Francois Joseph Savoie SOLVED

Also my extrapolated haplogroup is something similar. It's R1b1a...something. That basically confirms I'm heavily French, which I already knew.

Sorry to disagree with you but gedmatch is a vetted source and so is the savoy genealogical project..... But have fun trying to discredit everyone you talk to as you've done through both discussions. Trolling for the sake of argument is just immature. Hope you get the reaction you're looking for one day though

I'm not trolling. It's just that I've seen some user-compiled information out there, especially ancestry.com, that is of bad quality. Sometimes it's pretty obvious - a child is about 4 years younger than the mother, non-twin siblings are 3 months apart, etc.

My mother and her ten siblings are direct patrilineal descendants of Francois Savoie. I have tested the DNA of my mother and five of her siblings (males and females. I have also analyzed that DNA through Ancestry.com, ‪Genomelink, Gedmatch and mytrueancestry.com.
Together as a group, the DNA samples show up to 5% Native American, French, Spanish, Italian, Malta ancestry. Additionally, it shows connection to medieval samples in Turin Italy and medieval Spain. All of this is consistent with Francois Savoie being who he claimed to be: the son of Tomaso Savoia. Until someone can produce a birth record for Francois Savoie this remains at best an open issue, not a closed one. For me, the weight of evidence, taken in totality, points to this being more likely true than not. And that, is where I, and many other Francois Savoie descendants stand.

I do not believe that François Savoie, husband of Catherine Lejeune, was the son of Prince Thomas de Savoie Carignan.
So without more convincing DNA or documentation proof (this one being non-existent), despite several assertions still without documentation and despite oral traditions without real foundation, François Savoie came from an unknown place and was the son of unknown parents.

For the descendants of François: It is good to like genealogy, but it is also good to respect the need for reliable documentation in order to draw up real and proven ancestries. This prevents the creation of fanciful trees hoped to satisfy the ego of detractors.

Many people just copy genealogy information, and the consequences of publishing unfounded ancestries are unfortunate for generations to come.

DNA has also demonstrated for the moment that the patriarchal group of François Savoie is R1B and that the patriarchal DNA group of Prince Thomas of Savoy Carignan is EL-117 (Test carried out on one of his line descendants male direct).

It should also be remembered that several, and this for a long time, declared that the wife of François Savoie, Catherine Lejeune, was an Amerindian descendant through a known Amerindian chief.

Once again, DNA today has spoken, and confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that Catherine Lejeune does not have a direct genetic match with any Native American tribe.

Given the previous situation, the oral traditions of this family are not to be considered further as substantial evidence.

The case of Bill Debuque remains to be analyzed in the years to come with more correspondences targeted but it is especially not necessary for the moment, to attribute to François Savoie noble parents with the lack of documents and REAL genetic evidence.

Many Americans are descended from many noble European families from the late Middle Age and early Middle age periods, these families are all linked from near or far with France, England, Spain and even Italy. So believing among all your ancestors that the only explanation that links you to European countries is the so-called probable link between François Savoie and Thomas de Savoie Carignan is a very hasty and inadmissible conclusion.

Most of those who say the link is proven are descendants of Francois Savoie and Catherine Lejeune out put Bill Debuque. This ardently desired family relationship should therefore be analyzed with caution when reading their statements.

In respect of genealogy and the seriousness that must be attributed to this passion, including overall respect for history, we can today declare:

François Savoie is the son of unknown parents, he comes from an unknown place and his patriarchal DNA group is R1B. (Tests on two males descendants of François)

I therefore recommend to all descendants, not to trace their ancestors with the burning need to descend from the high European nobility.

From a double descendant of François Savoie

Believe what you want and I am going to stand by what I believe. Too many people have walked into this conversation with a biased ax to grind. Decent from Royalty, in this case decent from minor royalty is not uncommon. So, until someone produces a birth certificate or paper birth record that says otherwise, I say Francois Savoie is a son of Tomaso.

Well said Jonathan!
Most well respected Acadian genealogy experts are in agreement that there is no credible evidence that he is the son of Tomaso.

