original french surname of weymouth Bugler family

[paul ,harrison]

hi, my wife's maiden name was bugler. she understood that they were a family of french huguenots and that the original forenames were william francis or guillaume françois. she believes her family came from la rochelle but the surname was probably anglicised.
it could have been beauclair or beauglère etc. we live in france not far from la rochelle and wouldlike to do some research here. can anyone help? thanks in advance.  paul

[Girl Guide]

Welcome to Rootschat Paul.

Have a look at some of the websites below and see if they are of any help to you.

https://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/family-history.html

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Huguenots_in_Great_Britain

It may be worth putting a name in this one to see what appears:-

http://www.roelly.org/~pro_picards/prop/

https://genealogyensemble.com/2018/05/20/how-to-search-for-huguenot-ancestors-in-france/



You can always Google french huguenot genealogy and see what comes up.  I got the above from Google.   

[nanny jan]

Have you traced the Weymouth family through BMDs and parish registers?  There are several Bugler families in  West Dorset.

[avm228]

As nanny jan suggests, your best course at this stage is to trace your wife’s Bugler family as far back as possible in English records to gather evidence on the relevant family’s roots, generation by generation.  We can help you do that if you have some names and (even approximate) dates to start things off with.

[paul ,harrison]

thank you for your interest. we have an elizabeth bugler who married a Christopher Bradford at Beaminster in 1625. we have information of bugler family whose ancestor arrived in bridport from france after st bartholomew's day massacre. he was a weaver although some people thought he was a sailmaker. paul

[nanny jan]

Is your "information" of the ancestor arriving in Bridport from documentary evidence or family stories?

[paul ,harrison]

dear nanny jan, we have lists of names marriages etc which members of the family gave us years ago. we imagine that someone had researched it down to the arrival of french ancestor. however i don't know what their sources were. paul

[chempat]

Unfortunately that information is suspect if no sources are quoted.

You really need to verify it again.

Have you the name of the ancestor who arrived from La Rochelle, and have you started to look for any births, baptisms etc in La Rochelle records?

[avm228]

I entirely agree that if you’ve inherited an unsourced family tree (or similar) then you really need to start from scratch and trace back carefully from living or known family members backwards, generation by generation. It’s a fascinating process anyway, and we can help if you let us.

Inherited research or family legend really can’t be relied upon if the sources are not absolutely clear.   There are whole threads here on Rootschat about the differences between what was handed down in a family and what actually turned out to be the facts .