Posted on: Jackson County, WV Bios Reply Here: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/WV/JacksonBios/142 Surname: DEWEES ------------------------- As a member of the Dewees National Research Team for the Dewees Family Archives, I must refute the prior posting by Betty Briggs. The Dewees' are NOT from France and they were never, and I mean NEVER a part of Lafayette's French Army. This came from a book written by Daniel S. Dewees, "Recollections of a Lifetime" which is written as an autobiography and early WV history. This fact has been proven a long time ago. The Dewees history in West Virginia, especially in Jackson County, comes from brothers Joshua, Samuel, and William Dewees, as well as the brother Isaac Updegrove Dewees from Gilmer/Calhoun County (the father of Daniel S.). These were all sons of John Dewees and Mary Updegrove who moved to Fayette County, PA in the latter part of the 1780's from Misspillion Hundred, Kent County Delaware. The father John Dewees and his brothers did fight in the Revolution, but as colonials in the Delaware Line. John Dewees is a direct descendant of Adriaenz Hendricks de Wees (b. 1595) of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His grandson Gerret Hendricks Dewees emigrated to the United States, ca. 1680, and settled in New Amsterdam (New York) and then to Germantown, PA. This myth of French descent has often misled researchers and in fact all of the above facts are not only documented but stored in the Dewees National Archives in Philadelphia, PA. I have worked with the Dewees family in Jackson County for many years, submitted data that was proven.