Is Francois Savoie really the son of Tomaso?

Private User Thank you for providing clarification.

I asked one of my italian friends to provide a proper translation of the letter, and this was her result;

"as those gentlemen haven't so far worked on anything but giving me all the pleasures that it's customary to offer to princes visiting this city, so (last) Sunday it was arranged a regatta of boats on the Canal Grande with delightful liveries and yesterday a beautiful party with 100 ladies with dispensation from the rules, and this morning a banquet for me at the two castles with the entertainment of sea-fishing, having received earlier the visit of His Lordship showing me great honor and courtesy with actions and words that still confound me as I'm informing Your Authority, who will surely know I'm leaving for Padua tomorrow morning, hence to Ferrara, having in mind to be in Bologna on Saturday night to keep on traveling".

Thomas mentions a party with 100 beautiful ladies with dispensation from the rules. No idea what those rules might have been, but we can imagine they would commensurate with catering to his every princely need.

Better than Google Translate, at least, but you should have let said friend have a look at the broader context. They made some guesses at the initials based on what little *they* knew, and were not able to make the same kind of identifications that I did.

"delightful liveries" still doesn't make sense within the given context, so I think it's either an idiom or in a dialect (Venetian? Piedmontese? Savoyard?) that defies direct translation.

"dispensa dalla pragmatica" is slippery (another idiom?) and may perhaps better be translated "exemption from the customs" (if, that is, it doesn't mean "sparing no expense"). Venice had some fairly hard-and-fast customs as to who could wear what, or do what, or go where, under which circumstances, the majority of which were for distinguishing noblewomen from the "cortigiane oneste", the high-class and very expensive courtesans for which Venice was still very well known. Whether the "cento dame" were from the one class, the other, or both, is not clear from the context.

Note that Joseph Bolton at the beginning of this discussion claims there is no DNA evidence proving or disproving François Savoie is the son of Tomasso di Savoia. This is incorrect and he's been told that a number of times in the now closed discussion. We have several direct male line descendants of François Savoie who have tested R1b, as documented on Denis Beauregard's site. On FamilyTreeDNA, we have one person, a direct male line descendant of Tomasso who tested E-3B. Bolton ignores this. Mary Lewis Despres dismisses it as unproven. However, the Italian DNA Project only accepts DNA evidence from people with proven documented lines, which they have. Mary was given the email addresses of the individuals who manage the project. She went crickets. I'll also note that for months Mary pursued a very flawed and invalid atDNA approach in an attempt to prove François Savoie was the son of Tomasso di Savoia. In the end, she openly admitted/acknowledged that it was wrong and abandoned that approach. However, months later, she again pursued it. Aside from that, to do her triangulation, she was using Geni trees which were grossly incomplete, had numerous errors, and in at least one case, outright fraud. Erica Howton and I spent countless hours pointing out these errors, the bogus trees, and even the fraud in one tree she was using. Her own tree is not complete even within 5 generations. The amount of time that was wasted pursuing this fantasy by her and disproving by the rest of us was a colossal. Then, for months she pursued the Giacento Savoia did not really at the age of 6, his tomb is empty, and he's really Francois Savoie. She went so far as to put together highly produced YouTube videos making her case. The many gullible fell for it. But serious genealogists recognized it for the fraud it was. Imagine the insanity of claiming to use facial recognition on PAINTINGS!!! Just nuts, bonkers nuts. But hold on.... in the past few weeks, on familysearch.org, where she goes by the alias foxyblvd, she now admits this was all wrong, and that she has removed her YouTube videos. Another colossal waste of time by her and the community. And it hasn't stopped. On Wikipedia, there were recent attempts to identify François Savoie as the son of Tomasso di Savoia. It was done by an alias Ggt381, who presented the "Sally Hemming" straw man analogy argument. Does that sound familiar to those of you involved in this discussion for the past 5 years? Its beyond obvious who this person is. Geni has shown tremendous restraint on this subject over the many years. However, they finally recognized the dishonest trolling being done by a few. They did the right thing by shutting down Mary Despres Lewis and a few others here. She has also been told to go away at Wikitree and is now trolling familysearch.org. Also, another person with a one week old account here and present in this discussion above is also trolling that familysearch page and "his" UID is only a week old there also. My suggestion to Maven and Erica is to just ban them all. Its beyond obvious they are not interested in facts/truth but simply bullying a preferred myth on the rest of us who are descendants of François Savoie. They are discouraging/dissuading serious genealogists and truthseekers from engaging here. Here's the link to the trolling on familysearch. Just look through the change log to see the obvious trolling and vandalism of that page. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/LHXQ-QBY

Not being a Curator or any kind of Geni staff, I can't ban. but I can (and will) ignore.

My apologies Maven. No idea why I thought that!. But, I still appreciate. your contributions in this discussion.

Turns out Mary's latest theory based on a letter about parties in Rome thought to be written by Tomasso di Savoia was really written by Francesco d'Este, a distant relative, per an Italian heritage expert on familysearch. This theory seems to have had the shortest half-life of all the theories presented thus far.

