Joseph Gory (Gaury)

After reviewing the evidence, we find it likely that Anne Marie Joseph Gaury's parents were actually cousins. In fact, that means Anne Marie Joseph Gaury was a descendant of both Jean-Baptiste Gory and François Gory. A second read of the 1771 marriage license for Joseph Gaury (a son of Jean-Baptiste and Marie Bichot (Pichot?)) and Marie Françoise Paponet (the daughter of a mulatto, Françoise Drouillac, from Léogâne) revealed an interesting fact: Joseph Gory married the mother of Joseph Delande.

A close read of Joseph Delande's marriage record to Agathe Gory (also a child of Jean-Baptiste, but born in 1759) clarified the matter. Joseph Delande was explicitly stated to be under the guardianship of Joseph Gory, who was married to his mother, Paponet. So, Delande, already related to the Gory via his mother's marriage, proceeded to marry Agathe Gaury, the younger sister of his stepfather. Talk about incestuous? Or maybe borderline? At least they were not actually related.

Agathe and Joseph Delande had a son, Joseph Guillaume, baptized in 1776. This Joseph was likely the father of Anne Marie Joseph. Perhaps his name did not appear the entry for her baptism in 1793 because of his age and the fact that the mother was his cousin? The mother, Victoire, was likely Victoire Suzanne Monteise, born in 1764. She was therefore quite a bit older than Joseph Delande. Maybe his name did not appear because of an inappropriate relationship between cousins with a sizable age gap.

Our theory also makes it more easier to explain why Anne Marie Joseph's 1859 death certificate referred to her parents as if they were still alive. If Victoire was still alive in 1859, she would have been in her 90s, which is plausible but rare. Joseph Guillaume would have been in his 80s, which also seems rare but not completely unheard of. As for why Joseph Guillaume was named Gaury in her 1859 death record, perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his father's mother was married to a Joseph Gaury and his own mother was also one.

In light of the close link between Joseph Guillaume's father's family to the Gory, and his own maternal ancestry, one can understand why he used that name. It would appear that his father was an illegitimate child whose own father is not easily traceable. Therefore, the Gory name might have made more sense for him to adopt. We still do not know the exact reasons why Victoire, who was probably a Monteise through her father, used the Gory name. But this theory makes sense out of a messy situation of kissing cousins and missing records. Moreover, it illustrates how Beresfort's mother was linked to a variety of places besides Bainet, including Leogane, Grand Anse, and Jacmel. Now we just have to make sense of the possible Bichot connection and figure out where Paponet and Deslande came from.