Announcements

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Savannah, Georgia

Everything is arranged for our 2010 Annual Meeting weekend, to be held Friday-Sunday, October 8-10, 2010, in the Savannah, Georgia, area. Register today!

We will meet at the Best Western Bradbury Suites Hotel located at 155 Bourne Avenue in Pooler, a suburb of Savannah. It is Exit 102 from I-95. The hotel is walking distance from the Mighty 8^th Air Force Museum and a short drive from the downtown Savannah historic district.

Make your hotel reservations today directly with the hotel on-line or call the hotel at 912-330-0330. The hotel has arranged a special rate of $79.00 per room per day for two people. A block of 30 rooms will be held until August 8, 2010. After that day, rooms may be booked only if they are available. Please remember to specify that you are with The Fontaine Maury Society for the group rate.

Meeting Plans:

There is a registration fee of $10.00 each (to cover the cost of meeting rooms for the weekend).

Friday, October 8, 8:00 pm – gathering and business meeting and address by Dianne Ressinger, former Editor of The Fontaine Maury Society newsletters.

Saturday, October 9 – breakfast on own at hotel.

10:00 am – Tour of Savannah. Bus will pick us up at the hotel. Trolley is limited to 38 people. Cost: $27.00 per person.

Noon-2 pm – Group lunch at Paula Deen’s The Lady and Sons in a private dining room. Luncheon speaker is Hubert McAlexander, who will speak on his 2009 book, Francis Fontaine The Builder: 1721-1785, His Ancestors and Descendants and Their ConnectionsCost: $25.00 per person

2:00 pm – Return by bus to the hotel, afternoon free for personal activities.

8:00 pm – Reception and gathering at the hotel. Dinner on your own as you choose, before or after reception.

Sunday, Oct. 10 -- Breakfast on own at hotel, end of weekend.

Make your hotel reservations early and remember to tell them that you are coming for The Fontaine Maury Society annual meeting! Print the registration form and mail it in today!

Library Item Newly Available On-Line:

Memories of the British Fontaines

The late Kathleen Fontaine Busfield of London was a cherished Society member. She prepared an excellent compilation of facts and memories of the family in the United Kingdom, including the early family history of James Fontaine and his family in England, Ireland, Wales, and colonial America, as well as her more recent British family members. It is now available on-line for reading, courtesy of Alec Fontaine. Completed in April 2000, it includes handwritten notes, pictures, and copies of various family documents, including excerpts from Memoirs of a Huguenot Family. A copy is also available for purchase from the library.

Report on The Fontaine Maury Society’s 2009 Annual Meeting

Lexington, Virginia

Our Society held its annual meeting in Lexington, Virginia, on August 21-23, 2009. Our business meeting was on Friday, August 21. Introductions were made, with four people attending the annual meeting for the first time. One director was elected to the three year term, and the officers provided reports. Dues-paying membership is highest in recent years but the number of genealogical queries and orders from the library was lowest in the last six years. The master mailing list for recipients of the newsletter has been updated to remove people for whom newsletters have been returned by the postal service; anyone who has moved and no longer receive the newsletter are encouraged to contact the membership secretary with current information. It was also agreed to post newsletters on the Society webpage. Two framed poster-sized photographs were displayed at the meeting, one of the tower in Saintes, France, where Jaques Fontaine was held prisoner and the other of the building where his trial was held. Two new members and attendees each took one. They were donated by long-time Society member Maury Kingman. Lastly, the local of the 2010 annual meeting weekend was differed to the Executive Committee, which met after the meeting and tentatively agreed to meet in Savannah, Georgia, a location with no Fontaine or Maury ties but near where the Nancy Fontaine Brewton and Nathan Brewton family settled in the 1790s. Inquiries will be made about the logistics for meeting in Savannah and details will be provided here! (See our update above!)

On Saturday Society members took a half-day tour of the area, starting first with a guided tour of Lexington and a visit to the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery. We then visited the Virginia Military Institute Museum, where we were met by Colonel Keith Gibson who showed us the Matthew Fontaine Maury exhibit, while his wife played the Maury family piano for us. We then went to Goshen Pass where we saw the monument to Matthew Fontaine Maury.

At our annual dinner on Saturday night, Colonel Gibson gave an excellent talk on the life of Matthew Fontaine Maury during his years at VMI. Many of Maury’s papers are in the VMI Archives.

