PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2008

    The LeValley list at RootsWeb is eight years old, and we have reached a milestone of 50 active researchers.

    This year, we slightly expanded the books page on the LeValley web site by identifying the initials of contributors to scientific journals.

    Specific progress has happened in three different LeValley families:

Peter
    Judy Newman sent her fine picture of the original LeValley house in West Warwick, RI, and I turned it into a card.  We have also received tombstone pictures of Christopher's descendants in both Lockport NY and Fairgrove MI.

Valcartier
    A major breakthrough here.  We had long been aware of Daniel's descendants, and of his origin in Alderney in the Channel Islands.  A few years ago, we learned that two of his brothers and their widowed mother accompanied Daniel to the Quebec area.  Now new research by Shelley Murray reveals that nearly all of the ten siblings eventually came, though at least one nephew's family remained in Alderney for several more generations.

Prosper
    We were contacted by a woman whose mother's dying wish was that the World War II navy ring of her long-ago sweetheart, Victor LeValley Jr., be returned to its original owner.  With Elise's help, we were able to connect the woman to Victor's wife, who gave him the ring as a Christmas surprise.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2009

    The LeValley list at Rootsweb is nine years old, and membership has dropped slightly to 49.

    The big endeavor this year has been our DNA test sampling of almost every LeValley family in America--plus most branches of the larger families.  While we wait for the last results to come in, we can now see that the separate LeValley families are not closely related on either side of the ocean.  We still continue to exchange information.

    Preparing for the test brought renewed contact between the various LeValley families.  We have made progress in these families and branches:

Peter>Christopher
    We learned details of Lorne's daughter in Saskatchewan--a longstaanding mystery.

Peter>Cook
    Judy shared Leonard's Bible records, which are now on the web site.
    Nina Arbios got me a copy of the Otterson family book, which contains many LeValley details.

Peter>Peter Jr.
    Brief access to online marriage and divorce records in California and Nevada clarified some much-married LeValleys.
    We have been contacted by a descendant of Reuben's daughters with a few more fragments of information.

Valcartier
    With so much information now known on the immigrant generation, it seemed appropriate to add to our web site the records of Alderney in the Channel Islands.

Charles F.
    A few documents have been added to our web site.

Andrew Jackson
    We have made new contacts and cleared up a mystery or two.  Recently posted old Nevada newspaper clippings are filling in details on one man the family knew little about.

Coldwater
    In trying to arrange the DNA test, we came across an adopted son with lots of updates on his near relatives.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2010

    The LeValley list at RootsWeb is now ten years old--an anniversary of sorts.  Membership remains steady at 49.  For the first time, we have a descendant of Peter LeValley's grandson Peleg on the list.

    But after last year's huge DNA effort, we have very little progress to report this year.  Footnote.com made its newspaper archives available for a month, which was nowhere near enough time to sort through the more than 2,500 mentions at Dayton IA, where one branch descended from Peter's grandson Cook settled.  Wading through those records continues.

    Progress on all other lines has been small this year.  Yet we have come a long way since we began this list and web site ten years ago.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2011

    The LeValley list at Rootsweb is eleven years old, and membership remains steady at 49.  This despite the fact that Marc LaValley, the main researcher of the Xenia OH LeVally/LeValley family, died during this past year.  We have no progress to report from that group.

    The Peter LeValley family has seen mild advances in most of its branches:

Peter>Peter Sr.
    The LDS pilot program briefly allowed searches by mother's maiden name.  We found out what had become of some of the LeValley girls who married and moved far away.

Peter>Christopher at Columbiaville MI
    Important documents and pictures from the Eleanor LeValley estate came into the possession of Paul LeValley.  We finally got to see the original Tibbits manuscript, and found copying errors.  Other researchers in this line straightened out Phebe's maiden name.

Peter>Cook at Dayton IA
    We finished wading through all the newspapers at footnote.com--and learned lots more interesting details of daily life.

Peter>Peter Jr. in California
    We found a skeleton in the family closet.  The Paradise Genealogical Society sent newspaper clippings of a sensational murder trial that nobody in that part of the family had mentioned.