Thanks Erica. The source she calls a "manuscript" is actually Gallica, produced by the BNF. The document in Gallica is "Histoire généalogique de la royale maison de Savoie, justifiée par titres, fondations de monastères, manuscrits, anciens monuments, histoires et autres preuves authentiques. Livres 1-2 / ; enrichie de plusieurs portraits, sceaux, monnaies, sculptures et armoiries. Par Samuel Guichenon,... Guichenon, Samuel (1607-1664). Auteur du texte. Despite Mary's attempt to be dismissive of it, it is a very contemporary, extremely well sourced biography of the Savoie family. And BnF is the Bibliotheque Nationale de France's digital library. That in itself gives it credibility as a source.

I forgot to include the link to Gallica. It really is an excellent resource. Here's the specific link to Mary's Prince that didn't really die: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5774406q/f954.item

btw, they've been vandalizing the Wikipedia entries also. One justifies the change because of the "Sally Hemming" theory on Geni. Doesn't that argument sound familiar? Trolls abound.

Erica, exactly. But to Mary, Guichenon has no credibility. His work is heresay and poorly sourced. Guichenon wrote about the Giacinto less than 50 years after his death. I'm guessing his account is pretty accurate, especially since the Biliotheque Nationale de France chose to include it in their digital library.

How can one say he had no credibility?? ----->. Also in 1650 he was made dynastic historian to the House of Savoy (then under the regency of Christine of France until her son Charles Emmanuel II came of age) and to write a History of the Estates of Savoy he moved to Turin. In 1651 he was made a count palatine by Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor - he was also a knight of the Holy Roman Empire.[2].

In the end, trolls will be trolls. And you still have a few under different UIDs in this discussion.

btw Erica, what is Geni's policy regarding trolling? and regarding people who have agendas that aren't consistent with genealogy done honestly and with integrity?

Per Geni's Terms of Use Agreement, Para 8, prohibits:

"promotes information that you know is false or misleading". That's probably been proven/demonstrated dozens of times in this and the other discussion. The Youtube videos themselves are ample evidence.

If you find it of value, can you include this bit of research I did on Savoie's in the Aulnay/Loudon area in the profile: François' birth record has not been found. However, a search of the indexed parish registers in the immediate vicinity of these villages show 43 baptism, marriages, or burials of a "Savoie" between the years 1600 and 1650 demonstrating that the surname was not uncommon in that region.

Joseph Bolton asks, "What is an expert?" An expert is someone like Lucie Leblanc Consentino, probably the most well-known American Acadian genealogist who has contributed more than anyone I know to Acadian genealogy other than the Canadian Stephen White. Here's what she has to say about Joseph Bolton and Mary Despres Lewis' claims. Read the last line of her post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AcadianFrenchCanadianGenealogy/post...

Also, you were told years ago your Indian Princess theory about Catherine LeJeune was a fraud. The evidence is overwhelming the theory is a fraud. Not a single credible genealogist dares claim its even possible anymore. Yet, your website still claims she is an Indian Princess. You never corrected it, refuse to revise it. You're not interested in legitimate genealogy. Not at all.

I found a telegraph transcript from the late 1800's which mentions a birth record found in Rome for an unregistered son of a prince Thomas. Although the description is vague and lacking specific details such as name, surname, and date of birth. I'm curious to know if this could be in reference to Thomas Savoy.

Private User
Would you be so kind as to take a look at this and let me know if there's some context I might be missing?

https://archive.org/details/GV1884-05/page/n103/mode/2up?q=Tomaso

Nope, it's got nothing to do with Tommaso di Savoia. By the 1880s the Savoys were Kings of Italy, and that *would* have been mentioned.

Italy has always had "princes" in much the same way as Kentucky has Colonels.

Private User

I suppose my preliminary inclination stemmed from the mention of Thomas Savoy's father, Carlo Emanuele I, in a latter section of the book.
This type of research generally falls outside of my area of expertise. My proficiency serves more within the scientific arena. I appreciate your clarification, and I hope you don't mind if I seek your assistance again, in the future.

Mary has a new theory on family search… she now claims that the parents of Francois are Francois Savary and Johanne Provost from France as she says that she has a dna match on a Savary and somehow connected everything up to conclude that these are more than likely Francois Savoie’s parents. Interestingly she has abandoned the royal lineage theories that she has pushed for so long.
Thoughts?

Mary’s sources:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6MTK-JTMM
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6MTK-JTW2

If it is based on autosomal DNA then it is worthless as prove at this moment if only based on one DNA match. It could be a pointer/hypophysis but someone has to find at least many more DNA samples of different people on both sides to get more of an indication that the corresponding fragments come from Francois Savary or Johanna Provost.
If based on Y-DNA then we still need more information of what kind of match it is.
We have done the DNA discussion many times. We seem to be repeating it again for another match, for which we have no information what kind of a match it is.

Agreed. Mary just keeps coming up with new theories all the time.

Mary Despres tree is grossly incomplete. And the parts of her tree that are complete are fraught with errors. We spent weeks with her going through dozens and dozens of serious errors with her. We pleaded with her to accurately complete her tree before even attempting to do any type of DNA analysis. As Hubert de Vos stated, without a complete tree, you have no idea which ancestor the match comes from. For Mary, Francois Savoie is 8 generations away. Francois' parents 9 generations. That's 512 possible direct line candidates. She won't do the work.