Forest

or de Forest

The Forest family is probably of Flemish origin, and several different family trees have been proposed for the earliest putative ancestor, Henri de Forest, (possibly son of Jessé de Forest) who was born in Avesnes or Sedan in 1606. The following account is based on Père Vincent-de-Lérins' Histoire de la famille Forest published in 1955. Jessé de Forest is well documented, and was the son of Jean de Forest and Anne Maillard of Avesnes, who moved to Leiden (where they attened St Gertrude's church, above) to escape religious persecution. They had three other children: Melchior, Gérard, and Anne. Jessé married Marie du Cloux (a native of Sedan) about 1601, and had three children: Rachelle, Isaac, and our possible ancestor Henri. The reason we know so much about Jessé de Forest is that he was one of the leaders of a scheme to found a Dutch colony in what is now French Guiana (where he died in 1624). Henri was born in March 1606 and married Gertrude Bornstra in Amsterdam in 1636. Henri emigrated to New Amsterdam in the 1630s, with or without Gertrude (accounts vary) where he is recorded as "Hendrik de Foreest." Henri died either at sea or in New Amsterdam in 1637, whereupon his pregnant wife married a man named Hudde, and lived in Amsterdam where her son Michel de Forest was born in 1638. The problem with this account is the lack of any documentary proof that Michel was the son of Henri and Gertrude, and the fact that during most of their short marriage they were separated.

A more recent theory makes Michel de Forest originally Gereyt or Gerrit de Forest, son of Crispin, son of Jessé's brother Gérard and his wife Esther de la Grange. Crispin married Margriet Bornstra in a double wedding with his cousin Henri and Margriet's sister Gertrude in 1637. Their son Gereyt was born in Leiden in June 1638. He came to New Amsterdam in 1657, supposedly to try to claim an inheritance from his grandfather's investment in the Fort Orange trading post. Unsuccessful, he then decided to emigrate to Acadia. This theory rests on a document purportedly seen by a researcher in the PRO in London which mentions "Gereyt de Foreest, son of Chrispyn de Foreest and Margrita Bornstra from Leiden" as one of a shipload of Acadian settlers in 1657. But if this was our ancestor, he must have converted to Catholicism and changed his name to Michel before he married Marie Hébert in 1665. As the genealogist Maurice Caillebeau says, "Je trouvais un peu étrange que le fils d'une notable famille protestante de Flandre devienne un modeste laboureur catholique des premiers temps de l'Acadie" [I find it a little strange that the son of a notable Protestant family of Flanders would become a modest Catholic laborer at the beginning of the Acadian colony] (Caillebeau 1980).

A distant cousin, Caroline-Isabelle Caron, wrote her doctoral dissertation at McGill University on the problem of the Forest origins. (Se créer des ancêtres. Les écrits historiques et généalogiques des de Forest et des Forest d'Amérique du Nord, 19e et 20e siècles, 2001). She concludes that the family was French-speaking but Protestant, and was descended from a Gaspard de Forest who lived in Avesnes in the fifteenth century. This is possible, even probable, but also not documented, and does not necessarily disagree with the theories mentioned above.

I take these speculations about the de Forest origins from John P. DuLong, who tells me via e-mail that he does not accept the Gereyt de Forest theory and it expects it to be disproved soon by DNA evidence. He also notes that Governor d'Aulnay recruited teenaged emigrants from across northern France, where the name "de Forest" is fairly common. In my opinion the circumstantial evidence connecting Michel in some way to the Protestant de Forests of Flanders is not negligible, though it is hard to believe that Gereyt would change his name to Michel.

In any case, Michel de Forest was in Acadia by 1657, and the fact that he did not marry until 1665 suggests that he was quite young when he came. He was dead, however, by 1690. His wife was Marie, daughter of Étienne Hébert and Marie Gaudet, emigrants from Martaize. They had at least six children: Michel (1667, died young?); Pierre (1668, married Cécile Richard); René (January 11, 1670, see below); Gabrielle (1672); Jean-Baptiste (1677, married Isabelle LaBarre); and Marie (c1679, married Pierre Benoist).

We do not know when René Forest married Françoise Dugas, but it must have been about 1695, in Port-Royal. There were thirteen children: the birth order here is conjectural, based on when they married; the baptismal records are lost: Marie (1696?-1770, married Joseph Robichaud in 1718); Marie-Madeleine (1698?-1758, married Pierre Guilbault in 1731); Joseph (1697? married Marie Gilbault in 1720); Marguérite (married Pierre Bastarache in 1724); François (married Jeanne Girouard in 1727, 2 children); Mathieu (married Marie-Madeleine Guilbault in 1728, 2 children); Jacques (married Marie Josèphe Prince in 1734); Catherine Josèphe (married Claude Gaudet in 1737); Isabelle (married Honoré Prince in 1738); Anne (married Joseph Prince on January 25, 1740 in Port-Royal, see below); Jean-Pierre (married Anne Richard in 1743); Pierre (married Marie-Madeleine Richard in 1744); and Charles (married Marie Chiasson in 1745, 3 children). René Forest died in April 1751 in Port-Royal.

Anne Forest and Joseph (le) Prince were the parents of Joseph Timothée Prince, a great-great-grandfather of Marie Eva Jean Martin.