I am a direct descendant of Francois Savoie, patrilineal lineage until my GM, Gertrude Savoie, and I have followed this discussion for several years now. Thanks to all who haver contributed information to this challenging project -- and especially to Joseph Bolton and Bill Debuque. I have a few observations. Please study history. DNA is a useful tool, but it's not perfect -- and becomes much less so in the intervening 400 years. Regarding the suggested disagreement between haplogroups R1B (Francois) and EL-117 (alleged direct male descendant of Tommaso), I'm not sure that one can credibly argue the lack of a connection between Tommaso and Francois based solely upon those two haplogroup summaries. Francois' haplogroup summary is: R1b-Z367; his extended haplogroup is: R-M269->P312->ZZ11->U152->L2->z367. I'm sure that those of you who know more about DNA interpretation than I do will quickly put me on the correct path. That said, I would also like to know the identity of the alleged direct patrilineal descendant of Tommaso who supplied the DNA for comparison. Perhaps someone has already looked at these issues, but I have not seen them. And getting back to history, Emmanuel Philibert moved the capital of the duchy from Chambery to Turin in the late 16th century. After the move to Turin, the Savoy maintained their castle/palace in Chambery where it remains today. It is one of the most beautiful castles in all of France. If you're looking for an alternate birthplace for Francois, Chambery and its surroundings might not be a bad place to start. Likewise, the Royal Hautecombe Abbey and its surroundings in Savoy, France. Martaize, (as Francois' birthplace), is a red herring (at least to me). Martaize appears to be little more than an assembly location for those who were traveling to New France in one of D'Aulney's groups. There are multiple publications that describe it as such in so many words. And lastly, Tommaso was an accomplished, paid "soldier" in and around France, Spain, and Italy. In 1642, around the same time that 21-year old Francois immigrated to New France, Tommaso raised what is known as the Carignano Soldiers (Le Regiment de Carignan-Salieres). In 1665, (9 years after Tommaso died), Louis XIV hired and sent 1,300 of the Carignan-Salieres to Quebec to quell the Iroquois -- and they were successful. I do not offer this as proof of anything having to do with familial descendancy. However, it is certainly an interesting coincidence. I'm still working on a timeline of the Carignan-Salieres. I hope you find this useful in one respect or another.

I have Italian DNA, so this has to be true. Not sure exactly how to compare and all that.

Ted,
Just because you have Italian DNA doesn’t prove anything.

Savoie was a not uncommon peasant family name. Someone breaking their back doing manual labour their whole lives weren’t grandchildren of kings or crown princes. That’s life.

Wow, what a lot of incredibly interesting and valuable clues! Thank you so much to everyone who put in so much work and thought to discover our shared ancestry. I really appreciate it.

Near the end there was also some unnecessary negativity from a few people, which made me feel quite uncomfortable. Hopefully trolling was not the true intention. We all need to be careful to use expected social media etiquette, and be respectful of our fellow readers and the original posters. Most of us are quite literally (distant) family, and we are here to build a supportive, friendly community to collaborate and share together. Please stay if you are here to do the same.

I do want to clear up a common misinterpretation of genetic results regarding my 9th great-grandmother Catherine Lejeune that both Raymond Lafleur and Jonathan Chénier mentioned.

Autosomal DNA can be used to determine current locations that have populations who share DNA with us, which is used to estimate where our "recent" ancestors (in the previous 500 years or so) may have lived. The caveat is that populations do move for various reasons (war, economic opportunity etc.). It is not an exact science which is why there are ranges (my Scottish currently has a whopping 0% to 29% range), and the estimates are frequently updated as new data is input and new algorithms are created. That is why different companies don’t give us the same estimates; their data pool of users and their programmers are different.

However, mtDNA is very different from autosomal DNA and it cannot be used to determine ancestry. mtDNA can only provide information along one direct maternal line. That is your mother, her mother, her mother’s mother, and so on.

mtDNA is measured in many thousands of years. For example, the mutation resulting in the U6a7a1 subclade now common in France occurred about 4700 years ago.

Let’s imagine someone like our ancestor, Catherine Lejeune.
Around 1000AD, 600 years before she was born in 1633, her 20th great-grandmother on her direct maternal line was a Viking slave, (10% of all Vikings were slaves), stolen from Paris during an invasion. She was working for her captors in L'Anse Aux Meadows, or on a trading ship from Iceland, but somehow, through escape, love, war, or circumstance, she ended up living and raising children in what is now Canada.

