Lying in Wait for Fifty Years

When I got interested in family history, I knew that my beloved grandmother Ervilla Varran Stoelt was actually my mother’s stepmother. But I loved her and I was just as interested in her ancestry as I was in my mother’s. When I sat down to interview her in her Detroit living room in 1974, she told the story of her paternal great-grandfather. John Christopher Varran was born in Rouen, France about 1818, and when he was a young man he stowed away on a ship heading to New York City. There he settled down, married and raised a large family. Over the years I’ve regularly checked Varran family trees online, and no one had any idea who his parents were.

Until now.

For the past year I’ve been researching a client’s French ancestry, using the French records database Filae.com. Since I don’t read, write or speak French, I commissioned Bryna O’Sullivan of Charter Oak Genealogy to transcribe and translate the multitude of records I was finding. Recently I started wondering whether I could find a baptismal record for John Christopher Varran, and it turned out to be ridiculously easy.

This was one of the most exciting discoveries I’ve made in my own research in many years. I love French records because women maintained their maiden names throughout their lives. John Christopher’s parents were John Baptiste Pasqual Varin and Marie Hortense Antoinette Dequevaulliers. From there it was just a few minutes until I found his parents’ 1816 marriage record, which took up a page and a half in the parish register.

This record told me that Jean Baptiste Pascal Varin was a 26-year old fabric merchant in Rouen, the son of Jean Varin, and Genevieve Honore, both deceased. He was marrying 30-year old Marie Hortense Antoinette Desquevalliers, born on 2 April 1785, daughter of Jean Baptiste Desquevalliers (who died on 20 November 1784, before she was born) and Catherine Gabriel Leflamant, who gave her permission for the marriage.

In less than an hour, I had the names of John Christopher Varran’s parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

And right now, wherever she is, my grandmother Ervilla Varran Stoelt is turning cartwheels!

Arnold and Ervilla Varran Stoelt on their 50th wedding anniversary, 23 December 1982, Bradenton, FL