Did this Aubigny family exist?

Question

There is a long patrilineal line for this Mary Elizabeth Aubigny.  None of it is sourced (starting with her father), and all of the profiles have an incorrect LNAB.  Does anyone have information as to the accuracy of the line?  Is it fabricated?  If you have information and have certification to allow you to edit/change the data, please do so by adding sources, dates, and correcting the LNAB on the many profiles.  If you aren't certified but can provide data and sources, please post here so I can work on fixing (or eliminating) this line.

Thanks in advance,

Darlene - Co-Leader, European Aristocrats Project

Comments

I think this is another version of "Mary", or whoever Dabney Pettus's mother was

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dabney-329

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No, not the same.  Two Dabneys, one possibly non-existent.

A lot of this is coming from these snippets (not fully sourced)

https://books.google.com/books?redir_esc=y&id=55I38FXWyPgC&q=dabney#v=snippet&q=dabney&f=false

According to which theories, Thomas Pettus married Elizabeth Dabney, not Mary Elizabeth (Mourning Burgh being his 2nd wife).

They had Stephen Pettus, who apparently married his 1st cousin, Mary Dabney, daughter of George, probably Elizabeth's brother, they being probably children of Cornelius Dabney of St Peters d 1694.

Looks like people are messing with the story to try to skate round the cousin-marriage.

Lots of Dabney Pettuses later, some living.

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Looks like some of the line came from here (great, a connection to Pocahontas!)    http://www.southern-style.com/dabney.htm  

I don't have time to weed through this site, but it would be great if someone has time to look it over and do whatever needs to be done to fix or sever the lines . . .  

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Hmm.  The Virginia Families article (vol 2 p. 850) says the will of George Dabney d 1729 mentions Mary, Stephen and Dabney Pettus.

But in the VMHB article (p. 137) a claimed descendant says he has a certified copy of this will in the old box in his possession, and there seems to be no mention of these people.

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There is no such person as "Mary Elizabeth Dabney" born in Virginia about 1660. In 1678 Cornelius Dabney had a wife named Eedith and at least two sons. Land records suggest sons George and James, and daughter Sarah.  He also had a daughter named Elizabeth and a son named John, both of whom died unmarried (ages not given)  in 1688.  With second wife Susannah he had a son Cornelius, a daughter Mary born in 1688, and a daughter Dorothy.  There are a lot  of bogus trees involving both the Dabneys and Pettuses, and few supporting documents for any of the claims and theories.

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Thanks, Kathie.  So if Mary didn't exist, does that mean her husband didn't exist?  And does that mean that we should detach them as the parents for Pettus-3 and Pettus-170 (the only children with any descendants)?

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Thomas Pettus “Jr” is real, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Pettus (except he has duplicates who will be merged after he’s detached).  His first wife is completely unknown and whoever she was they had only one child, daughter Elizabeth,  before she died.  He next married a woman named Mourning Burgh, no children.  For now I’d detach “Mary” from supposed husband, detach the children from Thomas since they are proven not to be his, and maybe leave the rest connected to one another until someone can sort them out.  

A prevailing theory is that a Dabney was married to one of the Stephen Pettuses.

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Could I 'take' one of the duplicate Thomas', detach him from his parents, and keep him attached to Mary Elizabeth?  I have located the SAR (Sons of the American Revolution) application that is where this line came from.  However, Mary Elizabeth d'Aubigny is actually Elizabeth Dabney, daughter of George, granddaughter of Theodore Dabney.

The same SAR application has Elizabeth's husband as Captain Thomas Pettus "of Littleton", 1652-1698.

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How odd.  Way outside their time zone.

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I put no faith at all in an SAR application.  They took anything people wrote until recently.  Sounds like more garbled junk.  Who were Theodore and George supposed to be?

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No idea as to George and Theodore, as the application only lists names.  But probably the Dabney is more accurate than d'Aubigney...  I've detached her from the d'Aubigney line and changed her LNAB to Dabney.  At least there's a source for it, while there were none for d'Aubigney.

I just located duplicate profiles for Elizabeth and Thomas, so I've detached Thomas Jr. and attached the other Thomas, and proposed a merge of Elizabeth with Mary Elizabeth.  Baby steps . . .

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But steps in the right direction!

Answer 1

No.  Cornelius Dabney (spelled a variety of ways including DeBaney, Debney, and Daboney in land records) came to America in the 1650's.  There are claims that he (and his supposed brothers) were descendants of a family named 'D'Aubigny' but if so, that name didn't come to America with them. The following article says they are descendants of an English family named Daubeney  See this article:  Dabney, Charles William. “The Origin of the Dabney Family of Virginia.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 45, no. 2, 1937, pp. 121–143. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4244786.

