Correcting the Family Tree

As previously mentioned, there aren't a whole lot of American Coquigne families or family history researchers out there. Every family tree I have seen out there (on the internet) with the Coquigne name pertains to my family branch, specifically the descendants of Pierre Francois and Cecile Coquigne who came to America from the Jouarre area of France probably in the early 1830's. They lived in New York - we think Oswego County - for about 10 years before migrating to Michigan.

The information that was passed down to me about the genealogy of these Coquigne's came in the form of a couple of typewritten pages, but who exactly wrote the pages, I can't say. The document is titled "Descendants of Eugene Peter Coquigne and Emma Net Brown" (Eugene being the grandson of the previously mentioned Pierre), and it states that the parents of Pierre Francois Coquigne were Peter Hubier Coquigne, born 15 Jul 1741 in Jouarre, France and wife Marie Ann Coquette born 1749. Based on this source, this information has been reflected in my family tree since I first created it, and nearly every other Coquigne family tree I've seen out there says the same thing.

Thanks to some guidance given me by the experts at the International Desk at the Family History Library, I have recently discovered how to access French genealogy records online. The biggest trick is to know that France has departments, which are numbered, and you must figure out which department applies to your French village or town. In this case, we're talking about Jouarre, which is Department 77, known as Seine-et-Marne. You can access their archives by going here.

Happily, the Coquigne genealogy passed down to me said that Pierre Francois and Cecile were married 6 Jan 1817. So that was the first thing I went to find in the French records, and there it was, a marriage between Pierre Francois and Cecile on precisely that date. But this record as well as other corroborating records I found at the French archives tell us we have some corrections to make:

• Cecile's maiden name was NOT Bouquet. It's easy to see how this misinformation got passed around because I actually have an old picture of Cecile posted on my tree that was clearly labeled by somebody unknown as Cecile (Bouquet) Coquigne. But the French marriage record indicates that Cecile's maiden name was Huvier, and that her parents were Pierre Huvier and Marie Anne Bouquet. So the Bouquet name does tie into our family, just not in the way that we thought.
• The same marriage record indicates that the parents of Pierre Francois were Francois Coquigne and Marie Anne Deligny. I have not been able to find ANY baptism/marriage/death record for the date 15 Jul 1741, nor anybody by the names of Peter Hubier Coquigne or Marie Anne Coquette.

Given that the information in the "hand-me-down" genealogy cannot be truly sourced, and the information provided by the French archive records gives us evidence that was created at or very near the time of the actual events, I now believe the "hand-me-down" genealogy to be lacking. So if you are a Coquigne researcher and you have the "hand-me-down" misinformation in your family tree, please consider correcting it. I encourage you to look at the French archive records to make the judgment call for yourself. There might not be that many of us, but we can still strive to get our story right!