ROOTS part 1 (AKA Trip North)

We have, no doubt, mentioned that David’s family came to the US from the area in France known as Haute-Saône (Upper Saône river valley). David has been doing a good deal of genealogical research online using records freely available here in France. So it was time to visit the homeland, check out the towns his family once called home, and try to connect some dots.



Haute-Saône is a region that is dotted with a myriad of small towns – some very small. A number of these towns figure into David’s family history. Our goal was to actually visit some of the towns as well as some of the historic sites in those towns. This included finding the Temples (Protestant churches were called temples not eglises) his family had been members of and looking in cemeteries for names in his family. In particular, we wanted to visit Hericourt, Eschanans-sous-Mont-Vaudois, Badevel, Luze, Chagey, Couthenans, Tremoins, Brevilliers, and Mandrevillars. So armed with maps and David’s printouts of family data, and we were on our way.


This was also our first experience renting a car and driving by ourselves in France. All the rental cars have a stick shift so David did all the driving. Our route going north was pretty straight forward: A6 to A36. Coming home we took “roads less traveled” and did a little more sight-seeing.


Below are a map to give you an idea of how Haute-Saône fits into France and a map showing the area in the northern part of Haute-Saône. As you can see the biggest town is Hericourt. Since David’s family actually came from there to the US and it’s a reasonably large town, David tried to find us accommodations there. He came up with a big zero, so we settled for staying in Belfort – just to the East.

 
More to come...