French Canadians: You may descend from Crypto Jews

Here is the short version of the story. If you are of French Canadian descent, there is a good chance you have Hidden Jewish Ancestry. If you want to know more, read on! 

I was in Montreal in my college years and apart from experiencing bitter cold, I had met a really interesting guy, and I still remember his name: Denis Belly. He was really into hockey, no surprise there, and, he quickly told me his grandmother had Jewish ancestry. This guy was as French Canadian as they come. That little fact stayed in my brain, as little facts tend to do, until many years later. 

At a point, I was studying Tay-Sach's Disease. Tay-Sach's is an inherited neurodegenerative disease, most common in Ashkenazi Jews. 1 in 27 Ashkenazi Jews carry the gene. Children born with the disease do not survive into adulthood. I was researching it as I learned my "Mennonite" family also carried the gene that caused the disease. Based on my family tree, I know how a predominantly Jewish genetic disease entered into my family. But, what surprised me is French Canadians have the second highest incidence of Tay-Sach's Disease, 1/206 French Canadians carry the gene. 

This made me think. Where did French Canadian's get this really rare gene. Then I remembered Denis Belly, telling me his French Canadian family had Jewish ancestry. 

This brings me to one of my basic beliefs. DNA does not lie. Families lie. Friends lie. DNA does not lie. So, the fact French Canadians carry a rare, almost always Jewish genetic disorder, says to me, they probably have Hidden Jewish Ancestry. This basic fact had me look deeper into the topic. 

En Voila! I found Elizabeth Hirschman, one of the Crypto-Jewish star researchers,  had written a paper on the subject.

"Investigating the Sephardic Jewish ancestry of colonial French Canadians through genetic and historical evidence".  Here is the abstract for her paper. You can click below and get the whole paper, if you are so inclined. 

"The Spanish Inquisition in 1492 resulted in the deaths of thousands of Spanish Jews and the exile of around 150,000. The Huguenots and Acadians who settled in Colonial French Canada are assumed to be of Christian faith and ancestry. To support this hypothesis, the researcher uses a novel combination of methods drawn from historical records and artifacts, genealogies and DNA testing. In recent years, this combination of methods has led to the discovery that several of the Plymouth Colony settlers, Central Appalachian Colonial settlers, and Roanoke Colony settlers were of Sephardic Jewish origin. Thus, using the new methodology of ancestral DNA tracing, the researcher document that the majority of Huguenot and Acadian colonists in French Canada were of Sephardic Jewish ancestry.  They are most likely descended from Sephardic Jews who fled to France from the Iberian Peninsula in the late 1300s and early 1500s. The researcher additionally propose that some members of both groups continued to practice Judaism in the new world, thus becoming secret Jews or crypto-Jews. The researcher also finds evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry in both groups."

You can read the paper yourself, but, Hirschman's conclusion is that Sephardic Jews did end up in colonial New France. Despite the fact they were not allowed to do so. 

In 1663, when Louis XIV made Canada a French province, he decreed that only Roman Catholics could enter the new colony. The problem with decrees like that is, people just do not follow the rules or come up with work arounds. 

Let us not forget that the Spanish crown strictly forbade Conversos, Christians of Jewish descent, from entering New Spain(Mexico, Columbia, Peru, etc.). How did that work out? It did not. Conversos flooded into the Spanish colonies. They just forged fake pedigrees that wiped their Jewish past away. 

Just as I was working on all this, I came across Nikolas-Samuel Baron Bernier's article in Halapid, " Surprising Sephardic Migration". In the article, Bernier details how and when Jews made their way into French Canada, and the story of his own families journey to French Canada. This is a fantastic article. You can get it by following the link below. Bernier then wrote an even better paper, "Origines marines de ma famille en Nouvelle-France. This too can be found in the links below. 

So, no doubt about it, French Canadians have Hidden Jewish Ancestry. 

And this got me thinking more. When New France was created, there was one little problem. It had lots of French men, but no French women. The French King decided to pay for women in France to go to New France and marry French men. He didn't pay them per se. At the time, women were expected to have a dowry. No dowry, no marriage. He offered to provide women who lacked a dowry, a dowry, if they would go to New France. The became known as the Kings Daughters, or Filles de Roi. Peter J.Gagne made an exhaustive search of the Kings Daughters and wrote a book, "Kings Daughters and Founding Mothers. The Filles du Roi, 1663-1673. 

I have the books and decided to scan them for names known to be Sephardic Jewish surnames. Below you will find the filles du Roi who sported names that could be Sephardic Jewish surnames. There are more than a few. 

Abraham

Adam 

Albert

Amiot

Andrieu

Baril

Baron

Basset 

Bellehache

Bellesoeur

Billot

Blondeau

Bonheur

Bonnefoy

Brandon

Brunet

Caille

Charron

Chevalier

Chretien

Cousin

Crepin

Damane

De bonin

De Lahaye

De Lamarre

de La Motte

De Portas

Deshayes

Durand

Duval

Eloy

Faucon

Fauconier

Faure

Foy

Gambier

Genest

Guedon

Guillaume

Halay

Itas

Jalais

Jourdain

labbe

Lafleur

Lafontaine

Lagou

Langlois

Laval

Leblanc

Lebon

Lebrun

Leclerc

Lelong

Lemoine

Levasseur

Loiseau

Lucos

Marchand

Moreau

Morin

Navaron

Navarre

Paulo

Pechina

Quitel

Rabady

Riviere

Roy

Samson

Talbot

Valade

Vallee

Vanzegue

Vara 

Vilain

The interesting thing is these names, sometimes used by Sephardic Jews, were also common Huguenot names. So it seems, whether Sephardic Jewish or Huguenot, the "Catholic Only" rule may not have worked. Some people squeaked through. 

There is one name on this list, Bellehache, which is absolutely a Sephardic Jewish surname. When Spanish Jews left Spain as Jews, or as Conversos, the name was Bellhache, Bellhac, Belloc, and several other spellings. This one name that has its roots in Spain. 

One more interesting fact. This dowry business was a big deal. You really need to have one to get married. At this very time, when French women were taking the king up on his offer of a dowery, something similar was happening elsewhere in France. It seems that Sephardic Jewish girls, living in France, who did not have a dowry for one reason or the other, would apply to the Sephardic Jewish community in Amsterdam to provide them with one. An interesting fact, in my opinion. 

For all these reasons, if you are French Canadian, and discover you have Hidden Jewish Ancestry, you have some hot leads to pursue. It could have come into your family tree in the colonial period, or later, when Jewish immigrants were allowed to enter Canada.