Finding all the members of a particular family is a challenge when the family moved around a lot. Why couldn’t everyone just stay put?! Just kidding, I know there are a lot of reasons for migration.

I’ve been working on finding the parents and siblings of my ancestor Philippe Verny (about 1688-1748) in Eure, France. I found that his parents were Pierre Verny and Marguerite Boucher, but then the information dried up. I couldn’t find a marriage record for them, even after paging for YEARS back through the record book for Richeville, Eure, where the family was from at the time of Philippe’s marriage. Online trees offered a few hints, and indexed records on Geneanet and the Cercle Généalogique de l’Eure offered a few more.

But these Pierre Vernys were from different towns, and that always makes one pause. How to know if this was the same man? I took what information I did have, and possible leads and started putting it all into a timeline.

Three cheers for signatures! Enough of the records had Pierre’s signature that I feel confident that it is the same man.

Timeline for Pierre Verny, 1634-1714 

This information shows that Pierre Verny was married to Antoinette Martin, had at least two children with her, and then was married to Marguerite Boucher, and had at least five children with her. His signature on some of these records  is the key to helping tie it all together, showing that it is the same Pierre Verny who is the father of all seven children, even though the family resided in at least four different locations.

Italicized font refers to events that are implied from other records. Bolded events are found in the records.

Location	Date	Event	Comments
	About 1634	Birth of Pierre Verny	Based on his death at about age 80
	Before 1675	Pierre Verny married Antoinette Martin
		Birth of Antoinette Verny, daughter of Pierre & Antoinette Martin	Based on her marriage in 1692
	About 1675	Birth of Elizabeth Verny, daughter of Pierre & Antoinette Martin	Based on her death at age 4 yrs 8 months
	Before 1680	Antoinette Martin died
	Before 1680	Pierre Verny married Marguerite Boucher
Gisors	Jan 1680	Birth of Pierre Verny, son of Pierre & Marguerite Boucher1
Gisors	Jan 1680	Death of Elizabeth Verny, daugh. Pierre & Antoinette Martin, age 4 yrs 8 months2
Gisors	March 1680	Death of Pierre Verny, son of Pierre & Marguerite Boucher, 6 weeks3
Gisors	March 1681	Birth of Anne Verny, daugh. Pierre & Marguerite4
Gisors	April 1681	Death of Anne Verny, daugh. Pierre & Marguerite Boucher5
		Birth of Marie Verny, daugh. Pierre & Marguerite Boucher	Married in 1705, so probably born around 1685 or earlier.
	About 1681	Birth of Pierre Verni, son of Pierre & Marguerite Boucher	Based on age at death, but probably born later, since Anne was born in that year.
	About 1688	Birth of Philippe Verny, son of Pierre & Marguerite Boucher	Based on age at death
Pontoise	1692	Marriage of Antoinette Verny (daughter of Pierre Verny & Antoinette Martin) to Eloi Bretheuil6
Guitry	1705	Marriage of Marie Verny, (daugh. Pierre & Marguerite) to Romain de Gysors7
Richeville	1710	Marriage Pierre Verny (son of Pierre & Marguerite) to Catherine St. Gilles8
Richeville	1714	Death of Pierre Verny, age 809	Presence of Philippe Verny
Richeville	1716	Marriage of Philippe Verny (son of Marguerite Boucher) to Marie Heliot10	Father’s name is incorrect, but proved to be Pierre with other evidence, detailed in the comment section of his Family Search profile.
Richeville	1725	Death of Marguerite Boucher, age 7011	Widow of Pierre Verny, presence of Pierre & Philippe Verny

As you can see, there are still many gaps. I don’t have either marriage record for Pierre Verny, or a baptismal record for 6 of his 7 known children. It’s quite possible that there were more; Marguerite would have been of child-bearing age into the 1690s. I searched through the records in all four locations for those gap years and didn’t find the family at all. It’s likely they were living in elsewhere.

Great progress is being made with AI being able to read handwriting and indexing — we may not have long to wait for these missing records to come to light!