DeArmond nobility of Chateauvieux?

The foreground area in the above photo is part of the Commune of Chateauvieux (equivalent to a rural U.S. township rather than a single village), located on a piedmont plateau in the French Alps, just south of the city of Gap.

Chateauvieux is familiar to generations of amateur family genealogists who have read "DeArmond Families of America" (1954) by Roscoe Carlisle "d'Armand". There are several locations throughout France referred to as Chateauvieux. Search engine map and photo correlation to nearby Venterol, France confirms that the location subject of this post without doubt includes the scenic view in the above photo. According to the opening pages of his book, the many variations of the DeArmond surname found in North America trace their origin back to the British Isles and once noble French Huguenot refugees. Roscoe conjectured that his proposed refugees during the late 17th century had made their way by supposed means and routes to London from their homes in the Dauphine or Haute Alps region where his referred to Chateauvieux is located in southeast France.

In fact, many thousands of Protestants (Huguenots) from much of France did indeed flee to neighboring Protestant countries during that time period. They did so to escape from mobs of Catholics intent on torturing and murdering the Calvinist Protestants after French king Louis XIV blindly responded to the urging of his pious converted Catholic second wife Madame de Maintenon who wished merely for Protestants to convert as she had done, not realizing the upheaval and suffering her influence would cause. In 1685 Louis unwisely revoked the Edict of Nantes religious peace treaty of 1598. This caused France to lose a vital segment of population, thereby weakening it's economic strength in Europe, felt even to present day. Roscoe was able to obtain copies of genealogies and an armorial coat of arms for the noble family known as d'Armand de Chateauvieux, whose Protestant male members he postulated to be the progenitors of the various DeArmond surname variant immigrant lines to North America that he listed in his work.

Right: Roscoe Carlisle "d'Armand". Left: Coat of Arms of d'Armand which Roscoe purported to represent the DeArmond family crest.

The nobility of France were primarily of Germanic ancestry stemming from invasions of Teutonic tribes after the collapse of the Roman empire. The name Armand, which is both a common given name and surname in Latin Europe, derives from the Germanic name of Heri-mann or Herman meaning "army man". The patronymic prefix d' or de means "of " or "from", and once signified status of nobility in pre-revolutionary France. Chateauvieux is actually two words meaning "old castle" with the adjective reversed in English. Roscoe proudly included several pages of genealogy records concerning members of the d'Armand de Chateauvieux extended family, with those who were Calvinist Protestants having to flee France after 1685. Here we first begin to notice the sketchy anomalies in Roscoe's narrative.

Huguenot refugee routes and population estimates for various areas accepting the Huguenots. Chateauvieux was located nearest to Grenoble shown on the map. Only possible piecemeal and no direct representation of refugee travel from this area to England is indicated. Musee virtual de Protestantisme Francais.

From the map just above, it appears that Roscoe's story line that the d'Armand refugee families would have taken the long arduous and dangerous journey from southeast France to London would have been highly unlikely for Huguenots from the Alps piedmont region or even later via Switzerland and then Holland. Chateauvieux was located in an area of predominately Protestant population as were many regions of southern France, known for the ill fated late medieval Albigensian Catharism movement. The infamous quote "Kill them all, let God sort them out!"(as to who is Cathar or Catholic) originates from a Catholic bishop's order in 1209 to slaughter several thousand surviving inhabitants of a French Mediterranean coastal city after being sacked by a crusader army. The Chateauvieux region of 1685 did not necessitate the immediate urgency to flee the country for survival as critically as in northern areas of France where most of the Huguenot refugees of England fled from to save their lives or escape persecution.

Sketch of French Protestant church on London's Threadneedle street. The church was demolished in 1840. About 1700, French Huguenot refugees represented about 5% of the population of London, most being skilled artisans or businessmen, helping to boost the British economy.

Roscoe's belief that d'Armand families of Chateauvieux found refuge in London and were members of the Protestant "French Church" on Threadneedle street is based on a very thin assumption. On page 15 he proposed that the father of the Armand brothers, listed as Espirit Armand,"was perhaps a younger son of Georges d'Armand de Chateauvieux of Venterol, France" (6 km from Chateauvieux). I have failed to discern where Roscoe specifies a citation reference that can be found to support this critical alleged birth location at Venterol. Without valid documentation to support this contention, his entire noble French Huguenot origin story is merely his wishful supposition. In his North American research, he scrupulously researched and noted sources, but in recounting his old world record research, he was subject to flights of childlike fantasy.  He cites several marriages and baptisms of the Armand family listed in the Threadneedle street church records. The registers of the French Church of Threadneedle street are extensive, covering nearly two centuries and are included in several volumes. They are very unwieldy to peruse on line. I was hoping to find justification for Roscoe's assumption of connection to the Chateauvieux area, but decided the effort to search the registers was not worth my time or interest.

