The Armingeon family of
Savoy/France/Italy, Württemberg/Germany, and Pennsylvania |
|
Waldensian history. The Armingeons are one of the more unusual branches of my family tree because they were French Waldensians, a group that many people have never heard of. The Waldensians (aka Vaudois) began as a reform movement in the Catholic church during the 12th century. They rejected the authority of the church in many ways, which quickly led to intense persecution that never quite managed to exterminate the movement, although it came close a few times. Waldensian beliefs had many similarities to the Protestant Reformation that began more than 300 years later. They aligned themselves with the Protestant movement in 1532 without losing their distinct identity. The Waldensian population was concentrated in the Alps along the modern border between France and Italy. This area had remote valleys where the people could live in relative isolation from the mainstream population, with a better chance for self-defense when there was a resurgence of the persecution efforts. In the 1500s and 1600s, this area was part of the Duchy of Savoy, an independent state that was often under heavy pressure from France, their more powerful neighbor. In modern times, much of old Savoy is in France and the rest is in Italy. A particularly nasty episode of persecution was the Piedmontese Easter of 1655 (Wikipedia), an attack on the Waldensians by Savoyard troops at the order of the government. Thousands of Waldensians were killed in the most barbaric ways their attackers could think of, and there was international outrage at the egregiousness of it all. The Waldensians waged a successful guerilla war for a few years afterward, followed by a period of relative peace from 1661-1684. But in 1685, Louis XIV started a campaign to wipe out the Protestant religion in France and anywhere else that he could reach. In 1686 the Duke of Savoy caved in to French pressure and outlawed all forms of Protestantism in Savoy. The Waldensians refused to comply and were invaded once again, with heavy casualties. The shifting alliances of the Duke of Savoy gradually led him to end the persecution, and many Waldensian refugees returned home in 1689. In 1694 the Duke of Savoy officially allowed the Waldensians to live in their old residences, but it didn't last. The pressure from Louis XIV resumed, and in 1698 the Duke expelled all French Protestants from Savoy-Piedmont. (Wikipedia). The move to Germany. Not everyone was as bigoted as Louis XIV or as cowed as the Duke of Savoy, and there were many states where the ruler was Protestant. In 1698 the Protestant Duke of Württemberg (Germany) invited the displaced Waldensians to move to a part of his duchy that had been depopulated by warfare and create their own communities there (German Wikipedia, translated to English). Getting there required a long trek northward, passing through Switzerland and avoiding France. My ancestors came from a part of Savoy-Piedmont that is now called Villar Perosa, in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. It was called Villar Perouse or Grand-Villars in French, and the new community that the Waldensian refugees established in Württemberg was given the German-equivalent name of Grossvillars. This site says that Grossvillars was established in 1699, and the initial combined population of Grossvillars and sister village Kleinvillars was 379. Grossvillars is still a small village surrounded by farmland, with a modern population of about 1,000. The church began keeping records in Grossvillars in 1700, and they continued to keep records in French for at least 120 years afterward. The Armingeons. It took some detective work to figure out the Armingeon lines of descent in Grossvillars. There are no records available from the time they lived in Savoy; a lot of paperwork must have perished during the massive turmoil and destruction that took place there. Some of the Grossvillars records have faded to the point of illegibility, so there may have been more going on than what we see now. The Grossvillars records show the following sequence of events:
So we have two boys named Pierre Armingeon who were baptized in the same year, and no other boys with that name until the next generation. Which one of them married Madelaine Vincent? It must have been the son of Jaques and Marie, since the son of Pierre and Marguerite was Madelaine's half brother. They had the same mother and different fathers, so the church would never have let them marry. The son of Jaques and Marie had no visible relationship to Madelaine, so he could marry her. Many online trees have listed the wrong Pierre as Madelaine's husband, but it's so hard to figure out the relationships between these people that I can't really blame them. Pierre and Madelaine emigrated to America in 1753, blending into the German Moravian population in Warwick Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Their four children made the trip with them, and they had five more children after they arrived. The surname is consistently spelled Armingeon in the Württemberg records, but no one in the New World knew what to make of this strange foreign name. After years of awkward variations including Armishon, Armstrong and Jung, by 1800 they had changed their last name to Young. This name doesn't rhyme with Armingeon and isn't a translation of Armingeon, but it's short and easy to handle. The Family of Pierre and Madelene Armingeon traced the evolution of the name, but apparently this book isn't available anywhere nowadays. It's interesting that they chose an English last name instead of a German one; this suggests that the German community in Lancaster County was becoming anglicized. The first names changed too; Pierre became Peter and Jean became John, and this change came much sooner than the evolution of the surname. The most startling change was when Godefroy Armingeon transformed into Frederick Young. The English equivalent of