1939 Register redux

Two years ago I found my paternal grandfather in the 1939 Register, living at the Liverpool address my late father gave for his next of kin in his 1939 British Army enlistment papers. I knew I would have to wait another two years for my father's record to be opened, assuming he used the same 1917 date of birth in the register as in his enlistment papers two weeks later.

Ted Riding's 1939 British Army enlistment form

And he did. The record was opened this month.

2–6 Derby Rd, Bournemouth in the 1939 Register

He was listed in the register as single and working as a valet (previously a hotel porter) at the same Bournemouth address (4 Derby Rd) he gave in his enlistment papers, which appears to have been a boarding house where various hotel staff and other boarders lived. A guest house at that address was later described as follows: "Ideally situated corner position convenient for railway station, sea and shops, overlooking putting greens".

He was not a storekeeper as stated in his enlistment papers – it is possible he said that to increase his chances of being assigned to the ordnance corps. A valet in a British context appears to be a manservant who handles laundry and shines shoes for hotel guests. He was also only 17 years old, not 21.

(For the curious: the abbreviation UDD stands for unpaid domestic duties, the most common occupation for women in the 1939 Register.)

Paper and Spit (book review)

Anderson, Don (2017). Paper and Spit: Family found: How DNA and Genealogy revealed my first parents' identity. Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781544606989.
From the publisher's book description: "Using DNA and genealogy, Anderson finds not only the identity of his birth parents but also his true ethnic heritage."

Paper and Spit chronicles an adoptee's search for birth family, from the traditional paper search and reunion with his birth mother to the modern DNA search for his birth father and ultimate closure. The author's enthusiasm and dedication to the task, which involved a huge learning curve and effort gathering evidence, are apparent on every page. He was blessed with many helpers and welcoming family members along the way. May the book set examples for those searching and those found and those able to help people with unknown parentage to find answers and healing.

The book is reasonably light on technical detail and I do not view it as a how to guide, rather as one searcher's personal experiences.

The Foundling (book review)

Fronczak, Paul Joseph and Tresniowski, Alex (2017). The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me. Published by Howard Books. ISBN 9781501142123.
From the publisher's book description: "Paul took a DNA test. The test revealed definitively that he was not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul has been on a tireless mission to find the man whose life he’s been living—and to discover who abandoned him, and why."

The Foundling is a fascinating and gripping story about uncovering the true identity of Paul Fronczak, an abandoned baby in the 1960s whose unknown parentage case is inextricably linked with a once high-profile FBI case about a stolen baby, using the latest DNA technology and old school detective work. It details the deeply personal experiences of all the people involved in such a search, the sacrifices made, the highs and lows, and the drive to persevere without any guarantee of closure or a happy ending.

Paul uncovered his origins thanks to modern technology, the help of several experts, and the luck involved in matching relatives who had also submitted their DNA to genetic genealogy databases and were willing to help. There is a fair amount of detail about the search methods used, without being overly technical. This book should be of interest to anyone undertaking an unknown parentage search.

We've come a long way, baby

[Subtitle: An overview of AncestryDNA's Genetic Communities for someone with predominantly British Isles ancestry, highlighting the benefit of testing multiple family members.]

I tested my DNA at 23andMe and FTDNA around 2010, when autosomal SNP tests with genealogy features first became available, and have subsequently tested at AncestryDNA. I was trying to figure out where my then mysterious father came from. In the early days my ethnicity estimate was 100.0% European, jokingly referred to on genetic genealogy forums as "boring vanilla". That's it. Accurate, yes. Helpful, no. I later got some geographical resolution in terms of European countries (more accurately speaking, regions labelled as countries). It was better, but still gave a rather fuzzy picture.

This week AncestryDNA released its Genetic Communities feature representing ancestral origins hundreds of years ago versus thousands of years ago to all AncestryDNA customers. I am pretty impressed with the results, which are consistent with what I have discovered about my ancestry to date.

My father came from Liverpool, not far from
where my mother was born near Birmingham.

1881 census record for my great-great-grandfather
James Burke, born West of Ireland

This is what my family tree looks like now in terms of place of birth, showing the nearest large city in the British Isles where known. Almost half of my great-great-grandparents are concentrated in the Midlands and North West England [AncestryDNA's English Midlanders & Northerners and Welsh & English West Midlanders regions]. My maternal grandmother was born near Dublin in the East of Ireland [AncestryDNA's Munster Irish region]. One of my paternal Irish ancestors, James Burke, came from the West of Ireland [AncestryDNA's Connacht Irish region] and his second wife Ellen Gilheany from whom my father descends probably came from County Leitrim as her maiden name is quite rare and specific to that county [AncestryDNA's Irish in the North Midlands region]. I don't know whereabouts in Ireland John and Elizabeth Monaghan came from or where John Pattison came from in Scotland. There is another Irish line and probably a Welsh line one generation further back (not shown in the tree below).

