Jean-François Draime (b 1795) married Marie Madeleine Lallemand (b 1800) and had ten children with her that we know of. Marie died at the beginning of 1835, and younger sister Mary Catherine (b 1809) helped him through this difficult time. So effective was her help that she was about three months pregnant when he married her on February 24th, given that the first of their six children together was born on September 2nd.

(some trees have a wife before Marie, but then again, they have Mary’s second kid being born in Ohio two months before their ship reached America; it looks like the 1835 kid didn’t live to make the trip, and likely the 9-year-old and 5-year-old sons (scribble and Albert) listed in the ship’s log died young as well, since they’re not in anyone’s trees)

In 1837, the family moved from Belgium to Ohio, settling in Frenchtown. A year and a half later, daughter Marie Christine became the (possibly second) wife of Jean-Pierre Bergé. They allegedly had 22 children, but since Marie Christine would have been in her fifties for the last four, I suspect data-quality issues.

mumble years ago, my mother actually went to Frenchtown and got a copy of the Barger/Barga/Bergé family book, but it got boxed up in a move and hasn’t resurfaced yet. Fortunately, by combining DNA matches with family trees, ancestry.com has provided pretty decent confirmation that Jean-François and Marie Madeleine were my fourth-great grandparents. Five of my great-great grandparents are still dead ends (Switalski, Nowak, Michalek, French, and Snyder), so eventually someone will have to do some actual field work. And learn Polish.

(a lot of the online family trees get pretty iffy before around 1850, with mismatches, duplicates, mis-merges, and impossible parentages (pro tip: when both parents died years before a child was born, something ain’t right), but the DNA testing provides a nice sanity check)

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