Roscoe used a series of illogical and unfeasible logistical, social-economic and timeline  circumstances to support his fantasized contention of the Armands of London's Threadneedle street being one and the same as the early DeArmond surname variants found in 18th century northern Ireland. To preclude his own doubts about having any connection at all to the French Huguenots, he imagined the possibility of a Presbyterian minister led group emigration to America from England  instead of Ireland, that included Roscoe's ancestor. This was done in order to suggest his own surname line spelling was not corrupted by association with Irish names. The early DeArmond surname variant immigrants, including Roscoe's ancestor were exclusively Catholics who converted to the Presbyterian Church in order to lawfully take vacant tenant farming work. Presbyterianism was a Scottish and Ulster Scot religion not usually found or practiced widely in England. The English Anglicans considered Presbyterianism to be a "dissenter" or "non-conformist" religion and passed restrictive laws against it. This would later contribute to the rough and ready American Presbyterian Scots-Irish being the major patriot combatants in the revolution which was referred to as an "Irish war" by many British military officers. In his fairy tale version of history, Roscoe blindly ignored these critical historical factors or simply was ignorant of them.

My primary reason however, for discontinuing the effort to follow Roscoe's contention of an ancestral connection of the London Armand family to Chateauvieux, France, is answered in the following tree chart of Y chromosome DNA tested results of three descendants of Roscoe's own immigrant ancestor James, whom he designated as Line A. All three are positive for a Y DNA SNP FGC4113. This SNP is indicative of paternal line descent only from the native Irish clan of O'Duibhdhiorma, who for at least the past 1500 years have been indigenous inhabitants of the eastern Inishowen peninsula of northern Donegal, Ireland.

Y chromosome DNA tree chart of three descendants of James Line A who tested positive for Y DNA SNP FGC4113, indicating strictly a native Irish ancestry for James paternal line ancestors. The Y chromosome pedigree traces back to indigenous habitation in northwest Ireland centuries before a semblance of a French language began to emerge in western Europe.

R-M222 and Subclades Y DNA Project results chart screenshot at ftdna.com. FGC4113 is blocked in blue. The three test kits of descendants of James, Line A are shown listed. Click on image to enlarge. Included in the screenshot are additional related results demonstrating purely Gaelic origins. 

Lords of An Breadach

Kinnagoe Bay at the northern extent of the ancient kingdom of An Breadach, the ancestral homeland of the male Y chromosome DNA mutation marker SNP FGC4113, carried in body cells of all paternal line male (surname) descendants of the native Irish clan of O'Duibhdhiorma.

The Seanchloe type font rendition of the clan name above (Ui Duibh Dhiormaigh) uses the plural indicator suffix -maigh, but uses the Anglicized patronymic prefix O instead of the Gaelic plural Ui meaning all males of the clan (sept) who are paternally descendant of the clan progenitor Duibh Dhiorma

Just who were the people who originally carried this name down through the many centuries of turmoil in Irish history using several varying spelling forms, then for some to take up the Presbyterian religion and eventually become the DeArmond surname variant descendants of North America? This post deals with the early beginning of the native Irish clan of O'Duibhdhiorma (surname of clan chieftain and each male of the clan).

Section of 1846 published map of Irish surnames and clans from the 11th to the late 16th century. O'Dooyarma was an Anglicized phonetic transliteration of Ua Duibhdhiorma whereas Diermond was merely a substitution with a common Anglicization of the Gaelic given name of Diarmaid. The title Lord (Tighearna) was the clan chieftain's rank among other clans chieftains within the brotherhood of clans known as the Cenel Eoghain, all paternally descended from Prince Eoghain and King Niall (of the nine hostages). 

