Tag Archives: Sephardic Jews

Filles de Roi, genealogy, Quebec

My French Connection -or why my grandfather had a lot of GAUL

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My very Gallic Grandpapa, Jules Crepeau (1879-1938) proud descendant of the Redones of Eastern Brittany in the Iron Age, among other Gallic Tribes.

Judging from her family tree, my late mother, Marie Marthe Crepeau was a bona fide French Canadian de souche.1

Her father, Jules Crepeau, son of an entrepreneur painter from Laval and her mother, Maria Roy of Montreal, daughter of a master-butcher, have trees that go right back to the boat in France – and yes, mostly to Normandy, Poitou and Ile de France. Classic!2

And yet, according to Ancestry’s (beta) chromosome browser, my mother was not 100 percent “French.”

I’ve provided my own spit to the platform and apparently chromosomes 3 and 12 on her side are English (but that does include the North of France) and chromosomes 17 and 18 are Norwegian (Norsemen -Northmen-Normandy, perhaps?) And a swath of chromosome 2 is indigenous American, making me less than one percent indigenous.

Lately, I’ve subscribed to an interesting infotainment3 website that really dives into a person’s ethnicity from all angles and over a slew of time periods: Ancient, Bronze , Iron and Modern Ages. Sure, I get Eure, Finistere and Vendee (Normandy, Brittany and Poitou) in spades, but I get just about every other area of France, too – as well as some Spanish, French Corsican and French Basque.4

My mom’s French Canadian family tree supports some of this. From the ten percent sample I traced back to France I get natives of Limousine, Aquitaine, the Mid-Pyrenees, Picardy, Bourgogne, Haute-Marne, Bayonne, Les Rhones Alpes, as well as the Canadian North (Innu).5

And let’s not forget my ancestor the legendary pioneer river pilot Abraham Martin dit L’Ecossais (he of the Plains of Abraham fame) who may have been from Scotland. My mom has him at least twice in her tree.

A while back, I figured out that my Mom’s paternal Crepeau line (father’s father’s father, etc.) can be traced back to Vendee but it is likely of Sephardic Jewish ethnicity and hails originally from Spain. 6

Lachenaye Seigneury 1676 (Claude Martel -historian)
View from Hubou farm (or close). These pioneer farms on the North Shore of Montreal were a narrow stretch of river away from the Eastern tip of Laval Island, and just a bit more north of the Eastern tip (Pointe aux Trembles) of Montreal Island.

In New France, my grandpapa Crepeau’s maternal tree can be traced to the original families at the Lachenaye (Terrebonne) Seigneury (est.1673) north east of Montreal, four founding farmer families in particular: Ethier (Poitou-Charentes), Forget (Normandy), Hubou (Ile de France) and Limoges (Rhones Alpes). My mother’s DNA is largely a mish-mash of these families’ genes, for they inter-bred down through the centuries. Basil Crepeau my mom’s 4 x GG was a slightly later arrival at Lachenaye who moved in beside the Hubous.

Jules and family before my mom was born circa 1920. Maria Roy (Gagnon) his wife was also connected to the Lachenaye tribe through Ethier.

Now DNA distributes down the generations in very complicated and irregular ways especially where endogamy or founder effect is concerned8 and judging from my many French Canadian ‘cousins’ on Ancestry, my mom may have gotten a disproportionate amount of her genetic material from the Hubou founder family at Lachenaye Seigneury. A great majority of my DNA cousins on that platform are connected to me through her 2nd great grandfather, Michel Hubou dit Tourville.9

As it happens, Michel’s pioneer ancestor was one Mathieu Hubou dit Deslongchamps, a master-armourer from Normandy who was married to one Suzanne Betfer who was…wait for it… a gal from Gloucester, UK.

Now, ain’t that fun! A bona fide English Fille de Roi!!

THE END

1. de souche a controversial label that means from the roots.

2. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.20.500680v1.full.pdf On the genes, genealogy and geographies of Quebec. According to: French Canadians come from 8500 founder families in 17th and 18th century, with only 250 of these founder families, the majority from Perche, leaving behind the majority of genetic disorders that passed down through the ages. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41464974

(Hereditary disorders in the population of Quebec II Contribution of Perche)

The very first pioneers, the 2,700 super founder families, 1608-1680, were 95 percent French. The later 17th and 18th century founder families were 80-85 percent French but the non-French includes Acadians.) The first 2,700 founder families contributed to 2/3rds of the modern gene pool of French Canadians, but geography and natural boundaries kept families within even smaller gene pools. Indigenous DNA contributed one percent of French Canadian DNA. Regions can have super-founder families that contributed even more to the modern gene pool.

