The root of all that’s Dorsey
Found my ancestor on the Bayeux Tapestry. How about that?
Hours of painstaking research (three of them) have got me a little bit closer to being actually able to actually look in the face of an actual person and actually thank him, actually, sincerely, for the use of the name “Dorsey”. This epic hunt for the owner of the name’s copyright will not cease until he is pried from his coffin and showered with ululations while I dance around his grave waving his bones in the air.
And what a scene for the Discovery Channel, right?
The search goes on and on and on for three specific reasons:
* My inability to decide between a dark-haired Gaelic fellow called O’Dorchaidhe and some Frenchman from a place called Arcy.
* My inability to find Arcy in France, even though every genealogist in the world seems to know where it is.
* My inability to pronounce “O’Dorchaidhe”.
Here are the results so far of my climbing family trees and rooting for the family, as it were, beneath them:
THEORY ONE: The French Connection
Dorsey is an English name, but of Norman origin, stemming from “de (from) Orsay”, which one of the Buy-Your-Possibly-Authentic-Family-Crest-Here websites swears is “in Seine-et-Orne, France”. To another, it’s “the name of a place in La Manche, Normandy”. This latter Arcy was known to the Romans and right up to the 13th century as Orceiacum, “from the Latin personal name Orcius + the locative suffix -acum”.
(* Bit of an update at the bottom of the post.)
(So maybe it’s this Orcius chap I’m ultimately looking for. At the moment, though, he’s busy on the cyberphone with wrong numbers — calls for Orcius the domain-hosting service, a European football club, the centaur in CS Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, a character in some game called Tides of Blood and people asking about an ostensibly backward tribe known as the Shakor Clan for whom “the Orcius” is the life force inherited at birth that floats off when we die to seek a new vessel. Orcius the Roman says he’ll have to get back to us later.)
Another website insists that the original French seat of the D’Arcy family is a chateau about 30 miles northwest of Paris. It says the first bloke to call himself D’Arcy was David D’Arcy, a knight, no less, pre-Norman Conquest, and his son Christopher “is supposed to have been a crusader”. It was Chris’ son Richard who, with William the Conqueror, pioneered British tourism in 1066.
Burke’s Peerage names this one, Sir Richard D’Arcy, as the founder of the English and Irish branches of the D’Arcy family. One of his offspring, Sir John D’Arcy, was named Lord Chief Justice of Ireland by Edward II in 1328. There, John married Lady Jane Burke, daughter of the Earl of Ulster, and the Irish D’Arcy line was sown, from which, it could be extrapolated, sprang the Manchester Dorseys — of which I’m one.
Sir John’s son Willim got the family ball rolling in County Meath, and a “remote descendant” named James (Riveagh) D’Arcy did likewise in Connaught, where he was appointed chief magistrate of Galway town by Elizabeth I. James’ boy Martin D’Arcy had a handle on things in County Clare and another, Anthony, decided life was better back in France after all.
Then, through the magic of civil war, all the D’Arcy properties in Galway were snatched away. Lord Clanrickard seized the town in the Cromwellian uprising of 1641-49. In fact, all but one of the heads of the clan’s branches were muscled aside by Protestants, becoming poor tenants to English absentee owners.
Since they had nothing left to bequeath, they left no wills, and since Catholicism was crushed, there was no parish register left unburnt.
The family pretty much vanished from official history about 1700, but of course we were laying low the whole time in a sleazy hotel in Belfast or someplace, breeding up a comeback.
THEORY TWO: Make mine Irish
A genealogist named Hart supposedly claimed that a Gaelic Dorsey family “sprang up” in Connaught in the early 1300s, the name amounting to an English scribe’s anglicisation of “O’Dorchaide”, which means “son of the dark-haired man” (dorcha means “dark”). My father was dark-haired, but we’ve never been known to spring up, certainly not in the morning.
Other professional family-skeleton friskers doubt, though, that there was a blood relation between the D’Arcys of Counties Galway, Mayo and Clare and the Anglo-Norman D’Arcys of Counties Meath and Westmeath, even though both clans had the same coat of arms and were registered with the Ulster King of Arms as one family. In Galway, evidently, was a family seat dating to “ancient times”.
Here’s a photo of it.
WHAT, THAT’S IT?
Yes. Due to global economic woes, I am prevented from investing any actual money in this genealogical sleuthing and must instead stoop to jokes from antiquity. However, I have also assembled the following sub-fascinating facts:
* Variations on the name include Dorcey, Dorcy, Darsy, Darcey, O’Dorcey and MacDarcy.
