This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: susiefpa57 Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.demers/592/mb.ashx Message Board Post: My many brick walls included the parentage of my 3rd great grandfather, John DeMarsh (born abt 1829 in Quebec, Canada). He and my 3rd great grandmother, Rosa (Olive?) DeMarsh moved to Wisconsin. They may have lived in New York for a short time before Wisconsin, but there's no documented proof. They had about 9 known children, Marcellia, Esther, Rentus?, Francis Xavier., Charles J., Alexander, Eugene(my 2nd ggf), William, and Albert. John and Rosa eventually moved to Michigan and both died there in the same year, 1923. I found the death certificate for John DeMarsh and discovered his father's name was Francis DeMarsh, but his mother's name was not included. Well that didn't help much, so I thought I would try something totally different....AncestryDNA. I couldn't help myself. I was just tired of hitting the proverbial brick walls. Plus, I'll admit I was totally curious. Anyway, the test results included many distant cousin matches, but only two matches for DeMarsh. ! One was a 4th cousin, with a confidence level of 96%, whose 3rd ggf was also John DeMarsh, and his 2nd ggm, Esther(DeMarsh) Gilbert was the sister of my 2nd ggf, Eugene. That connection was easy to uncover. Unfortunately, this cousin also didn't know the identity of John DeMarsh's parents. The other DeMarsh match was a 5th-8th cousin at a very low confidence level. Her grandfather was Joseph Julius DeMarsh (born about 1869 in Michigan), and his ancestry seems to trace back to Francoise DeMange (born about 1670 in France) and Anne Richard (born abt 1672). Needless to say, I was a little disappointed by this point. Then I visited the Ancestry & GenForum and discovered different spelling variations of DeMarsh. I searched my DNA distant cousin matches for Demers, and was quite surprised at the number of hits. There were 22 distant cousin matches with Demers ancestors. I guess Demers is a very common surname. A total of 5 of these 22 matches had private family trees! , so I was unable to check their Demers ancestors. Anyway, of the 17 that I could check, there were 16 who all seemed to trace back to the same ancestors, Jehan Dumoys (b. abt 1525 in France) and Marguerite Berservoyse (b. abt 1535 in France). The only one I couldn't research did not include birth or death information for their Demers ancestor. Now I know I might be reaching, but 16 matches descended from the same ancestor seems to make it more than a possibility that my 3rd ggf, John DeMarsh, is descended from this Demers/Dumoys line. Plus, in my experience, the AncestryDNA results have been quite accurate. Then again, I guess it could be a coincidence. Please tell me what you all think...I really need help with this one. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board. <br>