So what AncestryDNA Genetic Communities did I get? Testing several family members helps to provide a fuller picture. We have tested three generations in our family, including our paternal aunt, my sister and I, a maternal first cousin, and my sister's children. Taking into account our combined results, all my recent ancestral origins are covered excluding Switzerland which is not yet included in AncestryDNA's list of over 300 Genetic Communities. All three generations got the English Midlanders & Northerners Genetic Community. Our aunt got Scots while we did not and out of the two nephews tested at AncestryDNA only one has a Genetic Community. My nephews' South African father has British Isles and Dutch ancestry and he and one nephew did not get any Genetic Communities.

Our paternal aunt

Me (maternal first cousin also has the top two)

My sister

My nephew

Brother and father of above nephew

Genetic Genealogy in Practice (book review)

Bettinger, Blaine T. and Wayne, Debbie Parker (November 18, 2016). Genetic Genealogy in Practice. Published by National Genealogical Society, Inc. ISBN 9781935815228.
From the publisher's book description: "At their own pace, readers learn the basic concepts of genetic genealogy. They then build on that knowledge as they study the testing, analysis, and application of YDNA, X-DNA, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and autosomal DNA (atDNA) to reach and support genealogical conclusions. Each chapter includes exercises with answer keys for hands-on practice."

This excellent workbook by two industry experts covers genetic genealogy theory and current tests and tools. About one third of the book comprises exercises (with solutions) exploring how to apply the theory in practice to a wide range of genealogical problems. The book also covers how to present results professionally.

I would recommend it to genealogists with an academic mindset but anyone with an interest in the subject can learn from it.

A Family Apart (book review)

Steffen, Craig A. (July 22, 2015). A Family Apart: Sleuthing the Mysteries of Abandonment, Adoption and DNA. Published by Cognoscente Publishing. ISBN 9780996364201.
From the publisher's book description: "a fascinating ride into the methodical quest of an orphan to uncover the truth about his origins".

This memoir tells a great story close to my heart. The author was relentless and left no stone unturned searching for his truth. The editing could have been better and the science was not explained well, which is a pity as it is a great medium for educating others searching for their birth parents.

The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy (book review)

Bettinger, Blaine T. (October 13, 2016). The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy. Published by Family Tree Books. ISBN 9781440345326.
From the publisher's book description: "This plain-English guide is a one-stop resource for how to use DNA testing for genealogy."

This comprehensive textbook by a respected industry expert covers the various tests and tools available today and is essential reading for anyone serious about genetic genealogy.

The editing should have been better. There are a few minor errors and omissions, especially in illustration captions, which fortunately I am knowledgeable enough to dismiss. Hopefully they will be corrected in future editions. The section for adoptees could also be beefed up a bit.

Pandora's DNA (book review)

Stark, Lizzie (2014). Pandora's DNA: Tracing the Breast Cancer Genes Through History, Science, and One Family Tree. Published by Chicago Review Press. ISBN 9781613748602.
From the publisher's book description: "Stark uses her family’s experience to frame a larger story about the so-called breast cancer genes, exploring the morass of legal quandaries, scientific developments, medical breakthroughs, and ethical concerns that surround the BRCA mutations, from the troubling history of prophylactic surgery and the storied origins of the boob job to the landmark lawsuit against Myriad Genetics, which held patents on the BRCA genes every human carries in their body until the Supreme Court overturned them in 2013."

Lizzie Stark is a first generation BRCA patient who has taken advantage of the ability to undertake genetic testing for the hereditary BRCA mutations that put some families at significantly greater risk than others of breast and ovarian cancer diagnosis. Pandora's DNA covers her family's medical history and her admittedly privileged personal decision-making process which nevertheless involves loss and trade-offs. It also addresses how much, and in some respects how little, has been achieved in the field of women's health, and highlights some notable individuals and events in history that have advanced technology to where it is today.