* An Edward Dorsey migrated to Virginia in 1646.
* Jane Austen named a bizarre central character D’Arcy in “Pride and Prejudice”.
* A few years ago, one Kyle Dorsey asked in the Genealogy.com forum for help locating the Dorsey family crest. “I have heard that there are different versions of the family crest,” he said. “I believe it to have four clovers and a nude woman on it.” Much to my dismay, no one ever responded.
* Residents of Orsay are called Orcéens.
* There’s supposed to be a town called Orsay in Kleve, Germany. But Kleve itself is a town, famous for its Schwanenburg Castle, which has been falling down and getting rebuilt since the 11th century, the most recent falling down attributable to Allied bombs and the most recent reconstruction completed in 1953. That was the year I was born, but even I think a possible link there would be a stretch.
I can’t find any Orsay in Kleve, unless the town has one of the ubiquitous boutiques for Orsay womenswear, a massive German brand.
* Dorsey is rare as a male first name, ranking 1,216th out of 1,219 for males of all ages in the 1990 US census. It is, however, astonishingly high on the charts as a surname — 604th out of 88,799, all ages in the same US head count.
* In the American Civil War, a Lt Col Dorsey of the 5th Regiment carried a gigantic Maryland flag into battle bearing the state’s coat of arms.
This little tangent into the War Between the States has other aspects to it that together add up to satisfying compensation for not getting far with the European Dorseys. More on that in another post after I answer some urgent phonecalls from lawyers representing the Buy-Your-Possibly-Authentic-Family-Crest-Here websites.
While I’m doing that, here’s a riveting, misspelling-intact, 2004 exchange from the members’ forum at WorldReference.com:
winniehouston: What does ‘orsay’ mean in French?
Rob625: Winnie, if you have several questions, it is better to ask them all in one post, please. I don’t know “orsay” except as a name, le Quai d’Orsai. That is a part of Paris, where there is a huge art gallery in what used to be a railway station.
fetchezlavache: ps orsay doesn’t mean anything!!!
valerie: Orsay is also a village in the south of Paris, which has a very known university (especailly for science, if I’m not wrong) There is also le musée d’Orsay, build in a former trainstation in Paris, and which is one of the most beautiful one there. It contains works (painting and statues) from 19th century, Le quai d’Orsay, actually not far away from the musée d’Orsay, is the place where the Frnch ministry for Foreign affairs is sitted
PhM: Orsay is a name, name of an old french family, of a little city near Paris, a station in Paris, now a museum close the Seine and a quay in Paris where is the criminal investigation departement (police judiciaire or PJ)
BERNIER: sorry… The judiciary police head-quarter “police judiciaire” or “la PJ” is “le Quai des Orfèvres” in the “Prefecture de Paris” quarter (right bank of the Seine river) while “le Quai d’Orsay” refers to the ministry of foreign affairs (left bank, this one).
Right, let’s dispense with this Quai d’Orsay business. It’s got so little to do with me that I’m going to give it only three, no, four paragraphs.
The Quai d’Orsay is both the address and the nickname of France’s Foreign Affairs Ministry. The photo shows it swaddled in a traffic jam that would make Bangkok proud.
Close enough to land a good old-fashioned Gallic spit on is the Musée d’Orsay, which doesn’t mean “amusing Dorsey” at all, much to my surprise.
This is the art museum that François Mitterrand hammered together in 1986, inside an old train station. Many venerable Paris art institutions yielded parts or all of their collections to fill the Musée d’Orsay and now, like the Louvre, the museum is thinking of sending a lot of the artwork on tour to China and the Middle East where the big money is.
The quay itself on the Seine took a century to build, starting in 1708. Before they realised it would be a fabulous place for a railway, it was the site of cavalry barracks and the Palais d’Orsay, which was supposed to house the Foreign Ministry but instead got lesser bureaucracy. I’m guessing it was the tax office, because in 1871 angry delegates of the Paris Commune burned them both down.
No one did anything with the ruins until the 1900 World Fair, when the government realised that if it built a railroad, Ernest Hemingway would come. My close, personal friend Orson Welles came too, using the train station for his film version of Kafka’s “The Trial”.
So that’s the Dorsey saga so far. The next chapter is about how the Dorseys won and lost the US Civil War, and then I’m going to build a new family coat of arms!
* One of the “buy-your-crest-here” websites, namely 4crests.com, sheds a little more light on the early Dorsey roots, saying the surname was originally the Middle English word for the home — in England — of someone who came from de Orsay in Seine-et-Orne.