The surname appears rather late in the Irish monastery annals commonly referred to as The Four Masters. Not until 1043 A.D. is notation made of the death of one of the successive clan chieftains. Some historians surmise this may be related to the defeat of Viking power in Ireland and certain native Irish clans seizing the opportunity to establish home rule over former Viking controlled lands. I once accepted that theory until I came across a map showing where the Vikings held power, and northwest Ireland was not included. Perhaps because Inishowen was long the ancient stronghold of the powerful Cenel Eoghain ruling clans and their chieftains, relative stability existed throughout the Peninsula compared to adjoining areas. In any case, the clan of O'Duibhdhiorma most certainly existed centuries long before 1043. The genealogies in the annals note that the O'Duibhdhiorma paternally descend from Feilim, a son of Prince Eoghain (Owen) who was a son of Niall Noigiallach (of the Nine Hostages), 5th century High King of Ireland. Mention is made of members of the clan participating in and sometimes meeting death during horseback cattle raids and large pitched battles throughout the northern Province of Ulster.

Due to a practice of Celtic clan chieftains adhering to a centuries old tradition of serial monogamy, the male Y chromosome DNA mutation marker FGC4113 appears in every undisturbed paternal line (surname) male Duibhdhiorma clan descendant. The marker is located on a Y DNA tree branch of related markers that essentially confirm the accuracy of the ancient genealogies in the annals.

A streamlined version of the genealogy from monastery annals of the Northern Ui Neill paternally related family of clans of northwest Ireland dating back to first half of the millennium after Christ.

In the mid 14th century, Irish poet Sean O'Dubhagain (John O'Dugan) wrote the following stanza included in an extended poem about many of the clans of Ireland at the time.

The text is in Irish Gaelic using the highly stylized Seanchloe letters which correspond to the Roman alphabet. The rhyming of the lines is lost in translation to English. A translation of the verse by Irish scholar John O'Donovan (d.1861) follows below. I utilized my own minor modifications to provide a more commonly understood American English meaning.

Lord of An Breadach

O'Duibhdhiorma of high pride,
Chief of ever noble Breadach,
Well has it found the strength of its ancients,
The noblest clan of the race of Owen,
A tribe which has prospered without peace,
In Breadach lived the clan chieftain.

The line, "A tribe which has prospered without peace" refers to the clan homeland of An Breadach being a sought after prize, of first: the larger O'Donnell clan, then the Normans, then again a larger Irish clan (O'Doherty) and finally almost two centuries after the above poem was composed, the British in 1602 and succeeding rebellions in the mid 17th century and late 18th century and beyond.. Through all this turmoil in it's long history, the Y DNA marker FGC4113 endured among the male line clan descendants.

A surviving historical observation was made about the native Irish by a shipwrecked officer (Capitan Francisco de Cuellar) from the Spanish Armada (1588). After months evading the British and receiving assistance from the Irish, he made his way to a ship bound for Holland. In the following year, he sent a letter to the King of Spain. He described the native Irish as follows: "The men are large and energetic with handsome features while the women are exceedingly beautiful".   

Above left: a portrait of Spanish Armada ship captain de Cuellar. Above right: frontispiece of a modern published English translation of his letter to the Spanish king.

Above left: map depicting de Cuellar's escape route from his stranded ship in Sligo northeast to Derry and his departure by ship to Holland. His embarkation point was a few miles due east of the eastern Inishowen Peninsula, home to the clan of O'Duibhdhiorma. Above right: a 16th century illustration depicting native Irish, typical of the people that sheltered de Cuellar from the British.

Decline of the noblest Clan

Located at the far northern tip of Ireland, the peninsula known as Inishowen or Isle of Eoghain, had long been the center of the Tir Eoghain or land of Owen, with the McLaughlins having their seat of power as kings of the Cenel Eoghain at their hill fortress of  the Grianan of Aileach (see below). The O'Duibhdhiorma were situated as lords of their subsidiary Cenel Eoghain kingdom of An Breadach.

The Cenel Eoghain were a powerful family of usually allied Irish clans noted for their hereditary paternal descent from Prince Eoghain, son of Niall Noigiallach, a 5th century A.D. high king of Ireland. Although the successive chieftains of the clan of Ui Duibh Dhiormaigh held one of the two Gaelic titles of Tighearna (English equivalent of Lord) among the hierarchy of the chieftains of the Cenel Eoghain clans, they were never powerful enough nor had the hereditary right of acendency to leadership of the Race of Owen. That position fell to one of the two larger clans known as the McLaughlin and the ONeill, both closely related to each other, but nevertheless always ready to battle one another for the right of kingship of the Cenel if military and political advantage offered opportunity.

