Mayville/Miville

So, the other day my uncle Rob Mayville finally received the results of his Paternal DNA test. They apparently don't have an exact haplogroup for him, but I believe it is r1b. This is based on the fact that, since we went through Ancestry.com, they matched my uncle's DNA against other submissions and found people with similar sequences. All of these people are in the r1b haplogroup, which generally comes from around Western Europe.

I have to look into some other things, but I took a look at whose sequences my uncle's DNA matched with and we were lucky to have a very close match with a man named Carroll Deschaine. All but one of the 46 markers tested were the same between Carroll and my uncle, and according to the site this meant that the relationship between the two could be as close as 6 generations back. The other matches were 10, 12 and more generations back. I couldn't believe this match was so close.

I emailed Carroll today to ask if he had done any work on his genealogy and might know how we are related. His answer was pretty awesome. He is a Miville descendent. Our common ancestor is most likely Pierre Miville but the common ancestor might even be even closer than that (either way Pierre is my ancestor).

Carroll indicated that he has done extensive work on this family and that my line may belong to Pierre's son Francois because apparently his line was associated with a lot of name mutations. He is going to help me connect my line to Pierre, as there is a sizable gap in known information. What is known, however, is that the line does connect, because we have hard DNA evidence for once.

I am really excited about this. I have been looking into the family now, especially Pierre. Pierre was apparently a guard for Cardinal Richlieu. http://www.delmars.com/family/perrault/2985.htm

This could be where the garbled nonsensical story that I have heard from the Mayvilles came from. That story purports that John Mayville (or, "the guy who came from France") was on Napoleon's court and had to flee so he went to Canada. As you will see at the link above, Pierre was a guard for Richelieu and was the immigrant ancestor. So, could be the story was at least right in tying our family to SOME important French guy.

Additionally, the two sons of Pierre both married Filles du Roi, or Daughters of the King. These were women sent to help populate the new territory in Canada. They were mostly nobility at first and then became more hardworking women from lower down in the strata.

Francois had one wife which he had 12 children with and then married a second woman who was a Filles du Roi. Jacques's only wife was a Fille du Roi, Catherine du Baillon (http://www.acadian-home.org/catherine-de-baillon.html)

This is really interesting, and I am excited to see what Carroll can help me turn up. His line is, I think still in Canada, and he speaks French and is very familiar with Quebec records. He is also very willing to help. We got very lucky with this find and I'm really excited to see what will come of it!

I still want to know what John Mayville seems to have been trying to hide, though.. Seriously.