For over three years now, I have been trying to link up the ancestry of Jacques de Savoye, one of my ancestors who settled in the Western Cape with the French Huegenots, to the noble de Savoye family. In this old post, I mentioned that I had a very strong suspicion that my ancestral de Savoye line was a descendant line of the noble family, but could not find the links I needed.

For one thing, my descendants came from the Hainault region, whereas the noble line was centered around the Savoy region. The second problem was that my progenitors were Protestant, while the nobles were Catholic.

So the question is, when did my ancestors move across a country, while changing religious beliefs?

Well, I have now managed to make a small bit of progress in sorting out this puzzle. I have found a source pushing back the ancestry of Jacques de Savoye several more generations than I previously had known.

The furthest back I am able to go now, is to a Pierre de Savoye, born in around 1430, in the same region as the noble de Savoye family, thus solving the riddle of how they ended up so far away.

Now this does pose a new riddle to solve. How does Pierre de Savoye link to the noble branch?

The frustrating thing now is that I suspect that Pierre is probably no more than one or two generations removed from the noble family, yet I am unable to find any records linking him to them. It may be possible that he is the son of an illegitimate child from one of the nobles, or else the historical record might just be incomplete. I have gotten so close to proving a link, but still lacking just that little bit.

However, at least this gem of genealogical data I found adds further weight to my reasoning that Jacques de Savoye was indeed of noble stock.

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