Reconstruction of the ancient ring fortress the Grianan of Aileach where for centuries, the ruling clans of the Cenel Eoghain maintained their center of power over the subsidiary clans of the race of Owen and much of northwest Ireland.

By the 13th century A.D., the McLaughlins had long been the rulers of the Cenel Eoghain, but the O'Neills struck a temporary truce and military alliance with the encroaching Cenel Chonaill who were descendants of Prince Eoghain's brother. The O'Neill were interested in eastward expansion into Ulster and were willing to concede Inishowen to the Cenel Chonaill. In 1241, the out numbered McLaughlin were slaughtered at the battle of Caim Eirge with survivors retreating into the north of Inishowen. The powerful O'Donnell clan of the Cenel Chonaill became the rulers of Inishowen and the O'Duibhdhiorma lost their right of Tighearna or lordship of eastern Inishowen.

Illustrations from the 16th century Book of de Burgos, which dealt with the history of the famed Anglo Norman Burke family of Ireland.

Control of Inishowen by the Cenel Chonaill and the O'Donnells was to be short lived, however. The English king granted authority over all of Ulster to the crown supporting head of the powerful de Burgos Hiberno Norman family of central Ireland. The Normans invaded Inishowen and established military control of the peninsula. They allowed the indigenous Irish including the O'Duibhdhiorma to run their affairs as they wished as long as the Norman garrison of Inishowen was provisioned with food and labor manpower. Their main use of the labor pool of native Irish was to help construct a fortified castle at the neck of Lough Foyle.

Ruins of Northburg or Green Castle. Built by the 13th century Normans under the de Burgos, on the far eastern extent of Inishowen.  Located with advantage to monitor ship entry into Lough Foyle.

The Normans themselves became victims of an invasion in 1315 by a Scottish army led by the brother of Robert Bruce, king of Scotland. This was preceded by Bruce's victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314. Obstensively, the Bruces wanted to form a Celtic alliance with the Irish to defeat the Anglo Normans who had ruled England since the battle of Hastings in 1066. The Bruces also wanted to hunt down surviving members of the House of Balliol who sought refuge in Ireland and could possibly usurp rule of Scotland from the Bruces.

Initially the Scots ran rampant through Ireland while alienating many native Irish with their plundering and murder of anyone opposing them. In 1316, the Scottish army marched through eastern Inishowen to capture Green Castle. However the plague weakened Scots were finally defeated at the battle of Farquart in 1318 by combined forces of Hiberno Normans and native Irish. Green Castle and Inishowen reverted to control of the de Burgos family. However, within a few years a bloody feud developed within the de Burgos family and the Normans abandoned all of Inishowen

Skull and reconstruction of the face of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland who briefly visited his brother's military expedition in Ireland. Evidence of a mild form of leprosy on the skull lends to substantiate the long held rumors of his illness.

With the abrupt departure of the Normans from Inishowen, the O'Duibhdhiorma were now too weakened and outnumbered to assert control of their former kingdom of An Breadach. The large O'Doherty clans of the Cenel Chonaill saw opportunity and swarmed into Inishowen to become the new lords of the peninsula. The O'Duibhdhiorma were left with nothing except their proud surname and a role of servitude to the now conquering O'Doherty clans and their chieftains.

The last contemporary historical comment about the O'Duibhdhiorma was in a topographical poem written by John O'Dugan before 1372, who wrote that they were the "noblest clan of the race of Owen" and that they had "prospered without peace", evidently referring to the numerous times their homeland was invaded by outsiders. After that, historical accounts of Irish history become for the most part silent as to their presence. Most modern Irish history writers appear to assume that the male bloodline of the clan simply became extinct, if they bother to mention the clan at all.

Nevertheless, The male Y chromosome DNA SNP marker FGC4113 indicating O'Duibhdhiorma paternal line heredity does still exist in many thousands of male surname variation descendants, not only in Ireland and the British Isles, but throughout North America. However, for most DeArmond surname variant descendants whose ancestors converted to Protestant religions, there hangs a dark cloak of ignorance of their once native Catholic Irish surname origin. This has occurred in Ireland also because many O'Duibhdhiorma Catholics who migrated or were forcibly removed in the 17th century to distant areas of the Isle, readily borrowed other Irish or anglicized surnames and over generations forgot their paternal ancestral heritage. Generally, only in Inishowen and the vicinity of (London)Derry do many Catholic Irish (usually using McDermott) today acknowledge or know of their O'Duibhdhiorma surname ancestry.