Changes in Library Holdings:

One New Item: Fontaine Maury Grand Reunion in France 2003

The library has added a new item, a 24 page album entitled, Fontaine Maury Grand Reunion at La Rochelle, France, September 2003, that records the visit of Society members to Fontaine family sites in France. This album contains a two page summary of the trip, followed by photographs.

The Maury Family Tree: Officially Out of Print

In January 2010 the Library sold the last copy of Sue Crabtree West-Teague’s 3^rd edition book, The Maury Family Tree: Descendants of Mary Anne Fontaine (1690-1755) and Matthew Maury (1686-1752). With that sale, the book is now officially out of print. It is still available for look-up service from the Librarian.

Visit the library page if interested in these items.

Join or Renew Your Society Membership for 2010!

All membership renewals or new memberships paid until the annual meeting in October 2010 will be for 2010, those afterwards will be for 2011! For members who are renewing, please remember to contact the Society’s Membership Secretary with any address changes, death notices, or other changes in membership status. You can use the form on our Membership page and send to:

Membership Secretary

The Fontaine Maury Society

116 Oakland Drive

Piedmont, SC 29673-9005

The Society would also like to create an e-list for our members. Please be sure to provide your e-mail address when you join!

Publication on Matthew Fontaine Maury!

In September 2006 the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) published a tribute to Matthew Maury Fontaine, rich with history and pictures, to commemorate the bicentennial of Maury’s birth. The NGA can trace its “lineage” to Maury and has made its publication available on-line to read or download. We encourage you to learn more about “the Pathfinder of the Seas” from this excellent publication!

Fountain / Fontaine DNA Study

A group of Fountain family researchers has initiated the Fountain / Fontaine DNA study to determine if various Fountain and Fontaine families share a common ancestor. The study included descendants of Solomon and Israel Fountain, who both lived in the late 1700s in Edgecombe County, North Carolina.

There has long been conjecture that these Fountain families descend from the Fontaine and Maury families’ common ancestor, Jaques Fontaine (1658-1728), but there is no definitive evidence to prove this. This DNA study could provide the physical evidence not yet located in documentation.

At the Society’s annual meeting in October 2006, it was agreed that the Society would recruit an eligible family member to participate in the DNA test. Since most Society members are documented descendants of the Jaques Fontaine family, a Society member’s participation in the DNA study should help other Fontaine and Fountain researchers in determining if they are part of this extended French Huguenot family.

We are pleased to report that in the first half of 2007, we had two members of our Society take the 37 marker test. The men match each other, but their results do NOT match anyone else currently in the study, so this means that his DNA does not match that of the descendants of Solomon and Israel Fountain. These results mean that Solomon and Israel Fountain do not descend from Jaques Fontaine as long believed.

As in all DNA studies, there is a 5 percent error rate. For optimal study design, we had two male descendants of two different sons of Jaques Fontaine to take the test. One of our Society members who took the test is a descendant of Jaques’ son, the Reverend Peter Fontaine. The other member who took the test is a descendant of Jaques’ son, John Fontaine.

We would welcome a male descendant of one of Jaques’ two other sons – James Fontaine and the Reverend Francis Fontaine – to take the test, to further verify the current results.

If you are interested in learning more about the study and possibly participating to assist you in your research, please contact the study administrator listed on the DNA study’s webpage.

Wanted: Descendants of James Fontaine and Elizabeth Fontaine Torin

Jaques Fontaine and his wife, Anne Elizabeth Boursiquot, had eight children – of these, six lived to adulthood and had descendants. Of these, we have descendants of four who are current members of our Society. We are seeking any descendants of the remaining two, James Fontaine and his sister Elizabeth Fontaine Torin.

James Fontaine was the eldest child, born October 10, 1686, in Barnstaple, England. He married twice, first in 1711 with Lucretia Desjarrie in the Diocese of Cork and Ross, Ireland, and second ca. 1737-1738 with Elizabeth Harcum in Virginia.

Elizabeth Fontaine was the youngest child, born August 3, 1701, in Bearhaven, Ireland. She married on October 31, 1729, with Daniel Torin in London. She died around 1764.

If you are a descendant of James or Elizabeth or have information on their families, please contact our Society!

Suggestions?

Should you have suggestions or requests for postings on our Society’s Announcements page, please contact the Society’s Librarian at FontaineMauryLibrary@verizon.net

Revised June 2010