Godefroy is Godfrey, but this name is so uncommon that they may have never heard of it. Maybe the name change pathway was Godefroy-Gottfried-Friedrich-Frederick. Or maybe he just liked the name. Frederick himself apparently preferred German over English. An English-language document about his will says that the original will could not be recorded with the county because it was in German, so the English document served as a workaround [FamilySearch Lancaster Wills Book I page 447 Img. 240].The family's history in America has been well documented elsewhere and will not be discussed here. Genealogy.com has a well-researched article on the Armingeon/Young family. But even the best resources can contain errors; the earlier researchers didn't have access to foreign records or the internet, which limited what they could find. So the next section will discuss the less convincing claims about the family. Truth or fiction? Page 5 of The Young Family History says "the original name was Orma Jeune or Ormashon, which is said by interpreters to be the same as Young". It's true that "jeune" is the French word for young, but the records show that the original name was Armingeon, which can not be translated this way. This book was published in 1910 and is based on the memories of family members. No one in Pennsylvania understood this name in the 1700s, so it's not surprising that later generations didn't fully understand it either. The internet says that Armingeon derives from "son of Armand" which also looks questionable. A more likely route from Armingeon to Young is that after the name was corrupted to Armischong it was shortened to Jong. From there it was a short step to Jung, which is the German word for young with a pronunciation fairly close to the English word. All of these name variations have been observed in the family records. Genealogy.com says that Frederick's parents Pierre Armingeon and Madelaine Vincent were born in France. The Young Family History says "Family traditions say their native country was France". But the records show that Pierre and Madelaine were born in Grossvillars in Württemberg, Germany, and their parents came from the French-speaking population in Savoy-Piedmont in Italy. The family probably did come from France at some point in the past, but it could have been many generations earlier than this. It has been said that Frederick himself was born in France, but the records show that he was born in Germany just like his parents. [FamilySearch, "Deutschland, ausgewählte evangelische Kirchenbücher 1500-1971" Img. 22] Genealogy.com says that there is no baptism record for Frederick's brother Jean Daniel, and it's believed that he may have died during the family's sea crossing. This is incorrect; Jean Daniel was baptised in Grossvillars just like his older siblings, with a birthdate of 5/29/1752 and a baptism date of 6/3/1752. [FamilySearch, "Deutschland, ausgewählte evangelische Kirchenbücher 1500-1971" Img. 27] This is the exact same birthdate that is carved on the headstone of a John Young who is identified with this family (FindAGrave), so it looks like Jean Daniel survived after all. Some sources say that this John Young is Jean Daniel's brother Jacques, born in 1747, but the precise date on the tombstone is more convincing. If anyone perished during the sea crossing, it might have been Jacques; but I can't find evidence that anyone died on the ship. Seven Generations talks about the family in a way that sounds well-informed overall; at the end it cites "Research for Pierre Armingeon history by Victor A. Young" which is a respectable source. But the story of the family's immigration doesn't sound quite right. For one thing, it says that Jean Daniel died on the journey, when John Young's headstone indicates that he survived. It also tells a story about the whole family being renamed on the spot when they arrived in Philadelphia. That sort of thing happened at Ellis Island, which opened 140 years later, but immigration procedures were different in 1753. The original immigration record is online [Pennsylvania State Archives - you have to manually set it to frame 537] [also on page 630 of Pennsylvania German Pioneers] and it shows only one name for this family: Pierre Armingeon. His correct French name, not a corrupted spelling variation, and it looks like these are the actual signatures of the passengers so he probably wrote it himself. He's the first name on the list so he's easy to find. We can tell that this is an arrival document (not just a passenger list) because it says that the foreigners imported on the ship qualified for admission. The qualification process was simple: males over 16 had to give their name, swear allegiance to the King of England and abjure the Pope. The women and children weren't important enough to bother with. The Pennsylvania State Archives explains that most of these arrival documents only give the names of adult male passengers, although some captains listed women and children. In any case, names were much more fluid at this time and the spelling on a piece of paper - any piece of paper - was not binding. Even if an immigration officer had misspelled their names, that didn't mean it was their new name and they had to live with it.
|
|
Other family history articles: The Trents: 1. Trent Y-DNA project results 2. Trent family tree 3. Trent landholdings 4. Frederick Trent of Tazewell/Logan county: how many Fredericks? 5. The Abraham Lincoln connection 6. Original documents The Jarrells: 1. Jarrell family tree 2. Jarrell landholdings 3. Who were William Jarrell's parents? 4. Was Susannah Parks a Cherokee? Other branches of the Jarrell/Herbert family: The Pocahontas problem The truth about Abner Vance The Canterbury family of Virginia The New Sweden line The Beach line: Richard Beach 1825-1900 The ancestors of Donkin Dover Tribute to Edwin Thomas Beach
|
|
Article by Carolyn H (a descendant of Godefroy Armingeon aka Frederick Young). 2025 All rights reserved |