Hello, fellow listers -- This is in response to the post today (7 Feb) from Marie <njtransplant@home.com> in which she outlined her VAN LAEYS & deVLIEGER ancestry. Marie, you did not mention any possible Huguenot/Wallon ancestry for your family. Was there any? It is true that the locations you included are "right" in terms of Huguenots/Walloons (France/Belgium) but the mere fact that people came from these areas does not prove Huguenot ancestry. Also, you said that you believe this family was Roman Catholic. Please keep in mind that the Huguenots/Walloons were Protestant. In fact, it was their Protestantism which resulted in their persecutions by the Catholic governments of their home countries and also resulted in their fleeing those home countries for safer locations. Therefore, being Catholic, it would seem unlikely that the VAN LAEYS and deVLIEGER families had Huguenot connections. As well, the dates you mentioned (mid-1800s+) were much too late a time period. Keep in mind that Huguenots/Walloons were from the 16th-18th centuries. For further clarification on Huguenots/Walloons, I hope you will go to our list website at http://www.island.net/~andreav/index.html. The Introduction section there has a discussion of this topic titled Who were the Huguenots and Walloons? This also includes information on the modern-day Walloons of Belgium which is a totally different group from the historical Walloons discussed on this list. The former are mostly Catholic, for example -- perhaps your family falls into this category. Possibly joining a Belgian or French mailing list would be helpful to you in your research, Marie. If you are interested, you can find out more about other lists on our list website -- look in the Beyond the Basics section under title Other Mailing Lists. Good luck and I hope these comments have been of some help. Andrea