For years, my Depew ancestry was stuck at 1850, with Joseph Depew in Montrose, Iowa. Joseph and his wife, Wealthy Elmer, had migrated with the Mormons to Nauvoo, Illinois, and had settled in Montrose, just across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo. Family legend was that, when the family was packing up to leave Montrose and head west with the Saints, Joseph was nowhere to be found. Wealthy and her sons were in her parents’ wagon, ready to move out, when Joseph showed up drunk. He yelled that no wife of his was going west with the Mormons, and pulled her off the wagon. Her father got the horses moving, the wagon started rolling, and Joseph couldn’t stop it. So Joseph and Wealthy stayed behind while their boys went to Payson, where they were raised by their grandparents.
The oldest record of Joseph Depew was an 1850 census record, saying that he was born “about 1800” in “Pennsylvania.”
My brother, Craig Depew, has done a lot of digging over the years, and we think that Joseph’s reputation has been rehabilitated. He may or may not have been the town drunk, but he did move west with his family. He never made it to Utah. Both Joseph and Wealthy died of illness in Winter Quarters, Nebraska. Their sons did go to Payson, where they were raised by their grandparents.
Uncle Craig also found that Joseph was descended from Nicolas DuPuy, a Dutch immigrant who arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) in the 1663. Nicolas was born in Holland in 1627.
Further digging gets us tangled up with questionable sources, including a French historian named Louis Moréri, who never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
If Moréri is to be believed, Nicolas’ lineage can be traced from Holland to France, where the DuPuy family were knights and noblemen, originally from the Dauphiné region of southeastern France. They converted to the Huguenot religion, which put them at odds with the Catholic church and the French king, and eventually made them outcasts. That’s why they fled to Holland, and from there to the New World.
In the Dauphiné, Hugues DuPuy was born in 1055, in Peyrins, France. He and his three sons went to the Holy Land with the First Crusade, and acquitted themselves well. One of his three sons, Raymond DuPuy, was the “second Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.” He was a Big Cheese. No, I’m not named after him. And no, I’m not descended from him.
If you go back further, and if Moréri can be believed, Hugues was the son of Raphael de Podio, who was born in 1011 in Lucca, Tuscany, Italy. (Italy!) He was a military commander and the Grand Chamberlain of Conrad II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Conrad gave Raphael a governorship in the Dauphiné, so he moved to Peyrins and Frenchified his last name to DuPuy.
Both “DuPuy” and “de Podio” translate literally to “of (or from) the podium,” but can also be translated to “of (or from) the heights.” Many French geographical names include “Puy” in reference to a hill, a ridge, or another high place.
Raphael himself was a descendant of Norman Anglie de Podio, born in A.D. 905. Norm was the first to bear the “de Podio” surname, his father being named Adminius Amélius Simplicius. It would be really great if we could say that the Depew family line goes all the way back to Norm, in A.D. 905.
Norman’s name is dangerously anachronistic, and I have a couple of problems with it.
First, the term “Norman” meant “Northman” or “Norseman.” Originally, it referred to the Vikings, the Scandinavian raiders that terrorized Europe and Britain for a century or more. The term wasn’t generally used until after Norm was born. The earliest it could have been used is A.D. 911. That’s when king Charles III of France and the Viking leader Rollo signed a treaty, giving Rollo and his people the land that is now called Normandy, in exchange for no longer raiding the rest of France. Over time, Rollo’s people became known as “Normans.” But that began in 911, and our man Norm was born in 905.
Second, the middle name “Anglie,” or “Anglo saxony” as one source renders it, refers to two Germanic tribes, the Angles and the Saxons, who invaded the island of Britain in the 5th Century, and by A.D. 899 were united in one kingdom under Alfred the Great. The year 899 is when Alfred the great died.
Our man Norm was born in 905. The term “Norman” didn’t exist until after 911. And the term “Anglo Saxon” referred to a people on an island all the way on the other side of the continent, a people that didn’t exist as a unified people until 899. I will state plainly that I think someone in a later century made up the name “Norman Anglie”, and they may have even made up the person.
To complicate things even further, it looks like the Amelii line is from southwestern France, near the Pyrenees and Spain. While Moréri has been quick to connect the Ameliis in the southwest with the de Podios in the southeast (and in Italy!), other reputable historians have not been able to confirm that connection, and there is considerable arguing between the two factions.
So, depending on how much you believe, we can trace our Depew lineage back to Joseph in 1850, Nicholas in 1627, Hugues in 1055, or Norman in 905.
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