From: peter@leroy.ws [mailto:peter@leroy.ws] My rabble of ancestors had some which included Maitre des Requetes de l'Hotel du Roi and Maitre d'Hoptel de Jean de France Duc de Berry, Conseiller du Roi, Maitre des Requetes du Roi and a whole boar load of other nifty titles. Oh yes, and thief, highwayman, smuggler, prostitute, farmer etc. How did they get them one might be asking ? Bought most of them or simply poked a local duc in the ribs with a sword or even made horrible threats such as "title or we blow up your chateau". -- Or subsequently arranged for an early twentieth-century researcher to "link" known ancestors to titled nobility, as was the case with my family, which believed for nearly 60 years that the Huguenot David Demarest (husband of Marie Sohier, mentioned in a post yesterday) who founded a line of the family in the US, was of the Cambray desMarets (one of whom was a minor king in the Holy Land during the period of the Crusades) AND (since it's better to get it on both sides) his wife was descended fro David Sohier de Mons (and that means....tada..... Descended from Charlesmagne!). Neither, alas, proves to be anything more than fiction; our David Demarest was in all likelihood David deMarais -- David of the Marsh ;-> The most interesting part of this story is, however, that the enthusiastic genealogist who paid the researcher who committed this fiction was himself a trained academic, a published scholar and president of a respected academic institution... Which goes to show that the will to believe is a (if not the most) powerful motive force in genealogical research. For anyone interested in the details... http://www.demarests.com/origins/index.html