About 500 years later, around 1500AD, there was a mutation in her 2nd great-grandmother’s mtDNA, and all of her descendants will have the newer U6a7a1a subclade of mtDNA.

So about 100 years later, when she is born in Acadia in 1633, over the past 600 years she may have had about 524,288 Mi'kmaq ancestors (although some individuals may appear multiple times in her family tree) and only that one Viking slave ancestor along her maternal line, yet she carries her mtDNA, mutated 200 years before to the U6a7a1a subclade, and all of her descendants carry it too.

Some of them got tested and found they have the “Acadian” U6a7a1a haplotype that appeared about 1500 AD, before French women were in Acadia, before there was an Acadia, when it was Mi’kmaq territory.
This is the key. U6a7a1a mtDNA is Acadian, not French, and happened about 500 years ago, in 1500 AD (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4062890/ ) This was 100 years before Port Royal was founded in 1605, before French women were in Acadia, it is evident that the U6a7a1a mtDNA mutation occurred among the Mi’kmaq, and is carried by their descendants.

Now, back to our own ancestor Catherine Lejeune. There weren't a lot of French women in Acadia in 1633, and French men would marry Mi'kmaq women, to gain valuable allies, information and trade ties. Even if Catherine Lejeune had a French paternal grandfather and her other three grandparents were Mi'kmaq, that wouldn’t affect her "Acadian" U6a7a1a mtDNA at all.

Also, if you have done your parents or grandparent's DNA this is a good article on "phasing" to reduce false distant matches, https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2017/07/26/the-effect-of-phasing-...

I used it and still matched with "the 6 Savoies", so it's more likely a true match.

You can try it with our GEDMatch numbers if you like.
My dad Patrick Murray Stark's GEDMatch number is M777092.
My (Cynthia Stark) gedmatch number is A832767.
My phased Paternal DNA kit is PA832767P2

Thanks,
Cynthia Stark (for some reason it just says Private!

Oops! I spotted a typo:
I meant "she carries her mtDNA, mutated about 130 years before" (not 200)
- Cynthia Stark

So using my phased Paternal DNA kit PA832767P2

I still matched with:
A034818 Thomas Savoie 8cM
A531526 David Savoie 3.3cM
A680750 Phyllis Savoie 3.3cM

- Cynthia Stark

And using my phased Maternal DNA kit PA832767M2
I still matched with:
A034818 Thomas Savoie 3.1cM
A258374 Joan Savoie 3.1cM

but my mom is distantly related to Swedish royalty, so that may be why

- Cynthia Stark

Edit: given the timeline of Vikings raids in France (820CE-911CE), the U6a7a1a mtDNA progenitor may actually have been a (captured?) Viking herself, the grand-daughter of a slave taken from France a hundred years prior.

- Cynthia Stark

Do you know how many ancestors you have who were born around 1621? Possibly up to 4000 different individuals (depending on your personal ancestry of course).
4000 individuals. You think you can use autosomal DNA as evidence for one of those individuals? You cant. By normal randomness of DNA inheritance it's possible you have individuals in the 1800s where you haven't inherited a singled thing, it has been 'washed out'.
It is not trolling to tell you this. They are facts.

Joshua, why are you messing with our family tree? You have NO evidence that the connection to Tomasso was fabricated. You have no right to destroy thousands of family trees here on Geni.

Private User from my understanding you can use totally use autosomal DNA evidence in that way if you are mapping your parts of the chromosome to the different ancestors. Now I have not read through all the conversion here but I have not seen it happen yet. I have not used it myself yet (too few relatives who have taken a DNA test) but could perhaps https://dnapainter.com/ help in this case?

From what I've seen various Facebook group exist on this topic.

Y-DNA and mtDNA are relatively precision instruments, in that they can decisively tell you who is or is *not* a member of which (direct-male or direct-female) descent line. What they cannot tell you with certainty is exactly *which* member of a given line they are descended from.

