Welcome to the Genealogy home page for the Vitter-St. Raymond-Artigues-Ferran-Hofeline-Dureau-Cougot-Péré-Weaver-Kohlenberg-Bendorf-Grimes-Bell-Mayberry-Wren-Nicolay Family! I (Jeff Vitter) try to keep the information as accurate as possible, but the records are often inconsistent and full of typos. I am always interested in discovering new links and new cousins, so please contact me if you have information to share.
My parents always told me about their ancestors and their trips to France as young children to meet their relatives, but they didn't know many particulars beyond those of their grandparents, and very little on my father's side. As I began to investigate my family tree out of curiosity a few years ago, I was very fortunate to fall upon some information in microfiche in an obituary of a local New Orleans newspaper (L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans) that clued me in to the previously unknown birthplace of my great great grandmother Virginie (née Oval) Vitter. I found out that she was a native of Clerval, France in the département du Doubs, near Switzerland. And after a search on google.com, up popped the full ship's log of the ship named Lyons that sailed from Le Havre, France to New Orleans in 1843 containing the entire Vitter family! I've since gotten a photocopy of the actual handwritten ship log. My subsequent research in the New Orleans library led me to find out that my father's grandfather Alfred Vitter was one of 16 children! So third cousins abound, many in Louisiana.
My wife Sharon Weaver Vitter and I welcome any help you can provide in helping us extend our family tree. We currently have over 12,000 names. We owe much to the efforts of other amateur genealogists in the U.S. and Europe, who have helped extend our family's story well into the 1600s in some cases. We've merged the extensive research by the Weaver and Kohlenberg families into our records. One group not yet merged is the line of Vitters in France whose roots come from the Ardennes region; they're said to be related to my branch of the family from Clerval. And according to a colorful legend told by former French Senator Pierre Vitter of Gray, all are supposedly related to Charles Quint (Charles V)! There's clearly much more to explore.
Most of my ancestors (St. Raymond, Artigues, Péré, Ferran, Feugas, Toujan, Ricaud, Noguès) came from the southwest of France, in the areas around Uzan (near Pau), Lannemezan, Salies du Salat, and Toulouse, and my direct ancestors emigrated to New Orleans in the 1800s. Sharon's family came from Switzerland, Germany, and England, gradually settling in Kansas in the 1800s. There are many relatives still to be discovered on both sides of the Atlantic.
My contact information and professional links can be obtained at http://www.science.purdue.edu/jsv/. If you follow the link at the bottom of that page to my Family and Academic Genealogy page, you'll find much family information as well as a trace of my "academic" lineage ;)
|
