Louis Vendryes (1759-1820), son of Jean-Baptiste (1736-1797), was working for the French Admiralty in St Domingue (Haiti) at the time of their Revolution. In 1820 he left for Jamaica, where he had already secured his family (c1795) and died that same year. Louis was the only child of his mother (nee Faucault d1759)  but had ten half-siblings by his father's second wife (nee Caurault). Three of these children died in infancy, leaving four sisters and three brothers. At least one of Louis' brothers, Barthélemy, visited Jamaica.

Louis married Marie Jacqueline Antoinette Adam (1770-1830) in 1788 in Port-au-Prince and they had seven(?) children including Pierre Charles Marie Henry (1798-1859), the first of the family to be born in Jamaica. Henry married Anne-Marie Maxime Seychoires in 1818 and they had Eulalie, Luce, Louis, Henri, Lilia, Cirée (Sr. Sacre Coeur), Ivanhoe and Ernest.

Many of the French blancs who escaped from Haiti during their revolution came to Jamaica where they intermarried so that it is fair to say that any Jamaican who descends from one of these families can also probably claim the others in their family tree.

Pierre Maximilien Henri Lovensky Vendryes (1824-1907) married Marie Josephine duVerger (1826-1894), the daughter of another Haitian émigré family, in 1844. It is the descendants of Henry and Josephine that this website chronicles.

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Pierre Maximilien Henri Lovensky Vendryes

Marie Josephine Vendryes nee duVerger

 

Josephine: How the fashionable young lady dressed in the mid nineteenth century

 

France, Visscher c1720

West Indies, Kitchen & Robertson 1778

Jamaica Thompson 1814

Henry and Josephine had seven children: Paul Emile, Marie Charles, Arthur Louis, Marie Josephine (Mimi), Marie Beatrice Elise, Marie Irene, Louis Horace and Phillippe Camille.

There is no record of who Emile married, if indeed he did marry. Charles married Emma Branday and had six children: Charles, Isabella, Vincent, William, Helena and Bernard. Arthur married Esther Levy and had five children: Blanche, Henry, Edmund, Ione and Arthur. Josephine "Mimi" married Harry Wilson and had a daughter Beatrice. Horace married Fanny Gutzmer and had Cecil, Louise and Horace. Irene married John William Branday, the brother of Charles' wife, and had three daughters. Camille married Bertie Bold Baylis and had Vida, Bertie, Leonie, Philip, Harry, Joseph and Winifred.

Marie Beatrice Elise (1866-1939) married Robert William Bryant (1865-1946). They had six children: Marie Evelyn Jessie, Marie Estelle Louise, twins Marie Gertrude Elise and Marie Muriel Josephine, baby Marie Ida Isabel who died in infancy, and then two boys Henry Robert (Bobs) and Frank William (Frankie).

In the first years of the twentieth century Arthur Sr. and Esther died of illness. 14 year old Blanche, 9 year old Ione and little Arthur went to live with their Aunt Elise. Henry and Edmund, who were teenagers, went to live with a maternal uncle in the United States.