Revisiting my French Connection -- Louis Roy

On April 6, 2008, I wrote a blog about my French connection, which went back as far as Louis Roy, who was presumably pure French, but that's as far back as we were able to go. There was plenty of speculation about where his roots went, but we didn't know for sure. On January 5, 2009, I entitled my blog, "50 things I would like to do." Number 44 reads as follows, "Determine with certainty the ancestry of Louis Roy (my great-great grandfather on my mother’s (LeRoy) side) all the way back to France."

Over the holidays, my cousin, Jayne Kerr (Phoenix, AZ), forwarded a letter she had received from another cousin, Judith (Judy) Ipsen (Willard, UT), about the success she had in discovering the roots of Louis Roy. Judy had put in a lot of hours of research, and while she did not have hard documentation, such as a birth certificate, she did have overwhelming evidence that met the list of criteria used by genealogists to go ahead and declare that Louis had to have been the Louis Roy that was associated with a specific Roy family living in the area that he lived and at the time he lived there.

I called Judy up and we had a lively conversation about old times when we as cousins used to get together and do things together, etc. She shared with me that she had prepared a 310-page book entitled, "Louis Roy, A Book of His Ancestors and Descendants," which had exhaustive documentation and many pictures that she had collected during her pursuit for information on the Louis Roy line. She said the book could be purchased for $30 (covers printing and postage costs), and that she only had a few copies left. I went ahead and purchased one for myself, so that I could see for my self what she had gathered. It is truly impressive.

So now the Roy line goes from Louis Roy to his father Louis Roy (mother, Julia Royer) to Andre Amable Roy (paternal grandmother, Francoise Chapart) to Francois Roy to Andre Roy, and finally to Jean Roy who was born in 1633 in De Marans, Aunis, France, and who died in 1676 in Lachine, Montreal, Canada. Louis Roy's mother, Julia Royer, it turns out, was half American Indian. Her father's (Nicholas Royer) mother was a Kaw Indian. Her mother's (Francoise Leduc) mother was an Osage Indian, making her half Indian, and the younger Louis (my GG grandfather) one-quarter native American Indian, and therefore not pure French as previously thought.

The Louis Roy family moved from Missouri to Oregon on the Oregon Trail in 1852. Louis was 37 at the time. Louis Roy's son, Daniel Vestal LeRoy, from whom I descend, was 12. Daniel married Sarah Priscilla Morrison and they had five children together. Then Daniel got into trouble and ended up getting a divorce. Divorce papers showed that he was guilty of petty larceny (stealing chickens) and grounds of abandonment and desertion were cited. Daniel left abruptly and didn't tell anyone where he was going. Oregon Roys descending from Daniel probably have a rather negative view of their ancestor.

The next we hear of Daniel is when he surfaces in southern Utah. LDS Church records indicate that he was baptized and confirmed into the the LDS Church in August 1873. In those records, his birth date is nine years off (1848, not 1839) and his name had changed from Roy to LeRoy. Daniel was courting a young Mormon girl named Sarah Melissa Allen, 15 years his junior, and he passed himself of as being several years younger than he really was. The name LeRoy may have been used somewhat as an alias. So that is how all of us descending from Daniel and Sarah, have the name, LeRoy, until we go as far back as Louis Roy. One final note: In the for-what-it's-worth department, the town of Roy, Oregon was named after Louis Roy's son, Lewis (my great-grand uncle), who was born after the move to Oregon