Peter>Peter Jr. in Oklahoma
    A new contact sent some historic pictures.

Peter>Benjamin
    The published ancestry of Nancy LeValley Davol confirmed things we had already figured out by other methods.

Prosper
    Charles LeValley visited me, so we met for the first time after years of correspondence.  He made minor corrections to that family tree.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2012

    The LeValley list at RootsWeb is twelve years old, and membership has dropped to 45.  That has happened as people changed e-mail addresses without telling us.  No one new has joined the list since November 2010.  But we measure our success in what we have learned and what we have shared.  Knowledge is cumulative, and we have piled up a lot in the last twelve years--ever so much more than we could have without this list.

    Brief access to the amateurish family trees people have posted on Ancestry brought us some death dates and second marriages--also a few pictures.  But the early parts of those trees are corrupted with every inaccuracy floating on the Internet.

    California voting records have clarified the identities of a couple of mystery women in the Peter LeValley family branch H, and the Prosper LeValley family.

    Progress on specific lines:

Peter>Peter Sr.
    We learned sadly that the nineteenth-century addition to the original LeValley house has been torn off.  We also learned of additional children from Stephen's second marriage, and some published history of the King family.

Peter>Peter Jr.
    We have received old pictures from Colorado.

Charles F.
    We have pushed back one more generatiion.

Prosper
    We now have the dates of Prosper's daughters.

Valcartier
    The LeVallee-LeGallee marriage has been cleared up.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2013

    The LeValley list at RootsWeb is now thirteen years old, and membership remains steady at 45.

    This year, the 1940 census indexes became available, but they told us little that we didn't already know.  More valuable were the state censuses of New York, where they kept such spotty birth, death, and marriage records.

    The Peter LeValley family were delighted to hear that the original house in West Warwick RI has been bought by people interested in restoring what is left of it.

    Other than that, this has not been a big genealogy year.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2014

    The LeValley list at RootsWeb in now fourteen years old.  There has been some coming and going, with membership lately rising to 47.

    There is not a lot of progress to report this past year.  We did find more examples of LeValley as a middle name.

    In the Peter LeValley family (line of Peter Jr.), we were able to untangle some Oklahoma records when we concluded that there were two Ida LaValleys--probably sisters-in-law.  That's the only recent breakthrough in our research.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2015

    The LeValley list at Rootsweb is fifteen years old--a milestone of some sort.  Membership is holding steady at 48 people from several apparently unrelated LeValley families.

    The only progress we have heard about this past year has been in the Peter LeValley family of Warwick RI.  Renovation of the original house has apparently stalled, with pictures of the stripped-down interior available online.  We have been contacted by a researcher on the life of Rev. Pigott (with whom Peter traded houses), and are hoping he can locate the other house in Marblehead MA where Peter lived first.  We have received a few pictures of descendants of Peter's youngest son Michael in Colorado.  And we learned more details about Michael's descendants when marriage records from Colorado and Oklahoma became available online.

    Ohio marriage records also became available at the same time, but we have no report of anyone from the Xenia LeVally/LeValley family checking them out yet.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2016

    The LeValley list at Rootsweb is sixteen years old, and is holding steady at 48 members.

    There has not been much genealogy work this year, because I have been busy moving and preparing my art history book for publication.  Ancestry has posted quite a few more marriage records, so we were able to fill in some missing dates and places.

    Peter LeValley family:  A very interesting old court case from Lockport NY is now online, and reveals hidden details about one of the LeValley women.

    I have not heard about research on other lines.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2017

The LeValley list at RootsWeb is now 17 years old, and has grown to 51 members.  Some recent people have joined without sending a letter of introduction, so we don't know where they fit in or how to help them.  Will the following please let us know who you are and what you are looking for?  We can't help you until you do.
dawndavis
dawnzeeg
davidlevalley (not the David LeValley in Silverdale WA)
ferrin
davemlev
plevalley

Work on the Peter LeValley family of Warwick RI is about to get serious.  Though new information continues to come in, I have reached age 75, and need to put nearly 50 years of research into book form.  That will probably take a couple of years.  If you have old pictures, now is the time to send them to me.