“The name was rendered in ancient documents in the Latin form Orceiacum, and was brought into England in the wake of the Norman Invasion of 1066. The earliest of the name on record appears to be William Dorsy, who was documented in Yorkshire in the year 1200, and Roger de Dorsey was documented in 1279 in Yorkshire.
“It was not until the 10th century that modern hereditary surnames first developed, and the use of fixed names spread, first to France, and then England … Thus hereditary names as we know them today developed gradually during the 11th to the 15th century.”
Dorsey as a male name is indeed rare but I used to go out with a fellow whose little brother was called Dorsey. I always wondered why Dorsey and not Darcey but after reading the above post, I guess maybe he was named after some ancestor as both parents were of Irish descent. Say, maybe he’s related to you!!!!!
It’s one name that’s never taken in vain!
I think.
Hi there.
THe place in France is actually Arci not Arcy. I know it is/was in Normandy and that’s about it…
Oh wait, it MIGHT actually be ‘Arci-sur-something’ or something similar to that.
Hi Paul — great name, by the way — surely you ought to know where you came from? Try and think back.
Well, I’m from Dublin, Ireland. I’m 99.9999% sure we’re of the Norman stock as opposed to the name that originated in Ireland.
I’ve just realised that your first name is Paul and you appear to work for The Nation, which is a little bit scary as I’ve taken a couple of years out from my boring job to study journalism… CUE TWILIGHT ZONE MUSIC
If you check the photos of me that appear in various guises elsewhere in the “About Dorsey” category and they look just like you, I may freak out.
Attention Paul D`Arcy.
Any connection to Matthew Peterr 1860s
Married Christina Daly,of Castle Daly Galway
Regards Colm
Correction;
Insert the name “D`Arcy” after Peter.
He was Member of Parliament for Wexford.
Hi Colm,
I don’t think there’s any connection there - as far as I’m aware.
I intend to conduct a thorough investigation into my family history at some point soon; send me an email with the question and if I ever do find a link, I’ll get back to you.
My email address is pauldarcy@eircom.net
the aforementioned lt.col. dorsey of the civil war from maryland is named ezekiel dorsey, fighter for the confederacy, of whom i am a direct descendant. Dorsey manor still sits on a hill in northern maryland, and is reputed to be haunted by the spirit of a confederate soldier, whom i can only assume is ezekiel. also, i thought you might like to know that the dorseys were one of the first five families to settle in maryland,(along with ridgelys, bosleys, warfields) giving my local history great amplitude. there are still many places named after us here. how come i cant find our coat of arms on here?
Greetings, Kathryn. Thanks for the information, especially about Dorsey Manor — can you tell me more about it (and about the Maryland Dorseys, if you have the time)? The Dorsey coat of arms remains elusive to me, which is why I personalised my own. The alleged ones online seem too alleged. If you can enlighten me on that too, I’d very much appreciate it.
on the place in france there is a Arcy sur Cure near paris which has a famous holy grottos there. My family D’Arcy are from Limerick,Tipperary area of ireland
There once was a D’Arcy from Limerick, who considered himelf a fine mimerick … Greetings, Tony! I’d read about the grotto too — interesting place. I suspect all of us Irish D’Arcys/Dorseys came from somewhere like that in France originally, n’est pas? But I’m still hoping that someone comes up with a connection in southern France or even Spain, possibly with a Celtic link that would help explain the migration to Eire.
Nice place to visit
And folks named Dorsey can get discounts!
I would like to get in touch with Kathryn Dorsey who claims to be a direct descendant of Sgt. Ezekiel Dorsey of the Civil War. I’m his direct descendant too and would like to communicate with her on this. Can you provide an e-mail?
I do have Kathryn’s email address, Tripp, and have forwarded your message and address to her. Hopefully she’ll get in touch with you directly. Let me know if you come up with something interesting!
Hello! My name is samantha D’Arcy and have always known my sur name is quite unusual and came from france but was also told it stems from royalty so was wondering if anyone could give me any info? i live in england close to liverpool. guitars_and_hippy_vans@hotmail.com thanx
Maybe someone else can give you something specific, Samantha, but it always amazes that every time someone emerges as a candidate for the presidency of the US, someone manages to trace their lineage to the British throne. The suggestion is that everyone of European descent was royal once.
Meanwhile John Mann, author of books on Genghis and Kublai Khan, cites evidence that almost everyone in Asia descends from them!
I still have not been contacted by Kathryn Dorsey. Can you please re-forward my e-mail to her? Thanks very much and Merry Christmas.
