Announcements

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October 10-12, 2008

Lake Junaluska, North Carolina

The Society will be holding its 2008 annual meeting in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, at the Lake Junaluska Conference Center. Lodging arrangements have been made at the historic Lambuth Inn Hotel, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We have arranged 30 rooms which will be held until August 10, 2008. Please make your reservations early, by calling 1-800-222-4930 and asking of the special rate for The Fontaine Maury Society. Single rooms will be $75 per night; double occupancy will be $49.00 per person per night, and triple occupancy will be $41.00 per person per night.

The annual meeting will be on Friday night, October 10, 2008. On Saturday a scenic tour has been arranged to the visitor center of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, passing through Maggie Valley and the Cherokee Indian Reservation. Lunch on Saturday will be at The Jarrett House in Dillsboro, North Carolina, an historic inn that dates to stagecoach times. The afternoon is free for sightseeing. The cost of the half-day tour, which includes lunch, is $30.00.

On Saturday night we will have our traditional banquet in the hotel, followed by a concert by the famous Junaluska Singers. The cost for the concert is $14.00 per person.

All other meals at the hotel will be buffet style in the hotel dining room (except for the banquet on Saturday night). The inclusive cost for all meals and the banquet Saturday night is $53.00 per person.

The total cost per person for all events for the full weekend, excluding the hotel, is $97.00.

All reservations, excluding the hotel reservations, may be made completing our registration form.

Please send your completed form to the addresses on the bottom of the form.

If you have questions, please contact our Society President, Dr. John May, at JohnMay@marlboroelectric.net or contact him at 4 Lady Huntingdon Road; Lake Junaluska, NC 28745 828-456-5370

UK Ceremony for 1^st U.S. Consul to Britain and James Maury

Since April 2007 the library has been in contact with Liverpool, England, city planners who are working with developers to revitalize the Albert Docks area of Liverpool. One building part of the demolition along Paradise Street was the office of James Maury, the first U.S. consul to England. James was a son of Mary Anne Fontaine and Matthew Maury; he was appointed as consul by President George Washington. A huge Golden Eagle crest once adorned building and has been preserved. The city also owns a large portrait of Maury which hangs in the Liverpool Town Hall. The house where Maury lived still stands and has a plaque identifying it as Maury’s home.

The city is having the Golden Eagle crest incorporated into the new development along with a bronze plaque that explains its historic significance. There will be an unveiling ceremony for the plaque at this new retail establishment in September 2008. The city has invited any Maury or Fontaine family members to attend and participate in the unveiling. The exact date has not yet been established but as soon as we learn it, we will post the details!

It is 2008 - Join or Renew Your Society Membership!

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!

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

Report on The Fontaine Maury Society’s 2007 Annual Meeting

Williamsburg, Virginia

Our Society held its annual meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia, on October 12-14, 2007. Our business meeting was on Friday, October 12, at which the membership voted to approve the amendment of the Society’s constitution to create the position of membership secretary. The librarian reported the conversion of most items to electronic format, which reduces the prices and makes items more affordable. Members agreed to explore a Society trip to family sites in Ireland, perhaps as early as the fall of 2008. Lastly, the location of the 2008 annual meeting was referred to the Executive Committee, which is considered two locations: Savannah, Georgia; and Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. Subsequent to the meeting, the Committee selected Lake Junaluska (see our notice above).

On Saturday Society members took a tour of King William County. Included was a visit to Elsing Green, a plantation on the Pamunky River, where John Fontaine unloaded his goods to move to his adjoining plantation. The 1719 house was opened for a tour. We passed Philip Williams’ ferry site on the property and visited the site of Claiborne Hall where Molly Maury Claiborne lived. We then visited the King William Court House, the oldest court house in the United States in continuous use. We also visited the King William Historical Museum in Tappahannock, where the museum stayed open after its normal hours to host our visit. Our day tour was arranged by Richmond Discoveries of Richmond, Virginia, which has organized a number of tours for our Society for previous annual meetings when in Virginia.

After our annual dinner on Saturday night, the annual meeting was adjourned until our next meeting in October 2008.

The Library Goes Electronic!

In June 2007, the library joined the electronic age! Up until now most of our items available for sale are bound photocopies.

We now have virtually all of our items available in PDF format, all available on CD and some available via e-mail! As a result, our prices for electronic copies are drastically lower than our prices for bound photocopies.

For example, the price for the bound photocopies of Charles Ragland’s two volume work, Ancestors and Descendants of the Reverend Peter Fontaine (1691-1759) of Westover Parish, Charles City County, Virginia, is $50. A CD with both? $10.

We have also added a number of new resources that are not available for sale but are available for look-up service.

For more details on our library holdings, please visit our library catalog!

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!

Revised July 2008