Family Origin Observation part 1

[Ira A. Runyan]

Extracted from E-mails from Gary Edwards.......

If the Runyons were descended from the Henri the Seigneur de Chaligny (as claimed) here's a website from the town, which mentions the hereditary lordship. Contacting the site's creator might lead to an opportunity to research the local records for Vincent's forebears.
axsane.free.fr/

I've been web-surfing all afternoon reading Google-translations of French pages related to the counts/marquises of Chaligny, reconstructing their "noble" genealogy. The main line goes all the way back to Rene the Good of Anjou, interweaving in & out with the house of Lorraine (later co-opted by the Habsburgs). Not easy to crawl through all the connections, but at least it yields the Chaligny succession (with interregnums in the 1560s and 1680s due to religious wars more than lack of direct heirs) from the 1550s to 1672, when the line became extinct. Helluva life for Protestants in France in those days. Try this on for size:

"[from www.histoiredevendee.com/ch27.htm]
History of the Vendée, Low Poitou in France

CHAPTER XXVII
PROTESTANTISM IN Low-Poitou SINCE The REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES (1685) UNTIL A the EDICT OF TOLERANCE (1787).

The edict of revocation of Nantes, defending inter alia things with the Protestants to be assembled to make the exercise of their religion, - enjoignant with the ministers to leave the kingdom within fifteen day, - with the parents to make baptize their children according to the catholic rite, - with the fugitive religionnaires to return in the kingdom within four month, under penalty of confiscation of their goods, etc, was dispatched in all haste with the governors and the intendants, without awaiting the recording, which took place on October 22.
ABJURATION AND EXILE OF VARIOUS PROTESTANTS

"With the Revocation, the dragonnade extended on all France, and the intendant of Poitou, Foucault, was distinguished sadly among the heads from the disasters bottées missions .
"All the pastors of the province, except three who apostasièrent, went to join their brothers in the exile. The battalions of converters invaded Low-Poitou in the end of the year 1685. Deux-cent-onze gentlemen abjured, in particular Amproux of Massais, lord of Mouchamps, Bessay and Muzanchère, while others, as well as middle-class rich person, gave up their fatherland, carrying on the foreign ground the remains of their fortune. Among the latter, one can quote of Béjarry, Rock Louherie (1), Butaud of Ansonnière, Sand-in Olonne; - of Chavergnay, lord of Grossetière; - Deladouespe, of Mouchamps; - Kerveno of Aubouinière, Ste-Pexine; - Fontenelle, of Violière, close Copechagnière; - Pierre Marchegay, of Saint-Denis-la-Chevasse; - Andre and Alexandre Marchegay, of Sigournais; - Moussyau of Pouzaire, St-Hilaire-the-Vouhis; - of Vilattes, Chantonnay. Others wanted to remain, and some of the most influential jetés in irons. This number, were Gazeau of Brandonnière and Regnon de Chaligny. For them the doors of the Bastille opened, from where one only left converted, at least seemingly.
"Whole families of industrialists or craftsmen left also France in the medium of dangers and difficulties of all kinds, because in guard, March 1686 were established on the edges of the sea to prevent this exodus, this escape of Israel out of Egypt, and at the end of October, Foucault requested from the king a launch to cross in trimmings of Saint-Michel-in-the Herm ..."

The last great Seigneur of Chaligny [the title got bumped down from Count to Marquis in the 1550s, when it became a fiefdom] of the Vaudemont (Lorraine) line, Henri I de Chaligny (1570-1600), wasn't even remotely Protestant, since his widow Claude (Claudia) [through whom he inherited the de Moy (Moy, Mouchy) marquisate, later passed on to his children] founded a nunnery called "the Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulchre" blessed by Jesuits and the Pope. His brothers were (hereditary position for Chaligny) bishops of Verdun and of Toul. However, the next generation apparently wasn't so pious -- perhaps due to the anarchy bred by "holy war." On the death of his son (also bishop of Verdun) Charles (1592-1631), the son who next inherited the title was Henri II (1596-1672) who fathered illegitimate children (i.e., not baptized by a Catholic priest) by one Jean de Choinville; and even the third son Francois (1599-1672), next bishop of Verdun, although married, fathered illegitimate daughters by a mistress, Sabine Marie Broons. One or more of those daughters was scooped up by a guy named Francois-Albert de Choiseuil, but the title to the Chaligny lands (by then much contested) reverted to distant relatives, back to the Lorraine-Vaudemont main line from which the family diverged a few centuries before.
A lot of dispossessed (or illegimate) lower-nobility in the late 1500s around Chaligny --
a fact that might make it hard to identify ancestor Vincent R's pedigree, even if the church records hadn't been altered by zealous converters or burnt by bloodthirsty holy warriors.

What puzzles me is the "Regnon de Chaligny" reference in the quote above, apparently referring to persons with the surname Regnon FROM Chaligny, which would ordinarily indicate a distance between the Chaligny aristocracy and the "vassal" Regnon family -- HOWEVER, whenever I see the "Regnon de Chaligny" title quoted from heraldic sources [never seen the original sources myself, personally], it assigns these same "Regnons" the seigneurship of Chaligny, which was held by the two Henris described above. So, if the "Regnon" surname isn't just some kind of adjunct to the noble title of "de Chaligny" (I know the Spaniards were famous for really piling on the "--de [name] de [name]" business!), these Regnons, in order to be their next-in-order, had to have at least some blood kinship with them, if only by marriage -- and their "illegitimacy" might play a role in there somewhere.

