How the story began

At the beginning of the 21st century, according to the French telephone directory (and other reliable sources), there were about one hundred families with the name Cavey in France. This means, if we assume that there are two children for each family and one wife, that there were four hundred Caveys at most. Click here to see how many and where did Caveys live in France.

In 2000, seventy-five per cent of them live in Basse-Normandie and more precisely in three departments: Calvados, Manche and a little less in Orne. The other Cavey's, living in the whole of France, come from Normandy through at least one of their parents.

We only know this because my father decided in the 1970s to build our family tree

The first way to do this is to look for the date of birth of our parents, grandparents and so on, through the civil registers.

• This is relatively easy since Francis I (1515-1547) promulgated the Ordonnance of Villers-Cotterêts (between 10 and 25 August 1539). Entitled "Ordonnance générale sur le fait de la justice, police et finances", this act, registered at the Parliament of Paris on 6 September 1539, obliges the clergy to keep registers of births, marriages and deaths in France (this act also orders the use of French instead of Latin in official documents, but not in the civil status) Since the French Revolution (1789-1794) these registers have been kept by the mayors of the communes. Before the "Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts", there was no official provision for keeping registers of births, marriages and deaths so the only way to trace our ancestors is to consult notarial acts, marriage publications, deeds of sale or inheritances. These documents can sometimes be found, but they require a good knowledge of Old French or Low Latin.

• This is sometimes difficult because of the damage caused during the two world wars, especially (in the case of the Cavey's) in Normandy, as many of these records were destroyed in the fires caused by the aerial bombardment of the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

So my father went back in time, from one registry to another, to the origins of our family. He spent a lot of time (and money) doing this, but since then he has been able to tell every Cavey living in France where he came from and who his parents or relatives were.

For my part, I decided to help my father and look in the hotel phone books for Caveys when I was travelling in France or abroad.

Once, when I was in San-Francisco for work (June 1980), I opened the hotel directory and discovered that there were a large number of Caveys living there (around ten). Many more than in Paris (where I was at the time the only Cavey present). I did the same thing in Los Angeles and I also discovered many Caveys (around twelve). Another year (1985), I went to New York and, this time, I found twenty Caveys in the directory!

I was wondering "what about the Caveys in the UK"?

One day I decided to go to the central post office in Paris (rue du Louvre) where I was sure to find the UK directory. I discovered extremely numerous Caveys in Great Southern Britain, especially in England (Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex) even if I found some Caveys in Liverpool, Glasgow, or elsewhere.

What I wanted to know was: "Did the French Caveys come from England or did they go the other way?

It was for this reason that in June 1997 I decided to build a website to try to share my Father's knowledge of our family name with anyone interested. I would have been very happy if I could have made contact with a dozen Caveys in the UK...

The result was to be beyond my expectations.