The information at the Newberry Library in the Chicago area of the US, indicated that I am descended from Rogiere L. and Marietta Tacheye Cheymoune LaForce (my 11th Great Grandparents), through their son Antionine S. & Marietta Champrelle LaForce and then their daughter Jeanette Tacheye La Force & her husband Samuele Moneuite deOllivette (married in 1552, supposedly at the French Court). The are supposed to have been cousins. I am no longer able to travel so I can not go back and replace all the documentation I lost in a flood before I left Wisconsin to return to my native Hudson Valley in NY state so I can not tell you the sources for this information (both my notes and the computer with the family data base are now some where at the bottom of the Bay of Green Bay).

There were also several other deOllivette marriages with English cousins both deOllivette and LaForce, so I am holding my breath in hope that the book might have contained some mention of these relationships.

The wine merchants, pawn brokers, spies and silk merchants all fit into the family legends and the spy activities may not have ended when the families came to Rhode Island, which may be one reason I am having so much difficulty tracing the earlier LaForces and Ollivetts here in the US and also might explain the vast differences and distances (emotional and religious) in the US Ollivette/Olivett/Olivet/Olivit tree.

Any help you can give me will be VERY greatly appreciated. This is a 40 year search that seems to have come to a dead end with a whole generation of people missing. If there is any of the US information you are interested in, I am always more than willing to share. In fact by the 15th of the month, the information I have will be at

http://geocities.com/allollivetts, please feel to look around, download the ged., what ever.

Thank you so much for the fascinating history and any cracks you can help me make in the brick walls.
Diane Cassedy Ollivett-Miles

If anything is known about this family, please contact Diane Cassedy Ollivett-Miles by e-mail.

Also sent later....

I will seriously go back and check out my pretty relative and her family. My families were over on this side of the big pond by the mid 1600's.

Am still not clear on the differences, I go back to Rogiere L. LaForce & Maeritta Tacheye Cheymonue who married in 1499. Do you mean the wife is of the family that became LaForces in the 1600's? So I 1/2 real and 1/2 created?
Back to the history books for me!

I have one more question to seek from your fount of knowledge, My other LaFroce ancestress,Desiree La Force, also a dughter of Antonie S. LaForce , married Jeane Baptiste Colbert deOllivette, Count deMelum et la Vaux. Is the la Vaux a place or a "seat" in what part of France.?

My response...

The Caumonts were given our castles in the middle 1400s. There is no reason why you may not be descended from both families - you never know what may turn up. As for King David, I expect everyone of European & Middle Eastern origin is descended from him, one way or another. Page g33.html is a bit of fun (which is highly unappreciated in certain quarters!)

As the Cheymonue name seems to go back to the 1400s, I may have lead you up the wrong red herring by mentioning the Caumonts. Genealogy is a minefield.

Jeane Baptiste Colbert de Ollivette, Count de Melun (not Melum) et la Vaux: Melun & Vaux-le-Vicomte (where the castle is) are just South-East of Paris.

This book was printed in London by Reeves and Turner, in Edinburgh by William Paterson, 1874.

Page 188: The Caumont and Layard Group of Families

The Ducs Caumont de la Force were descended from Francois de Caumont, Seigneur de Castlenauth, who was killed in the St. Bartholomew Massacre. His son was the first duke, and the family was true to the Protestantism until the persecution of 1685, when the fourth duke apostatized. The only refugee at the Revocation period was his wife, the Duchesse de la Force, nee Susanne Beringhen, the mother of the fifth and sixth dukes. She died in London in 1731.
Notes
The Beringhen family were warmly admired for their constancy under persecution.
The father (who was an Elder of Charenton), the mother, sons, married daughters,
and daughters marriageable, all were severely tried. Members of the La Force family had settled in England at earlier dates. In Chelsea ('Faulkner' s Chelsea' Vol. 1, page 210), there is the following epitaph in Latin:-
D. O. M. S.
Elizabethae equitas Theodori de Mayerne Baronis Albonae filiae Marchionis de Cugnac patre Henrico de Caumont, Marchionis de Castel Nauthet avo Jacobo Nomper de Caumont, Duce de la Force
(primo Franciae Marescalo, rigiorum exertuum longum imperatore fortissimo fortunaissimo invictissimo),
nati, Uxori dulcissimae lectissimae charissmae XVI post nuptias mense acerbo ereptae fato.
Conjux in amoris inconcussi et irruptae fidel monumentum moerens possuit.
Obit X Julii MDCLIII in pago Chelsey juxta Londinum. Vixit annos XX, menses VI, dies III

Page 111:

Concerned with Theodore Turquette de Mayerne, son of Louis de Mayerne, Baron d'Aubon, a French author who with his wife fled from Paris to Geneva, narrowly escaping the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Theodore took a degree of Doctor of Physic at Montpellier, and rose to be a Councillor of Physic to the King of France. He came to England and was incorporated as MD of Oxford, 8 April 1606. He was chief physician to King James and afterwards to Charles 1st. He was sent on a diplomatic mission to France in 1618, but ordered to leave by the French government. On 14 July 1624, he was knighted. Sir Theodore was an author on medical subjects and worshipped in the Presbyterian Church of Kensington. His mother lived in England and was buried in the chancel of St Martin's in the Fields, where also five of his children were buried, and he himself buried 30 March 1655. He was twice married, and his second wife, Isabella, survived as his widow.
Two daughters were married to cadets of the ducal house of Caumont de la Force.
Elizabeth, Marquise de Cugnac, died in her father's lifetime.
Adrienne, Baroness D'Aubon, became wife of her sister's husband's brother, Armand de Caumont, Marquis de Mompouillan. The marriage proclamation is dated 10 January 1656/7 (register of St Paul's, Covent Garden), but the marriage, as registered at Chelsea, 'bears the singularly remote date of 21 July 1659'.