John LeValley of Warwick RI married twice, to Hester (probably Cooke) and Anne (probably Greene).  This year, we have examined Internet claims to have identified Hester's parents, and found them unconvincing.  On the other hand, some old evidence has surfaced to bolster the liklihood that Anne's maiden name really was Greene.

We have just been contacted, for the first time, by a member of the Coldwater Michigan orphanage LeValley family, who has expressed an interest in our DNA testing.

The mysterious Ace LeValley of Sullivan Co. IL has been placed in the equally mysterious George LeVally family of Nashville IL.

We have not heard from the large Xenia, Ohio LeVally/LeValley family lately.  Is anything happening there?


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2018

The LeValley list at RootsWeb is 18 years old, and has 52 members.  In January, RootsWeb shut everything down for updating.  Most parts are functioning again, but the LeValley web page is still down after five months.

I am busy preparing my notes on the Peter LeValley family of Warwick RI for publication.  (This accounts for about two-thirds of all known LeValleys in the U.S.)  I predicted it would take me two years, but I have been working at it for a year now, and I am not half done.  I can see now that it will be two volumes of about 600 pages each.  And this is only the male lines.  I still don't have a price.  When pictures are available, I will use black-and-white head shots of individuals by their vital statistics.  There will also be an 8-page color section.  If anyone has old or recent photographs of this family, please send them.  I have requested birth-marriage-death updates from all ten branches of the family, and that process is complete on three of them.  Also some old documents have surfaced, shedding light on the elusive Reuben LaValley of Oklahoma.

300 years ago, on April 21, 1718, Peter LeValley paid 20 pounds (a hefty sum) for pew 3 of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Marblehead, MA.  That is the earliest piece of documentation we have on that family.  And it was 50 years ago this summer that I began working on this project.

The LeVally/LeValley family of Xenia OH accounts for about one-sixth of all LeValleys.  We are joined by Joshua LeValley, who has found names of three more generations stretching back into southern France.  I have requested but not yet seen the supporting details; this could be a big breakthrough.  The only other LeValley family we can trace back to Europe came from the island of Alderney in the Channel Isles, and settled at Valcartier, Quebec.  Peter LeValley of RI has long been supposed to have come from the Channel Isles also,  but we have yet to find proof of it.

The remaining one-sixth of LeValleys fall into several small clusters, unrelated so far as we know.  The Coldwater Michigan orphanage group was the largest such family who had not been tested for DNA.  Now that has been done, but they don't link up to any other known LeValley family.



PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2019

The LeValley list at RootsWeb is 19 years old, and has dropped to 48 members.  That is partly because RootsWeb has failed to keep the list updated.  (I know that at least one person has joined, and at least 5 e-mail addresses no longer work.)

A year-and-a-half ago, RootsWeb shut down most of its pages for a security update.  This mailing list has sort of been restored, but the LeValley web page is still missing--despite several requests to get it back up.  Last July, I lost all patience with them, and posted much (but not all) of that information on my personal web page: www.paullevalley.com.

Work continues on the book of descendants of Peter LeValley of Warwick RI.  But it is still a couple of years from publication.  Five of the ten lines are now updated.  More DNA testing has confirmed that one of Michael LeValley's grandsons must have been adopted--and this affects many generations of his descendants.  I have found a lot of current pictures on the Internet, but still need ancestral portraits.  Please send scans if you have any.  I have gone through all 1300 LeValley references in the books at the LDS site, filling a few important gaps.  Another of Gardner LeValley's daughters has been identified, and I have traced a couple more generations of the Waverly IA LeValleys to Minnesota and California.  The 2-volume LeValley book will cost around $100.  I'm not collecting money yet, but it would be useful to know how many copies to print.  Please get back to me on how many your family need.

The small Coldwater Michigan Orphanage group of LeValleys are also starting to talk about putting their information into book form.

Meanwhile, I have not heard one word from any of the other LeValley families all year.  Is anything else happening out there?