Autosomal (atDNA) is a comparatively *blunt* instrument. At close range (about 5-7 generations max at the current level of technology) it can indicate that two or more people are related - but, again, not exactly how. And past that point the "signal to noise ratio" gets increasingly garbled until it's all just "noise" and any "matches" may be the result of coincidence.

There actually are a number of scam artists practicing in the field of "autosomal DNA research", so caveat emptor.

Private User, I disagree that it's necessarily blunt if you are putting a lot of effort into it and mapping all the various ancestors into their respective parts on the chromosome (triangulation). Also you need enough of the right people having taken the test for this. So it's only as "blunt" as you are making it.

To make autosomal DNA work for you in the way you are trying to claim, you *must* know every single direct ancestor, male and female, for at least five and preferably seven generations back. Most people don't have that complete a tree. (I've got a fairly complete one, but it has holes here and there - including maternal great-grandfather, who *would* be the genealogist's nightmare, a John Smith.)

You don't necessarily know the ancestors, just have an understanding of which part of the DNA comes from which ancestors which you can find out by grouping DNA matches, those through known but also those through less known routes (e.g. if you just know the general vicinity, e.g. by looking at the surnames).
Private User, please try the Cluster Auto Painter tool from https://dnapainter.com/ to get what I mean.

Not good enough. Ask Justin Swanstrom, if he ever shows up again.

Maven B. Helms, we have thousands of connections here on Geni with no so called "paperwork" to back them up. If we are going to apply an equal standard, should'nt they be removed also?
This is not just an issue of accuracy, but also of fairness. What has happened is that a long-established connection on Geni was removed at the request of Mr. Joshua M Swerling who only reason for removing the connection was “it is a fabrication”. Yet, this Geni user has offered no proof that the connection between Francois Joseph Savoie and Thomas Francis of Savoy, prince of Carignano is a fabrication. It seems logical that if someone is requesting a change to a long-standing connection on Geni, they should present positive evidence for requesting that change. This was not done.
I concede that I can not be 100% that Francois joseph Savoie is the illegitimate son of Thomas Francis of Savoy, prince of Carignano. However, there is evidence that Francois joseph Savoie is the illegitimate son of Thomas Francis of Savoy, prince of Carignano and his descendants throughout North America have believed this to be true for centuries. Mr. Joshua M Swerling can not be 100% that it is a fabrication either! As I have noted elsewhere, Geni family trees have made connections going back thousands of years to Noah and Adam. Where is the paperwork to support these connections? We are holding Francois Joseph Savoie to a different and higher standard.
This change has destroyed many hours of work for me and my research and not just for me, but many others. There must be room for compromise. Please restore the connection but make it clear in the profile that it is unconfirmed. This seems to be fair and equitable.

Unfortunately, Y-DNA analysis is what blows it out of the water. A Haplogroup E father *cannot possibly* have a Haplogroup R son (or any group but a matching E, for that matter), no matter what convolutions you try to put on it. (Diane Owen *does not* understand this.)

This is exactly what blew up the "traditional" connection between the D'Arcys (haplotype E, and where *did* that come from?) and the Maryland Dorseys (R1b, and I think they were Irish Modal to boot).

Thomas Francis of Savoy, Prince of Carignano is my cousin through the Moseley Ligon lineage. interesting topic.

So many ancestors migrated to the American Colonies, which we may never be able to fully document properly.

Even if
you match yDNA or autosomal, I think genealogists still require documentation alongside the DNA evidence as well, at least that is what I've stumbled upon on Family Tree Projects working on a few lineages.

They require this to prove the dna is not coming in bilateral.

https://www.geni.com/path/Suzan-Martin+is+related+to+Joseph-Bolton?...

Thomas Bolton is my 11th Cousin via Moseley Trabue linage

Y-DNA cannot come in "bilateral", but can come in "collateral" from another male relative in the same line.

Autosomal can come in from any direction, or more than one direction if you have multiple ancestors from the same area.

But the basic rule is still the same as it has always been: no match, no relationship.

Being related to Francois Joseph Savoie DOES NOT prove that you are also related to Thomas Francis of Savoy, Prince of Carignano, because of the Y-DNA incompatibility mentioned repeatedly (and as repeatedly IGNORED) in the above Discussion.

E men *do not* have R sons. It is *impossible*.