Kelsey Ernst’s comment was snagged by Spaminator for some reason I can’t fathom, so I’m pushing it through myself:
First of all let me say Hi. I knew we probably won’t see each other but if it’s any consolation I would like to tell you I am a distant family member of the Dorsey clan. I too was curious about the family origins. I found this web site and thought it made perfect sense of why there is a lot of confusion. I strongly encourage you to check it out.
http://www.4crests.com/dorsey-coat-of-arms.html
Im from Ireland meself and have never had any clue of the origin of the name at all, you’ve opened my eyes just that lil bit more, spankx!
hi am from england i never know my name was french .
ha you learn new things every day
Mais certainment, Samantha! More in England is French than anyone is willing to admit, which is why the Queen kept a close eye on Sarkozy while he was visiting, in case he tried to get anything back.
Hey, I found this whole thing really interesting, and I am so eager to find out where the heck I’m from! There are actually two unrelated (that we know of) families in our area (West Virginia) which complicates things, since I know that, heck, on up the tree, I might not even be from a Dorsey!
The only clue we have is an old letter mt grandfather received one day. It invited us to the Dorsey Family Reunion in Ireland, so we are now led to believe that there some Irish in this mixing pot of descent that is Dorsey.
Yes, Troy, this family needs to have one giant, global reunion to try and get some unity! I recently rediscovered a Dorsey geneology that my father actually purchased through some hokey advertisement back when I was a kid and I’ll be posting the information soon, but no one should get their hopes up for any big revelations. Meanwhile, you’ve got a great first name too!
Live in the U.S., grandfather from Galway. Figured I’m basically Irish, but after reading up on my surname, I’m either Irish, English or French…or a combination of all! I’m dazed and confused, man, dazed and confused.
Did I mention that my English father’s grandmother was Spanish (we think), Mike? I speculate that there’s a Celtic link in the Dorsey migration that would include Spain and Ireland and, further back, possibly eastern Europe as well!
O’Dorchaide originally of Mayo, migrated to Galway likely circa 600 AD, part of the Ui Maine Clann Cernaig (read Onomasticon Goedelicum)Ui Dorchaidhi, his sons Mac Dorchaide in ancient Breifne, chiefs of the Leitrim Conmacne ( read the History of Ireland in Maps and the references from Irish Annals created long before the Norman family of D’Arcy ever landed in Ireland (late 1300 in Meath). Check the DNA site for the Dorsey family (the myth that the Galway Darcy is Norman is being challenged by something that doesn,t lie DNA. Many Irish Dorcey, Darcy, Dorsey descend from this line not the Norman one. Lyn
Excellent information, Lyn. Thankyou. This seems to suggest (or confirm?) that there are two completely separate families, one Irish and one French, presumably with no shared root in the surname.
Hi my name is Laura D’Arcy. I live in Dublin and alot of my relations come from Co Wexford thats where my greatgrandad and grandad lived before moving to the Libertines in Dublin!! I was wondering if there are any D’Arcys anywhere in Wexford or anywhere around if im related to u in anyway ye never no we mite cross paths some day and it would be nice to know!!
Greetings, Laura, and good luck with your search. I hope you and all the other visitors to Dorseyland realise, however, that this blog isn’t really a Dorsey family forum — much as I’d like it to be! All requests for contacts are more than welcome, of course, but the genealogy websites are probably better suited to finding others in our clan.
Have you run into my bunch of Dorsey’s descended from Elisha Dorsey (Dorsey Elisha - see census of 1800) out of North Carolina ?? I will do all I can in research to help our cause.
Cousin John
I have not had the pleasure of meeting Elisha yet, Cousin John D., but would definitely welcome all the information you have on the North Carolina side of the family. Thanks a lot.
Hi Im Ian Dorsey from mansfield, nottingham, england.
Hiya Ian! You’re not the sheriff there, are you? (And how many times have you heard THAT joke?) Greetings from Thailand!
Edward Dorsey-Darcy the Immigrant, was in Virginia by 1642. He’s the 1st Dorsey in the colonies. A DNA project has proved that he is descended from ancient Irish stock (and not the Norman D’Arcey’s). The DNA also shows that most Irish Darcy’s are not of Norman descent.
JD, whose got some stellar ancestry in the States, is referring to recent research discussed in an excellent article you can download in PDF format here: http://tinyurl.com/4nftms — I’ll be doing a new post about it soon. Thanks, Ed!
The name DURKEE is also derived from Darcy thro the Gaelic DORACHAIDHE (pron dura-kee)