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2020

The LeValley list at RootsWeb is now 20 years old--except we are no longer at RootsWeb.  They quit hosting e-mail groups like ours, so we had to move to https://groups.io/g/levalley.   Only 26 of our 48 people made the transition, so we are about half the size we were a year ago.

RootWeb did, however, restore our web site at http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~levalley/genealogy/.  They had it down for more than two years.

So far, I am not aware of any LeValleys or LeValley researchers who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.  That will surely change.  Yet having all interruptions shut down has enabled me to work full-time on laying out the Peter LeValley family history book, moving faster than expected.  I have reached the halfway point--with one volume (688 pages) finished, and one to go.  If I can continue at this speed, I hope to send the manuscript to the publisher at the end of summer, and have books ready to purchase as Christmas gifts.  The price has gone up since the last estimate--around $125 for the 2-volume set.  I don't need money now, but I do need an accurate count of how many to order.  Let me know how many your family needs.  (If you are from a different LeValley family, you of course don't need any.)

I have heard nothing about progress in the other LeValley families.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1, 2021

The LeValley group that started at RootsWeb is now 21 years old, and we have 28 active members.  We are still not aware of any LeValleys who died because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The big news this year was the 2020 publication of the two-volume book, The LeValleys of Monteagle: Descendants of Peter LeValley of Warwick, Rhode Island.  100 copies were printed; 14 remain unsold.  Heaviest buyers were from family branches B, F, and G.  Copies have been placed in these libraries: Rhode Island Historical Society Library, The Pawtuxett Valley (RI) Library, the Niagara County (NY) Historian's office.  Because they insist on electronic reproduction rights, the Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City will not receive the book until all other copies are sold.

Almost as exciting, an Internet genealogy has appeared, showing that the Coldwater Michigan orphanage group descends from the well-documented LaVallee (not LeValley) family of Sorel, Quebec.  If this checks out, they may be leaving us and joining their closer relatives.

Rhonda Schrader of the Xenia OH LeVally/LeValley family, writes that she has discovered black ancestry for Elizabeth Smith, matriarch of that line.  I have not seen any proof.

We have heard no news from other LeValley families, but this may be enough excitement for one year.


PROGRESS REPORT--JUNE 1 2022

The LeValley group that started at RootsWeb is 22 years old, and has increased to 31 members.

Because so many people died (not of coronavirus) during the year after the two-volume Peter LeValley family history was published, I sent an annual supplement to those who had bought the book.  I plan to continue doing that as long as I am able.  Eight copies of the book remain unsold.

Rev. Peter LeValley Spencer, who possessed many of the early family documents, has died recently.  He was always eager to share the information.  One of his sons is interested in the history, so the records will be safe for another generation.  The important ones were published in the LeValley history book.  Many of the hand-written originals can currently be viewed at https://carrlevalleyhouse.com, though the unrelated family who posted them will surely not pay to keep them there forever.

Things have been very quiet in all other LeValley families this year.


PROGRESS REPORT--June 1, 2023

The LeValley group that started at RootsWeb 23 years ago has grown to 33 members.  New people include a member of the small Joseph LeValley family of Ionia, Michigan.

LeValleys in the 1950 census have been sorted and posted at http://www.paullevalley.com/Genealogy/2bn-1950census.html.  Unidentified LeValleys are listed at http://www.paullevalley.com/Genealogy/2b-mys-census.html.  (A few are marked X? because every sign points to them being part of the Xenia Ohio LeValley/LeVally family.)  If you can identify even one of those names from 1950 or earlier, please let me know.

Only three copies of the Peter LeValley family history remain unsold.  I issued a second annual supplement, including a list of recent books by LeValley authors.  A treasure-trove of old pictures from Dayton IA (Branch G) has recently arrived.  The LeValley ranch near Hotchkiss CO (Branch H) has recently received a lot of publicity since winning the Aldo Leopold conservation award.  Gary LaValley and Jimmy LaValley, my two main sources on Branch I of Oklahoma, have both died.

If anything is happening in the other LeValley families, word has not reached me.