The background of the BLUM family is an interesting mix of Acadians, Canary Island and Spanish immigrants, early German Coast colonists, French Canadians, 19th century German/French immigrants, and some of the Acadian families (and accompanying French families) who came to Louisiana from France in the 1780s. JEB's complete ancestry is included in the database at ancestry.com.

There are a number of other families that are part of the genealogy of these ancestral families, but who are not themselves ancestors. If your ancestors include people from early Louisiana with the tolling he database at ancestry.com should help you to find facts about them: ARSENEAU/ARSENAULT (Pierre, Acadian), ARCENEAUX (Michel, from Quebec), BAUDOIN (Francois), BERGERON (Guillaume), BOURGEOIS (Jean-Baptiste), CHENIER, FALGOUST, HIMEL, LEBOEUF, MATERNE, ORY, POURCIAU, RIVARD, TASSIN (Francois), TASSIN (Pierre), TROXLER. I have made less attempt to trace these families to their oldest roots, and I have spent less time on these families than on ancestral families, but they are important members of the history of our ancestors, so I have included them.

Mistakes - With this many names and dates, there are bound to be mistakes. Some are no doubt transcription errors, others are errors in my interpretation of data, a few are errors in the texts I have used, and some resulted when I edited the documents. All are, of course, my responsibility, and I'd be happy to discuss errors. I'm most concerned with relationship errors. There are many omissions of dates and offspring, some because I didn't find the data, others because I was running out of momentum towards the end and I wanted to get something on line. I would be happy to discuss these.

Names - I have not seen many original documents. Working from Madison, WI, my sources have mostly been the published sacramental records from the New Orleans and Baton Rouge Dioceses; the courthouse and church records compiled by Rev. Donald Hebert for other parishes; the journals Les Voyageurs, New Orleans Genesis, Louisiana Historical Quarterly, and Louisiana Genealogical Register; and the civil proceedings of St. John the Baptist and St. Charles Parish, translated by Glenn Conrad. I do not know exactly when and for which families HUBER became OUBRE, HEIDEL became HAYDEL, LECHE became LAICHE, and so on. It undoubtedly occurred differently for different families, but in many cases I have simply changed the name at a generation. I have also not tried to discover which family went by VICNER and which by VICKNAIR, and so on. I hope the present Vicknairs in Louisiana will forgive this oversight.

Printed References - I have used many abbreviations in the references, and have not given full publication information in frequently-used references. The references are all listed in REFERENCES and ABBREVIATIONS.

Electronic Documents - I have listed a number of electronic sources for my genealogies. You might find something useful here too, if the pages have survived. Unfortunately, many electronic links are ephemeral, so I can't guarantee that all of these have survived. I will check periodically and try to correct the broken links. In the meantime, happy hunting!

Buddy KELLER was an old family friend of the Destrehan Romes from high school days, and Irvin's 4th (twice), 5th (twice), 6th (twice), 7th and 8th cousin. Out of curiosity, after working on the ROME genealogy for a while, I began to look at Buddy's ancestry. Whereas Irvin ROME and Joseph Emile BLUM both had Acadian grandmothers, and Juanita FREDERICK had considerable Acadian ancestry, Buddy KELLER has no Acadian or obviously Canadian ancestors. His forebears were all French and Germans who came directly from Europe, from the early days of colonization into the nineteenth century (except perhaps Michel MICHEL). The Early German Coast and New Orleans colonists arrived from the 1720s through the 1740s or so. A large group of Alsatians (including the KELLER family), arrived in the 1750s. A few ancestors were among the many French who arrived in the first half of the nineteenth century. Some of these and many of the ancestral families found only in Europe are profiled in the very helpful German Coast Families by Albert J. Robichaux Jr. There were a few 18th century Louisiana and Mobile soldiers in his ancestry. The HELFER/ELFER family arrived in Louisiana by way of Pennsylvania. Buddy's complete ancestry is included in the database at ancestry.com.

One of our graduate students some years ago at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Chemistry Department was from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We spoke occasionally about New Orleans, and I discovered that he shared at least one family with my wife - they are both descendants of Mathias FREDERIC. So I started adding his FREDERIC ancestry to my database, and inevitably found that he and my wife shared other lines - PERILLOUX and SAVOIE, for example. Then I began tracing his ancestors to see how many other times he was a cousin to Linda. It turns out that his grandmother Juanita FREDRICK and Irvin ROME are 4th (twice), 5th (3 times), 6th (3 times), 7th (4 times), 8th (5 times) and 9th (3 times) cousins. They have numerous common ancestors. Since I had many of the family files already, I added the ones I didn't have and came up with Juanita's genealogy. I must admit I have not pursued the "new" families as deeply as I did Linda's ancestors. But I hope this helps a few of you to find some of your own roots. Feel free to point out errors that I have included. Above all, enjoy. Juanita's complete ancestry is included in the database at ancestry.com.