History of the Bourgeois and Related Families

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This website documents the results of Don's genealogy research since the summer of 2017. A small amount of data comes from research in the 1990's before the Internet. The information available today is so vast that it is impossible to include everything available. Three internet sources provide much of the information presented on this website:  FamilySearch.org, GenealogyBank.com, and FindAGrave.com.  None of these is a valid source in itself.  However, the documents referenced by the first two and the authors / submitters for the last site can be a valid source.  An effort is being made to verify all the information presented here and to document the source of that information.

The information presented here is grouped into three family trees:

• The family tree rooted on Don's father, Ellis Paul Bourgeois. A family tree for Don's mother, Janie Lee DaSilva, is quite sparse and questionable. Therefore, it is omitted here.

  Much of the material on Ellis's ancestory comes from Dwayne Montz of Dayton, Ohio. We are thankful for that gift of information. Since Dwayne's data largely lacks sources, much time was spent searching the internet and the Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City, Utah for sources to verify the data.  In the FHL were found several valuable publications:

  • A multi-volume set summarizing the sacramental records of the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans covering the years until 1831. Publication of new volumes was suspended in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.
  • A multi-volume set summarizing the sacramental records of the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge covering the years until 1900.
  • A large book by Albert Robichaux, German Coast Families, European Origins and Settlement in Colonial Louisiana, documenting his research into the European ancestors of the original setllers of the Louisiana Colony.
  • A set of personal pages within the family trees on FamilySearch.com. These trees / pages reference the Parish and Civil records of the Department of Dordogne, France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  In addition, the archivist at Tulane University, Ann Smith Case, has provided a large amount of information on Ellis and his days at Tulane.

• The family tree of Don's wife Helene including the Widell, Falkenberg, and Drakenberg families in Sweden. Much of this information comes from a family genealogy and is mainly unsourced.
• The family tree of Don's late first wife Karen including the Gorton, Klem, and Omerso families mainly resident in New York. Much of this comes from Karen and Don's personal archives, material and references supplied by a family member, and from two books:
  • Samuel Gorton of Rhode Island and His Descendants, Two Volumes, by Thomas Gorton
  • The compiled research notes of August H Clem, titled Conrad Henry Clem Family History, November 1993.   It is not clear whether this work was ever formally published.

  The information about the Omerso family is quite thin.  They have been in America for only a century immigrating from what is now Slovenia between 1913 and 1920.  Much work is needed to find information about the family in Europe.