 There was no Mary Aubigny married to a Thomas Pettus in the 1600's or very early 1700's.  Mary Dabney, born in 1688, daughter of Cornelius, married a man named Thomas Carr and died in 1748.  Mary Carr is named in the will of her mother, Susannah (?) Dabney Anderson, Hanover County, VA, 1724, "I do hereby give, devise and bequeath the same unto my dear children three Cornelius Dabney, Dorothy Trice ye wife of James Trice and Mary Carr ye wife of Capt. Thomas Carr...."  transcript at [https://johnsonfamily.talldude.net/susannah-3015/genstory/243/susannah-discussion
]

The first Thomas Pettus in America married a woman named Elizabeth Durrant in 1643.  They had a son named Thomas, born abt. 1653 who married a woman named Mourning Burgh.   

Some genealogies claim that Cornelius had a granddaughter named Mary who married a Pettus, but this is not documented as far as I know.  The name "Dabney" does appear in Pettus records, so there  may have an intermarriage at some point (or maybe someone just liked the name!).  

Comments

Just to mention that in medieval times, the name d’Aubigny appeared like many medieval names in a number of different forms. One of them was Daubeney.

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Thanks, Kathie.  Unless someone comes up with a source for Mary's ancestry, looks like we'll end up detaching her.  Has anyone looked up the line to see if the patrilineal line is actual or sheer fabrication?

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Daubeney seems to have been a typical English spelling from an early date, as far as one can guess from Latin records.  Mostly it was translated as de albineio or de albiniaco, but those forms don't necessarily indicate the true origins of the families, which they probably forgot.

Dugdale called them de Albini in his Baronage.  But he seems to have made that up, or got it from somebody else who made it up.  This became tradition in that sector and was followed by Nicolas, Courthope and Cokayne in their Peerages.

Browning changed it to d'Albini, probably so he didn't get a lot of letters.

In Complete Peerage 2nd edition, Gibbs decided it was time to ditch Dugdale, and switched to d'Aubigny for the early families.  I haven't found d'Aubigny in any original sources.  It seems to be a reconstruction in Anglicized modern French of a hypothetical name that Daubeney is supposed to be a corruption of.  But it's become totally conventional for the Arundel and Belvoir families.

Elias and his descendants are generally called Daubeney by English writers, following the spelling on Sir Giles's peerage patent, but Americans like to correct it to d'Aubigny.

As regards the Dabney line, Hugh

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/D'Aubigney-Descendants-14

and the next 5 generations seem to be taken from this Visitation (with a William skipped)

https://archive.org/stream/visitacionievisi32ryew#page/98/

which doesn't add much information.  This village history

https://www.sharrington.org.uk/history/

doesn't add much more.

But that line is probably garbled.  Blomefield's version

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/vol9/pp436-438

starts the Daubeneys with William, but has Broughtons to match the John and Robert at the top of the chart.

Whether this family had anything to do with any immigrants is a different question.

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That is helpful, R J. You have given me some useful pointers.

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More scraps

https://books.google.com/books?id=qQPVeN8uCRsC&pg=PA201

Answer 2

I have just separated out two branches of a d'Aubigny family of the 12th/13th centuries that had become conflated on Wikitree. Work on them has made me conscious how much research is needed to give a reasonable overview on Wikitree of the various d’Aubigny lines, with almost certainly quite a few profiles and some branches to be added. I stopped one generation later than the particular d’Aubigny I was focusing on, and am conscious that there were further generations of descendants to be added. It is possible that some of the relationships shown in this unsourced ancestral line have a basis in fact, and that some of the profiles in it can be linked up to other better sourced d’Aubignys. I will try and find time to do some quick research in the next few days to see if I can find sourcing for at least one or two of the profiles.

There is probably a substantial project waiting to be done on d’Aubigny families if anyone has the appetite!

Comments

Thanks, Michael.  That would be great if you have a chance to look over the line.  The LNABs going up the line are all incorrect (they have it as d'Aubigney; EuroAristo naming standards require the LNAB to be Aubigny or Aubigney, but no 'd'), so we need to either merge them away or correct the LNABs on any that are actual people.  Most of them are abandoned, so if there are any d'Aubigny aka Daubeney aka . . . fans out there, they are just waiting to be adopted (and repaired/sourced or merged away)!

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I have started to work on this d’Aubigney family line, including creating one or two duplicate profiles where there is an inactive profile manager, so that the LNAB error can be merged away. I am setting the LNAB as Daubeney, the form normally found, with Dawbney as alternate where there is a source for that. I will continue as I have time. Anyone else who wants to help - please do.