3. Your DNA Portal

4.These ethnicity estimates are based on complex science but the various results have to be taken with a grain of salt. Even if the original science is spot on, these results depend on what sample of your DNA is taken and how far back the algorithm is examining. I liken it to making a complicated stew from various ingredients, letting it simmer for a long time and then trying to deconstruct what it was made from. Maybe you put parsnips, carrots and parsley in the recipe, but these ingredients are already related genetically so it’s not easy to pull apart. Still, taken as a whole the results I get are telling: My mother’s ancestors were mostly from Gaul, especially the tribes Redones and Veneti in Brittany. Hardly a surprise as that’s what my Mom had always been told, that her people were from Brittany. I also get Gaul Santones who lived in Charentes. So spot on!

5. Nos Origines and Drouin

6.My mother is no outlier French Canadian in this respect, at least according to a recent paper that maintains that the Huguenot and Acadian populations are largely made-up of Sephardic Jews escaping the Inquisition. Investigating the Sephardic Jewish ancestry of colonial French Canadians through genetic and historical evidence. Hirschman.

https://nameyourroots.com/home/names/Crespo (Spanish roots likely Sephardic) The name means Curly Haired One. My mom knew that. She did have very curly hair as did her father so that trait passed down through the ages.

The Crepeaus (Crespeaus, Crespo’s Crepspin) are not the only possible Spanish line my mother has in her tree. For instance, her mother’s maternal Gagnon line goes back to one Lily Rodrigue in Normandy, a surname some say is Spanish derived. Another line goes to a Domingo in Bayonne, near the Spanish border. That name is Spanish/Italian and found in Southern France. I also have Navarre or Navarro. ADDED August 2025. I recently got two distant cousins – not related themselves on Ancestry Crespo and Crespim. Both mostly Spanish (very little 2 percent French) with 3 percent Sephardic Jew. Seems to prove my point.

7. Roy is the second most common surname in Quebec. http://leroy-quebec.weebly.com/the-surname-leroy.html . Gagnon is the third most common name and my direct pioneering ancestor hails from Perche in the North of France where he was a leading citizen, apparently.

8. Supposedly, all things being equal, we have only a 47 percent chance of inheriting DNA from an 8th GG, and inherited DNA from 8th GG’s amounts to a fraction of 1 percent but a high degree of endogamy or ‘founder effect’ clearly changes that, judging from the info in the studies in the links I have posted here.

9. On Ancestry, 60 percent of my closer DNA cousins are connected to me through Michel Hubou Tourville and his wife, but it should be noted that a full 400 family trees on Ancestry contain his name. It appears that his descendants moved to the US and did their family trees! Also, these ‘cousins’ tend to have my other Lachenaye names like Ethier and Forget and Limoges in their trees, so impossible to parse.

“This article explains the very thing I’m talking about: https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dealing-endogamy-part-exploring-amounts-shared-dna?fbclid=IwAR1veE4wNTc9gLGtx33Z8qphXmRdtTH2fREANxrenVDgx2NRqs1SznCAV0 “In one of our research cases, we found that an individual descended 12 different times from the same ancestral couple who lived in the late 1600s in French Canada. Although they were quite distant ancestors in every case (within the range of 9th-11th great grandparents), he had inherited a disproportionate amount of DNA from them due to their heavy representation within his family tree.”

Endogamy or consanguity? I’ve discovered that my grandfather Jules Crepeau likely had some double first cousins: his mother Vitaline Forget Despaties married Joseph Crepeau and Vitaline’s brother Adolphe Forget Despatie married Joseph’s sister, Alphonsine. I wonder if this happened further up the line. Wouldn’t that have messed with the DNA estimates! If such cousins marry it is closer to consanguinity than endogamy.

https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsEurope/BarbarianRedones.htm

The Celtic Tribes in France were described by the Romans as the GAULS.

french-canadian, genealogy, New France, Quebec, Scotland

When History and Genealogy Come Together

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Genealogy is usually of little interest to children probably because their parents already seem from the Dark Ages and their grandparents from the times when Tyrannosaurus Rex tramped the planet.

It was the same thing for me way back in the 1960’s – except for the one day when I was about twelve years old. My mother came home all excited with some important news passed on to her by a cousin who had researched the Crepeau family tree.

My mom’s father, Jules Crepeau of Montreal, was descended from one Abraham Martin dit L’Ecossais, a pioneering (boat) pilot and land-owner in New France. My French Canadian mom found this fact highly entertaining. “I am descended from a Scotsman,” she told me, laughing. “What a joke.”

I remember this episode only because of another part of the story. Apparently, this Abraham Martin fellow owned the Plains of Abraham. THOSE Plains of Abraham. Now that I could sink my tweenage incisors into.

You see, I was learning about Canadian history in school. Our text was Canada Then and Now, a bright green text with a very iconographic cover pic.

