One of my goals for this year was to create a chart for all of the descendants that I could find for Eglantine Lautin, my 5th great-grandmother. My hope is that by knowing which lines left female descendants, I would be able to find a modern-day descendant who would be able to test for the mtDNA haplogroup in order to learn more about Eglantine and where she was from.
I have posted a few times about my 5th great-grandmother and you can read more about her here:
- 52 Ancestors – #33 Eglantine Lautin (1821-1889)
- Tracing Eglantine Lautin
- December 21st – A Day Dedicated to My Ancestress
- Dreaming in ‘français’…
Eglantine is an important ancestress/ancestor to me because she is my closest ancestor who was born in Africa and to this day, we do not know where in Africa she was from. All traces of her identity were basically wiped away during the slave trade and her life in Martinique. She was probably renamed Eglantine when she arrived in Martinique and was assigned the surname “Lautin” in 1848 when she and her daughters were freed. Eglantine had been registered as the number “192” in “Register C”; however, whatever registers those originally were are no longer around and thus it is not possible to know if they would have provided more information about Eglantine and her origins in Africa.
Lucid Chart
I used a website named LucidChart to create the image below for Eglantine’s descendants. I was able to use the free version of the website and it was enough to place many of her descendants. Granted, I left some of the descendants who were born more recently in time out of the chart to protect their privacy. I divided the table into three colors: green if the line provided descendants, orange if I was unsure of whether or not they had left children, and red to mean that the line died out as candidates, meaning it providing no daughters (at least that are known through documents).
Below you can see that out of the five daughters Eglantine had, only two left daughters: Marie Boudré and my 4th great-grandmother Julienne Malvina Lautin. From Eglantine’s daughter Marie, I am not sure if Lucie Cellia had any children seeing as how the online French records don’t extend into modern times. From Julienne, my 3rd great-grandmother also left female descendants; however, since I descend from one of her sons, my line is not eligible for mtDNA testing. Similarly, another daughter named Valentine had various daughters and likely through her it will be possible to find some modern descendants. Similarly, through the Correa daughters it is also possible to find some descendants as well. Take a look below at the chart!
This type of testing is known as targeted testing where you go after a certain person or group of people in a family tree in order to learn more about them. In this case, I am going after the descendants for my 5th great-grandmother but specifically those who were her daughters.
I am hopeful that I will be able to find a descendant today that would be willing to test in order for us to learn more about Eglantine. Haplogroups are not the “end all, be all” for learning about the origins about a specific ancestor, but I figured it would good to have a haplogroup assigned to her and to learn as much as possible through DNA since currently the records are lacking. Hopefully in the near future I am able to learn more about Eglantine and her life in Africa before she was brought to Martinique as an enslaved person.
Cover Photo Source: Registre 1848-1858 (Rivière Salée, Martinique), “Actes d’individualités – 1848-1858,” p. 18 (backside), Nº 141, Eglantine Lautin, acte d’individualité [act of ‘individuality’ (freedom)], 21 December 1848; accessed as browsable images, Archives de la Martinique (https://www.patrimoines-martinique.org/ark:/35569/1rl6fbpc0m4z : accessed 21 January 2023). Image 21 of 182.