For the Degruy list - This is an edited version of an email I sent Renee recently. Recently, I had the time to join the Degruy site and start looking around. Over the past few nights, I have looked at some of the Degruy List archive of messages. I need to reread them before I start making any comments because I haven't looked at all of them to see if some issues were resolved. Responding to one of your early messages, you noted that a family member did genealogy research and had put out a small listing of that family. This was because she only included persons for whom she had clear and convincing documentation/proof. You mentioned that you sort of included everyone if it seemed reasonable to do so. (I realize that I am paraphrasing your words here.) I follow the same general rule, though I do look for some documentation in the long run and I do make corrections (like I did with Pierre Huxelle based on your info). Now about assumptions and coincidences - Starting family research, you make assumptions about your ancestors. They are good, upright people who marry only once, have good places in the community, everything falls into place, etc. Then you start facing the information that you have available - it's not complete. Some relatives are not good and upright - I have had a distant cousin on my mother's side who was executed for rape and murder many years ago. One ancestor was a slave trader (I've seen the listings at the Registrar of Conveyances' office of his sales); his grandson married a Degruy. Relatives (and not very distant ones) have drinking problems. It didn't hit me until I started looking at my GGgrandfather Schneidau's marriage to my GGgrandmother, then looked at the birth of their first child to realize that she was 3 months pregnant when they got married. (I made the assumption that babies born 3 months early would not have survived in the 1830s.) Then I discovered that they were married at First Congregational Church. My GGgrandfather had a Lutheran background - he was an immigrant from Sweden (sea captain, so he ended up in a port city). My GGgrandmother was English and I am going to assume that she was low-church Anglican (I really don't know). However, Colin Hamer, the head of the Louisiana section of NOPL, told me that people used First Congregational Church for quick weddings - they didn't require having the banns read or incisive questions about the circumstances. This leads to another assumption - my GGGgrandfather Pierre Verloin Degruy married my GGGgrandmother Francoise Azelie Daspit St. Amant, and had kids including my ancestress, Francoise Elodie Degruy Salomon, period. It wasn't until I was looking at some of the Degruy succession records that I realized that Francoise Azelie was Pierre Verloin's second wife. There is a court record from the early 1820s (I have a photocopy of the main part somewhere) in which Etienne Degruy and Jeanne Julme Degruy, children of Pierre Verloin Degruy and Jeanne Dumenil Glapion, brought suit over their mother's dowry interest. Etienne was born about 1801 and died 10/19/1855; and Jeanne Julme was born 2/18/1804 - date of death unknown. This brought out the fact there was a prior marriage and children. The court documents are primarily in French, but I could piece out names and dates. By the way, you are correct in that Jeanne Dumenil Glapion died at age 20. The thing is that so many of those young New Orleans French women got married at age 14, 15 or 16, it was normal to have a couple of children by the time you were 20. Anyway, the next assumption was that someone like Pierre Huxelle got married and was married for over 20 years that I did not think about a second marriage. Then you gave me the information about your ancestress, Mary Cecelia Cunningham. I can now go back and see that the information is there; I just didn't think to put it together. Now the coincidences - Then I saw the information that had been loaded about Antoine Paul Brandon's birth and death and his marriage to Mary Cecelia Cunningham and I realized that I had seen that name before in a different setting. Jeanne Julme Degruy, the daughter from Pierre Verloin Degruy's first marriage, married Moses Duffy on 10/10/1818 at St. Louis Cathedral and had several children with him. Please look up the Duffy listings in the Archdiocesan sacramental records books. Then I could not find any more information about Jeanne Julme or Moses Duffy after the birth of a child in 1824. About two months ago, I stopped in at the Jefferson Library main branch to see if they had the most recent volume of the Archdiocesan Sacramental Records (for some reason it takes the libraries in New Orleans three months to get those volumes on the shelves after they are published). It was not there, so I browsed around to see if there was anything interesting. Then I looked in the microfilm section to see what they had. I found the listings for probation records starting in the 1820s and going on through the 1850s that someone has been indexing on the Jefferson Parish archives website and noted the probate listings that had a Degruy or Degruy-related last name. I started looking at them quickly and after a few cases, the probate case on Moses Duffy came up. It started in the late 1830s and went on for several years. The oldest son of Moses Duffy and Jeanne Julme Degruy had brought suit over ownership of some land in McDonoughville. The suit lists that Moses Duffy had died around 1828. Then, Jeanne Julme Degruy had remarried a Robert Brandon sometime after 1828 and they had a son, Paul Antoine Brandon, who was born about 1835. Robert Brandon then died sometime after 1836. Jeanne Julme Degruy Duffy Brandon then married an I. MacKenzie and moved to St. Louis. At one point I got the implication that someone was arguing that she had abandoned everything to move to St. Louis. Anyway, last night everything fell into place. Mary Cecelia Cunningham first married Antoine Paul Brandon, son of Robert Brandon and Jeanne Julme Degruy, and grandson of Pierre Verloin Degruy by his first wife. When widowed, she marries Pierre Huxelle Degruy, son of Pierre Verloin Degruy by his second wife. Or to put it another way, she married her mother-in-law's half-brother! How's that for a coincidence - which it probably wasn't? Anyway, that is how things look now based on all the information from several different places. Hope this tickles your funny bone as it did mine. Of course, cousin marriages and other marriages involving consanguinity were not unusual at that time due to the much smaller community. Wally Schneidau