Wow! Impressive! My great grandfather's parents were killed by the Prussians and he was found clinging to their bodies by French seamen. They took him on board their ship and deposited him in various ports of call over the years, in order to educate him. In the process, he became a polyglot - he spoke 7 languages fluently and read Sanskrit. Of all the descendants, I am the inheritor of his linguistic gifts. I speak 3 languages fluently - English, French and Italian.
When he became 'of age', the seamen deposited him on French soil. He eventually accepted the position of translator in the Irish courts, met and married an Irishwoman and migrated to the US. Today, only a small remnant remains. Of what few cousins are still living, I am the only one still practicing the Catholic faith, and in a Maronite Catholic Church :-).
Easter blessing to you and your family!
What an interesting story! Where were his parents from?
Parts of my family were from France. They were the younger sons of provincial petty nobility whose one skill was gambling, and they came here early on, probably to escape their gambling debts. They settled in New Orleans and devoted themselves to gambling, and my direct ancestor married a woman in NO who was of Spanish descent. Eventually, their grandson married a woman who was a governess with the family (an Englishwoman who spoke French and was the well-educated surplus daughter of a British Protestant clergyman) and the family moved north.
Some of them went to California for the Gold Rush; and one of them married into a family of Prussian/Swedish immigrants. The child of this marriage eventually married a man whose family had come directly from Dublin less than a century before. And I was the child of that marriage.
And I married a man of Bavarian/Austrian and Irish parentage whose great uncle had been Bishop of [some city - don't remember which] in Austria.
And I too am Eastern Rite. Don't we have interesting histories here in this US of A?