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Goree family
Posted by Jonathan Rogers Clark <AinoArt@aol.com> on Fri, 27 May 2005, in response to GOREE ISLAND, posted by ROY CAMPBELL on Tue, 21 Oct 2003
Greetings! My great grandmother Mary Angeline Goree was the daughter of the only son of the Honorable L.F. Goree and his FIRST wife, who was a french aristocrat. She died soon after reaching Alabama. They came to Alabama from Charleston, SC, where the Goree family had lived with other French Huguenots who escaped from France during their revolution of 1789.
They were close to the King of France for hundreds of years even though he was Catholic. The story in my family is that La Goree protected the King, and once saved his life. The Goree family was rewarded by the gift of what is now called the Island of Goree; they had it before the slavery days when it was expensive spices coming through the port from the mainland.
Second sons were sent to the island to supervise the ships and the family became rich from docking fees from shipments
and may have owned a few trade ships themselves. Supposedly we loaned the king gold when he needed it. which was often then. When the revolution started, Goree wanted to get the royal family out of their palace in a haywagon and the queen refused to leave that way and they were all killed
later. Goree rode the wagon out himself throwing jewels to the guards at the gate to let them pass. Then they came to America, Charleston, S.C.; 1790s. Then around 1810 they came to Alabama in wagons.They pioneered that area, naming their plantation Cold Springs. Their neighbors were the Rogers family, whose family plantation is Spiegners.
My great great grandfather was Jonathan Rountree Rogers, and he arranged the marriage of his first son Jonathan, my greatgrandfather to Molly Goree. He came to Birmingham to run the coal mines. They had one son, my grandfather Claude Jonathan Rogers. His second daughter my mother is Agnes Rogers Clark. I'm the last of the pure french Goree family
though LF Goree married again in Alabama and had several Goree children.
The really ancient origins of the Goree family are very interesting and they go back almost 800 years in France.
Napoleon died in 1821 and the Goree were already here by then.
happy to share info about the Goree family.
Best wishes! Jonathan
(I am an artist using the name Claude Goree on some of my paintings.)
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