[Ira A. Runyan]

Extracted from E-mails from Gary Edwards.......PART 2

[from users.skynet.be/am035431/lesprem/antoine.html]

2. Anne Elisabeth d' Aumont , born 9/11/1633, deceased 27/2 in 1716 in its castle of Champagne Dormans. She was lady-in-waiting of Mme Christina of France duchess of Savoy, and had married the 12/7/1661, Charles, count de Broglie, count de Santana, marquis de Dormans (on the Marne), large baillif of Hainaut, governor of Avesnes, general lieutenant of the armies of the king. Governor of the towns of Belfort, Bassée and Avesnes, senior of the general lieutenants. Born in 1617, it dies the 17/5 in 1702. Wire of Amédéo Broglia, count, born about 1560, deceased after 1626, and of Angelica Tana, 1581-1635.

An only daughter, Anne Catherine de Broglie , born in 1663, who will die in Paris the 4/12/1701, buried in Dormans. In 1682, it had married Procope Hyacinthe Joseph, prince de Ligne and of St Worsens, marquis de Moy, baron of the Mowing and Vieges, lord of Tugny, lord of the manor of Montcornet, born the 25/12/1659, struck of sudden death in Paris in 1723 and buried in Dormans. It <sic> had been instituted universal heir to Lorraine by Henri, 2nd of the name, count de Chaligny, marquis de Moy, his great uncle, had been died in 1670, with load and conditions of carrying the names, weapons and delivery of Lorraine and Moy. He was a captain of cavalry to the regiment of Tilladet, then captain-lieutenant of the company of the gendarmes shelled, sergeant of the armies of the king, in 1690 with the battle of Fleurus, withdrawing from service in 1692.

The prince of Ligne and Anne Catherine de Broglie had eight children, to which only one heir, Claude Lamoral Hyacinthe, prince de Ligne, born 20/1/1690, died without heirs in Paris the 30/8 in 1755, husband of Henriette Eugenie de Béthisy de Mezières, rams palate of the queen of Spain.
I forgot to mention that individuals with the specific surname of "Regnon de Chaligny," a family of Huguenots celebrated as artisans, is also found in France in the mid 1600s. This by itself would suggest either that (a) a secondary branch of the De Chaligny line existed, or (b) there was an unrelated "Regnon" family hailing from the same region. Alternative (a) gains support from the example of the Boutcher/Boucher/Bouchier family, contemporary with Regnon de Chaligny -- Rene I Boucher (1595-1665) was Seigneur of Avenson, his son Rene II (b. 1620) Seigneur of Richebourg, and his other son John (1625-1679), due to his Protestant inclinations, fled to England and there, in 1645, married another French refugee, Jeanne of Cleves -- having issue in our own Anne Boutcher ... (I should note, however, that the info cited was taken from the Internet without verifying original sources.) Apparently it was not at all unusual for the younger generation of lesser nobility to abandon their titled positions (in which they'd inevitably be persecuted or murdered anyway, and their inherited possessions seized) and strike out on their own, under Protestant sponsorship, as skilled craftsmen or entrepreneurs. In THAT region of France (Lorraine) especially, where the "Thirty Years War" was only the latest round in one full century of religious civil war.

One final point, however -- it still remains only a supposition, fundamentally, that upon arriving in America the surname "Regnon" was "Anglicized" as heard, as "Rongnion" and then as "Runyon". Here we could use an expert opinion from someone familiar with the Lorraine dialect. If it can be attested from local records that surnames more similar in sound existed in Poitou around the same time, we're standing on shaky ground indeed.

I'd love it if I had a "royal descent" (on my mother's mother's side -- which amounts to nothing as pedigrees go!), but I've learned genealogical research is slippery and unforgiving:
My Kentucky SMITH grandfather's traditionally "English" or "Welsh" ancestry was more probably Hessian or Palatine German, from SCHMIDT, according to the records-searching I did a couple of years ago -- although there too, in terms of solid documentation, there's still (as far as I know) no authentication of my Schmidt ancestor's arrival on any particular ship from Europe, and there is a lot of ambiguity surrounding the identity of the founder of my particular line, one "Ali Smith," whose year and place of birth, profession, and decade-by-decade residence is either absent or else varies so widely in the few existing records that he seems almost fictitious. And THAT's relatively recent and here, in America in the pre-Civil-War 1850s -- so I can only imagine the difficulty of establishing facts from four or five centuries ago, abroad, during civil anarchy, destruction of records, and mass emigrations!
So, the bottom line (as I'm sure you're aware) is that we may simply never, ever KNOW ...

[Axsane]

Hello ! In your message, you spoke about my website. I want to say you that I never meet the surname of Regnon ou Rongnion in my region of the East of France.

Regnon of Chaligny certainly means that this person comes from Chaligny. In France, we have two villages which are called Chaligny : in the East of France (my website) and another : Chaligny (St-Hilaire-en-Morvan) in the center of France (next to Chinon).

With my best regards
Axsane
axsane.free.fr