Welcome to the La Force’s
Constance de Caumont de la Force
In France there’s a village called La Force. According to this site, the village of La Force belonged to the Prévôt family who first appears in the 12th century following the First Holy Crusade. Then in 1554 our ancestor, François de Caumont, Seigneur de Castlenauth, married Philippine de Beaupoil, who was a direct descendant of the Prévôts.
François, a Huguenot, learned there was going to be problems with the Catholics. He paid somebody off hoping to spare the lives of him & his children but it was to no avail. François & his son Armand were killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. But his son Jacques-Nompar was not killed. He laid there & played possum ’til someone came to collect the bodies. The man who found him threw a cloak around him & claimed he was his drunk nephew & he was taking him home.
So our Jacques-Nompar survived, grew up & became a man. I believe the Kings of France & our family were friends before François & Armand were murdered. But when Jacques-Nompar grew up he served King Henry IV, a fellow Huguenot, very very well. In exchange he was given the titles duke (he was the 1st duke of La Force – where he was born), marshal of France, & peer of France.
King Henry IV created the Edict of Nantes to protect Huguenots from anything like St. Bartholomew’s Day ever happening again. But eventually his grandson, King Louis XIV, revoked it. When he did all hell broke loose & their cream of the crop began fleeing for other countries. This almost completely destroyed France’s economy & they’ve never been the same since.
French Huguenots, including our ancestors, fled for England, Holland, & Germany. These countries tried hard to take fleeing people in but it was starting to hurt their own economies. That’s when people decided to ship them to America.
We’re not sure where our ancestor, Renald Rene La Force I, went to first (England, Holland or Germany). We’re also not sure which boat he came in on. But we do know he ended up at Manakintown, VA. I’ve heard he married there yet we don’t know the last name of his wife Sarah. They had 4 children but only 3 were named in his will as the 4th was born after he was already deceased. In about 1728, Goochland County was formed out of Henrico County VA. He was named Justice of the Peace of Goochland County then he died shortly thereafter.
To learn more about this family, please check out this site. If you’d like to donate towards this feel free to do so here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=2704672 & thank you in advance. 
