This is a link to a new interactive map locating the various sites mentioned here. Click on the item "scratchpad" for details. Zoom in for better view.

1 - SITES NAMED ORGEVILLE in France

There are three sites with this name in France, that existed in the early 1600's.
Click on the name to go to the Gencom site of the Commune, including links to today's map and Cassini's XVIII century map.

ORGEVILLE - EN - VEXIN - About 10km to the south east of Rouen and is now part of the commune of Flipou (27247, Eure). It is of particular interest because it has an old parish church, named SAINT-VAAST.

CAILLOUET-ORGEVILLE - The second one is in the area of Dreux about 60km south of Rouen and is now part of the commune Caillouet-Orgeville (27123, Eure). Orgeville used to be independent from Caillouet.

ORGEVILLE - The third one is north in the Pas-de-Calais area.It is now part of the Commune of Lillers (62516, Pas-de-Calais).

2 - ORGEVILLE FAMILIES in France

There are some Orgeville nowaday in France, including nobles of the Graindorge d'Orgeville and Orgeville du Mesnildurand. There was a noble family named HALLÉ, living somewhere between Rouen and Beauvais about 1600, who were referrred to as the lords of Orgeville.

3 - SITES NAMED ABANCOURT in France,

There are many sites with this name, mostly in old Picardie and Artois provinces. I limited the research on the ones that seem to have existed prior to 1650.Click on the name to go to the Gencom site of the Commune, including links to today's map and Cassini's XVIII century map.

ABANCOURTt - still a commune of this name today (60001, Oise). Next to it is the hamlet of La Montagne. In the XV century, a Adrien d'Abancourt, knight, was lord of both places.

ABANCOURT - A commune (59001, Nord) next to the town of Cambrai close to the Belgian border.

SAUMONT-LA-POTERIE - Abancourt was a large village with church etc which was erased off the map during the first world war. The area is now part of the Commune of Saumont-la-Poterie (76666, Seine-Maritime) near Beauvais. It was owned by some d'Abancourt family members and so were many of the villages and farms within 20 km. Courcelles Rançon, Haussez, Maucomble and a few others.

It seems that the three of them are somehow related to a fairly large ABANCOURT noble family.

4 - ABANCOURT FAMILIES in France

There is a lot of data on various Abancourt individuals, mostly nobles, but so far I have not been able to connect our Adrien to anyone. These Abancourt likely have King Louis IX (Saint-Louis)as one of their ancestors, thus with a genealogy going back to Robert le Fort in 620 somewhere in the Black forest. Some of the d'Abancourt were the owners of the three Abancourt sites mentioned above at one time or another. Some were also lords of many fiefs in the general area between Beauvais and Rouen.

Adrien and Simone were likely of noble families, probably poor, but noble.

I don't have any solid reasons to say this. Here are a few hints.

(a) The use of the particle "de" in front of a name during the reign of Henri IV and therafter was definitely reserved to the persons belonging in direct descendance to the family of someone who had owned a seignory by that name and one had to be part of the nobility, that is either of royal blood or granted by the king, to be entitled to land. Granted that by the time Henri was king, a few seignories were owned by rich non-noble persons, but they kept their own names and anyway this represented less than 500 in about 36,000 seignories, not counting the ones owned by religious organizations.

(b)Adrien and Simone both used a particle, not just Adrien or Simone. This is just circumstancial but significant.

(c)The 40 persons to immigrate were under the direct scrutiny and control of Cardinal Richelieu who had put two high profile nobles Emery de Caen and Duplessis-Bochart de Kerbordo in charge of the exercise of populating Canada. I don't think that any of them would have tolerated that Adrien and/or Simone used a particle in front of their name without any right to it.

(d) A far fetched "happening" is that their grandson, Louis Jolliet was made a noble for his deeds obviously, but extremely rapidly if not instantenously. Maybe having a pair of noble grandparents on his mom's side weighted in the balance and accounted for the rapidity of his "promotion" compared to the very few others who eventually received the honour (such as Boucher, Lemoyne etc) after having waited many years. Would be interesting to read the "Letter of Nobility".

(e)When one searches the many genealogical websites from France, dozens of references will come up including for living people, with the names d'Abancourt and d'Orgeville but none with Dabancourt or Dorgeville. Why these two names and not Dupont, Dubuc or Deblois etc?

(f) Another circumstancial thing is that they come from an area populated by Abancourt and Orgeville. All persons by these names were nobles and none appear in other regions. The fact that they are all nobles is of course highly biased by the fact that noble genealogies have a better rate of survival in the archives...

There is no proof of their nobility, but I suspect it. It also makes researching before the 1600's a lot easier.