From this textbook, I was learning for the first time how the French and British were always at war with each other, way back then, in Europe and in North America. In North America, the fought over control of the lucrative fur trade and, apparently, it all came to a head one morning on the 1th of September, 1759 when a British general named Samuel Wolfe, after being rebuffed a few times by the superior French forces, led a cagey attack on the French General named Louis Joseph Marquis de Montcalm on the cliffs of Quebec City, cutting off his supplies and defeating his superior forces. This was all part of something called The Seven Years War.

All night long kept quietly landing the men on Wolfe’s cove. By morning, 5000 British soldiers were drawn up ready on the Plains of Abraham. The French had avoided battle, believing they were safe because they had more men than the British and plenty of supplies. They knew the British wold have to withdraw before freeze up. But now tht the British had landed above the town and cut off supplies from Quebec. The time had come for battle.

The textbook instructed us Canadian children, in subtle terms, to take no especial pride in this seminal event:

Wolfe and Montcalm were great generals and gallant men. Today, on the Plains outside of Quebec, a monument stands to honor them both. Wolfe’s name is on one side, Montcalm’s on the other. There is a Latin inscription that says, “Valour gave them a common death. History a common fame and posterity a common memorial.”

Illustration from Canada Then and Now. Storming the Plains of Abraham

Today, I am much older and predictably I am into genealogy. I have written many many family stories from both sides of my tree.

My mother’s French Canadian side was easy-peasy to patch together thanks to all those fabulous Catholic church records on Drouin available. And yes, if the Mons Origins website information is correct, my mom was indeed descended from this Abraham Martin.

Should I write about this pioneer ancestor? I have long wondered.

Truth be told, I would very much like to puzzle out the story of my earlier French Canadian ancestors, as Tracey Arial and Claire Lindle have done so brilliantly on this blog. I’d like to discover exciting new tidbits of information about my ancestors to add to the historical record (perhaps using some of the stellar resources catalogued on Genealogy Ensemble by Jacques Gagne) but it all seems so difficult, so labour intensive and so hard on the eyes.

In the past, I have explored the lives of Les Filles de Roi – because I am particularly interested in the lives of women ancestors – only to find there doesn’t exist much detailed information about these pioneering females from Normandy and Ile de Paris. It seems no one bothered to document the day-to-day lives or unique personal stories of these ‘mothers of millions’ back then– either in Europe or New France.

When it comes to this Abraham Martin dit L’Ecossais character, it would be a real waste of time to try to find a new angle or to write something fresh about him. There are already reams and reams (or pixels and pixels) of information written about him. It appears that Abraham Martin dit L’Ecossais is one of the most famous French Canadian pioneers and a father to millions of North Americans, including Madonna and Justin Bieber – and, ah, little ole me.

Long story short: He married Marguerite Langlois. Had 14 children. I am descended through Vitaline Forget-Despatie, my mother’s father’s mother.

The kicker to this non-story of mine: Abraham wasn’t necessarily Scottish. He could have invented the epithet to avoid criminal prosecution or he was a war deserter. His name might have generated from the fact that he had visited Scotland many times in his youth.*1

Now, lately I have dug out one very interesting fact about my mom’s French Canadian ancestors on her dad’s side, one she didn’t know about. My mother always told me that the name Crepeau meant “curly haired one.” She had very very curly hair herself, as did her father. I have no idea how long she had known this fact or who originally informed her.

If that same cousin, back in 1967, had provided her with a paper genealogy, my mother would have noticed that the original Crepeaus, going back six to eight generations, were Crespeaus, from Poitou Charent. I have recently learned that the name Crespeau almost certainly came from Crespo, a very Spanish name – and not only that a Sephardic Jewish name.

I found this tidbit on sephardim.com:

“The name Crespo has been identified by the Holy Office of the Church of Spain as a Sephardic Jewish surname.”

How fascinating.

So, it seems, even genealogically-timid I can dig out an interesting fact or two about a distant French Canadian ancestor. Maybe I should keep trying.

1. Even if Abraham Martin wasn’t born to the Tartan, he likely had English, Scottish and even Viking dna. Normandy, Normans, North men, Norsemen. Ancestry gives most of my many many French Canadian cousins a little bit of Norwegian ethnicity. I have a very vague 0-8 percent.

Wouldn’t it be funny if my mom were related to Eric the Red, chronicled in the second chapter of Canadian Then and Now, after the first chapter on “Indians” and “Eskimos.”

If you believe mytrueancestry.com, my husband, whose Mom comes from Isle of Lewis Scots, apparently is connected genetically to Eric’s clan. How very romantic! If I didn’t love him before, I’d have to love him now!

2. I checked the Y dna lists online at Family Tree and someone is trying to see if French Canadians have Semitic genes. There are very few members. On a regular French from France Y dna site I can see that some French Canadians have J M172, an Anatolian line, often thought of as the Greek Diaspora. Cote and Leger are the names that crop up. There are no Crespos, Crespeau’s or Crepeaus.