Every six months or so, I thought I'd trot out my DUBOSE/DUBOIS theories for discussion purposes. When first researching my DuBOIS lines, I was struck by the thought that frequently people from the south (USA) would assume I was talking about DUBOSE. But this virtually never happened in the north. Rather, the discussion in the north seems to be whether my family pronounces it as doo-BOYZ, doo-BWAH, or doo-BOY (Answer: all three.) Once I started researching, I soon was struck by the notion that the DuBOIS and the DUBOSE families do not appear to be related at all. Many hundreds, or thousands, of documents later, I am still of this opinion. Yes, there are occasional clerical errors. But when examining documents as a whole, you can usually figure out which spelling is meant. The folks who live in the gray areas are the DUBOISE families. And then, there are the DuBoyce famillies, etc. In collecting census and military records for SC, AL, and GA for the 19th century, I've come to the following conclusions: The DUBOSEs, for the most part, descended from a line by the name of DUBOSC/DuBosq that initially came to SC and due to either clerical error or choice, the name was changed to DuBose. They produced many descendants who migrated throughout the southeast. You will rarely find the DuBose name above the Mason-Dixon line prior to 1800. The DUBOIS, on the other hand, have fairly consistently spelled their name this way for at least 400 years. In the US before 1800, they settled mostly in the New York/New England/Canada areas. But my branch came to Charleston at least by 1696, and it is from this line that the few southern (except for Louisiana, where the DuBois were French Catholics) DUBOIS families sprang. Both DUBOSE and DUBOIS families that settled in SC by 1700 were initially French Huguenots and fairly adamantly protestant from at least 1680 to the early 1900s. In the Southeast, the DUBOSEs probably outnumber the DUBOIS' at least 10 to 1. They produced more sons and many DuBoses owned slaves numbering in the tens and hundreds. The DuBOIS' owned similar amounts of land, but tended to not have more than one or two families of slaves, if at all, and their slaves probably came into their families via intermarriage with non-DUBOIS surnamed people. I am less familiar with the northeastern DUBOIS and leave it to those researchers to chime in with their slave info, etc. One theory I've read is that the northern Huguenots with Dutch ties were more likely to own slaves than their southern cousins with English ties. And in the south, Huguenots coming directly to the US who attended French-speaking Huguenot churches were more likely to be slaveowners than those coming through England who were Anglican. In my own family, it appears that they were Anglican and later Methodist from the earliest dates of the colonies. Their churches emphasized "mission work to the Africans" by teaching them to read and write and by providing places and opportunities for worship. Their early efforts were met sometimes with violence. This, along with their close ties with their friends and neighbors, probably kept them from being outright abolitionist. But their faith dictates appear to have kept a lid on slave acquisition. In looking at 1860 census indexes for the southern states, it was striking to note that in that year there were NO DuBois' listed for the state of Georgia, but many DUBOSE. The DUBOIS for Louisiana were mostly French catholic immigrants, but those who came to that state from AL or SC prior to 1850 were probably from the Huguenot lines. In examining Autauga and Hale county, AL census record for 1870, I found no black DuBOIS families, but several DUBOSE. In looking at Confederate military records at NARA for Alabama, again the DUBOSEs outnumbered the DUBOIS. These facts are not surprising statistically, given that there were far more DUBOSE families than DUBOIS in Alabama. I would love to hear from others about these theories. What have you found? I search the truth, and not political correctness. Elizabeth DuBois Russo