Winston De Ville (born August 8, 1937) is an American historian focusing on colonial Mississippi Valley/provincial Louisiana genealogy and history.
According to scholar P. William Filby, "By far, Winston De Ville is the earliest of Louisiana's prolific genealogical writers... I can think of few genealogical authors with so many works to their names... as important to the historian as to the genealogist... [His] quality productivity in so few years is remarkable."
De Ville was born 8 August 1937 in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana, son of Dalvis Joseph De Ville and Olevia Marie Johnson. In 1959 he was graduated magna cum laude from Louisiana College with majors in Piano and French and minors in organ and journalism. He received his master's degree in history from Louisiana State University in 1965.
An author, publisher, translator, and archivist, De Ville has been recognized by the state of Louisiana for his 1961 volunteer effort to create the first guide to materials at the Louisiana State Archives.
In 1970, De Ville was inducted as a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists, an organization limited to fifty members worldwide, selected on the basis of quantity and quality of published works. [1] De Ville appeared in the Marquis' Who's Who in America in 1998. He is a member of Mexico's Academia Mexicana de Genealogía y Heráldica.
Beginning in 1976, De Ville was often called upon as a consultant in court cases involving genealogical and historical evidence. Among his clients were the State of Louisiana and the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division.
In 1977, he was elected founding president of Friends of Louisiana Archives; that organization's vigorous campaign resulted in the state's first archives building.
Publications include approximately 100 monographs and over 300 articles published in leading academic journals throughout the United States. The third edition of Winston De Ville: A Bibliography of Genealogical and Other Writings is due in 2017.
Archives of De Ville's papers (dating from 1944) were begun in 1991 at Louisiana State University; additions are made regularly.
For many years De Ville owned Polyanthos, Inc., and Provincial Press, which produced many genealogical and historical publications.
In 2014, he was named a Penrose Associate of the American Philosophical Society.
Today, he resides in Opelousas, Louisiana.
Genealogy is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members. The results are often displayed in charts or written as narratives. The field of family history is broader than genealogy, and covers not just lineage but also family and community history and biography.
Evangeline Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 32,350. The parish seat is Ville Platte.
Herbert Eugene Bolton was an American historian who pioneered the study of the Spanish-American borderlands and was a prominent authority on Spanish American history. He originated what became known as the Bolton Theory of the history of the Americas which holds that it is impossible to study the history of the United States in isolation from the histories of other American nations, and wrote or co-authored ninety-four works. A student of Frederick Jackson Turner, Bolton disagreed with his mentor's Frontier theory and argued that the history of the Americas is best understood by taking a holistic view and trying to understand the ways that the different colonial and precolonial contexts have interacted to produce the modern United States. The height of his career was spent at the University of California, Berkeley where he served as chair of the history department for twenty-two years and is widely credited with making the renowned Bancroft Library the preeminent research center it is today.
The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society is a non-profit institution located at 36 West 44th Street in New York City. Founded in 1869, it is the second-oldest genealogical society in the United States, and the only statewide genealogical society in New York state. Its purpose is to collect and make available information on genealogy, biography, and history, particularly in relation to New Yorkers. The Society also publishes periodicals and books, conducts educational programs, maintains a Committee on Heraldry, and offers other services.
(John) Horace Round was an historian and genealogist of the English medieval period. He translated the portion of Domesday Book (1086) covering Essex into English. As an expert in the history of the British peerage, he was appointed honorary historical adviser to the Crown.
Donald Lines Jacobus, FASG (1887-1970) of New Haven, Connecticut, is widely regarded among genealogists as the dean of American genealogy.
The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is the oldest and largest genealogical society in the United States, founded in 1845.
Emily Wilder Leavitt (1836–1921) of Boston, Massachusetts, who doubled as an historian and professional genealogist, was one of the first female members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Daughter of an acting mayor of Boston, Miss Leavitt managed to make a living writing the histories of early New England families, compelling her to scour the region's early records.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall was an American historian who focused on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, Louisiana, Africa, and the African Diaspora in the Americas. Discovering extensive French and Spanish colonial documents related to the slave trade in Louisiana, she wrote Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1992), studied the ethnic origins of enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana, as well as the process of creolization, which created new cultures. She changed the way in which several related disciplines are researched and taught, adding to scholarly understanding of the diverse origins of cultures throughout the Americas.
The South Carolina Historical Society is a private, non-profit organization founded in 1855 to preserve South Carolina's rich historical legacy. The SCHS is the state's oldest and largest private repository of books, letters, journals, maps, drawings, and photographs about South Carolina's history.
North Louisiana History is an academic journal published twice annually in Shreveport, Louisiana by the North Louisiana Historical Association (NLHA).
The Mississippi Historical Society (MHS) is a historical society located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The society was established in 1858 but was terminated soon after because of the outbreak of the American Civil War. It remained in hiatus until 1890, after which it published extensively over the next 35 years and helped establish the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1902. After a second protracted hiatus from 1925 until 1952, the society re-emerged and has remained in continuous operation ever since.
William Henry Whitmore was a Boston businessman, politician and genealogist.
George Andrews Moriarty Jr. (1883–1968), called G. Andrews Moriarty in most of his published work, was an American genealogist from Newport, Rhode Island. He was born in Newport on February 14, 1883, the only son of George Andrews Moriarty and Mary Ann Sheffield. His ancestor, John Moriarty, emigrated from Ireland in 1777 and settled in Salem, Massachusetts. George attended St. George's School in Newport, and then did his undergraduate work at Harvard University where he earned an A.B. in 1905, cum laude. He then attended Christ Church College in Oxford, England where he specialized in historical studies, following which he returned to Harvard to earn an M.A. in 1907.
Malcolm Henry Stern was an American rabbi, historian, and genealogist. Through the work he did that supported secular genealogical communities and resources, as well as created what is the structure and backbone of current Jewish genealogical societies, Stern's efforts created long-lasting, far-reaching cooperative organizations. For these reasons, Stern has been described as the dean of American Jewish genealogy.
Jewish Roots in Poland: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories is a book created by genealogist Miriam Weiner and co-published by The Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. A searchable database of updated archival holdings listed in the book is available in the Archive Database on the Routes to Roots Foundation website.
Dutchess County Historical Society, located in Poughkeepsie, New York, was formed in Pleasant Valley, New York May 26, 1914 and received its Charter from the Regents of the University of the State of New York in 1918. Its mission is to discover, preserve and share the local area's history and artifacts from the time of its earliest people to the present.
Sever Ioan Zotta was a Romanian archivist, genealogist, historian and publicist, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy.
Roland C. McConnell (1910-2007) was a Canadian-born American archivist, historian and author.
Lawrence Park was an American art historian, architect, and genealogist who authored pioneering critical and biographical studies of portrait painters Gilbert Stuart, Joseph Badger, and Joseph Blackburn, active during the colonial and early federal periods of the United States. Park's four-volume treatise on Stuart was published posthumously in 1926. Park's papers are held at the Winterthur Library and the Frick Art Reference Library.