The Stranger in My Genes (book review)

Griffeth, Bill (September 6, 2016). The Stranger in My Genes. Published by New England Historic Genealogical Society. ISBN 9780880823449.
From the publisher's book description: "Bill Griffeth, longtime genealogy buff, takes a DNA test that has an unexpected outcome: 'If the results were correct, it meant that the family tree I had spent years documenting was not my own.'"

This personal memoir by CNBC anchor Bill Griffeth was a short easy read on a topic that interests me in general as a genealogy and DNA researcher with my own (now solved) family mystery and because I share DNA with the author's Griffeth cousin. One small quibble is that the book confuses mtDNA with X-chromosomes (brothers with the same mother are expected to share identical mtDNA, not necessarily X-chromosomes, and mtDNA results for the author and his brother were almost certainly what he was comparing not X-chromosome data as stated). I therefore don't recommend it for the science aspect, but that represents a very small part of the memoir.

International man of mystery

My father Ted Riding

My parents probably met in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where my British mother had gone to work as a medical doctor in 1962. They moved to Johannesburg in 1963 and to Durban in 1964. I have no memory of my father who died from lung cancer in 1967, a month before my second birthday. My mother was left with three young children to raise alone. All our mother knew about our father’s origins was his date and place of birth (1917, Vancouver, Canada), his father’s name, his mother’s given name, the place where his parents lived in Canada (Lytton, BC), and that he had a lot of siblings. My sister was named after our mother's mother and I was named after our father’s mother. I knew nothing else about my namesake, or where our father really came from, until I was 50 years old.

In the 1980s I wrote to the Ridings listed in a Canadian telephone directory. Some kind people actually wrote back to me, and one of them even sent me family photos in order to see if there was any resemblance (bless you). There were other letters too, to the Canadian authorities and anyone who might know something about my father’s family. Nobody did. The search went cold.

Our mother died in 1992. In 2000 my brother obtained our father’s 1967 estate papers via a private researcher. His death notice for estate purposes containing information supplied by our mother revealed the first name of a wife who was not our mother. I knew our father had lived in England before coming to Africa as our mother had kept an official letter that had once accompanied a King’s Badge issued in his name in 1943 (sort of, his initials EG were transposed for some reason to GE). The Internet was still pretty new, but I eventually extracted some more secrets from it, namely further details of my father’s marriage and the name of a son born to the marriage in England. I found my father’s marriage index and my half-brother’s birth index by manually searching GRO indexes on 1837online.com (now known as Findmypast.com) launched in 2003.

I found my half-brother’s telephone number listed on the British Telecom website and called him. He was “shocked but not surprised” to discover he had siblings in South Africa. Our father was a mystery to him too however. He told me he last saw his father in South Africa in 1951 at the age of eight, when his pregnant mother returned to England with him after a short stay in Port Elizabeth. I travelled to England to meet him in 2005. My half-sister, who was born in England in 1951, passed away in 2001 so I never had the chance to meet her.

In May 2009 I ordered my father’s GRO marriage certificate dated 1942. I noticed an age discrepancy for him and that the name given for his father was not the same as the name my mother had provided on his death notice. The discrepancies were frustrating, but the record proved to be one of the keys that would ultimately unlock my father’s identity. It contained his British Army unit, rank and service number which enabled me to obtain his non-public World War II service record later that year. His enlistment papers dated October 1939 contain a name and address for his father. I now had a third name for his father, namely William Riding, and a new place of birth for my father, namely Liverpool in England. My father’s first and middle names were switched around, consistent with the initials in the letter my mother kept. There was no UK birth record using any of the known variations of his name and date of birth however. I looked up his father’s supposed address online and decided against writing to the homeowner who had a different surname. I no longer took any of these “facts” too seriously and I thought that many people would have come and gone from that house in the 70 years since my father enlisted. I was wrong.

Starting in 2009, I submitted my DNA to all the main testing companies in the US as their genealogy products became available. I didn’t get any close matches other than some known cousins on my maternal side.

I took great interest in the Canada 1921 Census launched by Ancestry.ca in October 2013. My father and his family would surely be in it. They were not, and I was deflated again. In 2014 I noted with cautious optimism Findmypast’s announcement that they would be publishing the 1939 Register containing details of the population of England and Wales at the outbreak of World War II. In November 2015 I searched these records for the address my father had provided for his father to see if there was in fact a person by the name of William Riding living at that address. To my surprise there was.

I searched his name and birth date on Ancestry.com and luckily found a public family tree containing William Riding and his wife Ellen (thank you Jane). In 2010 a grandson of theirs and second cousin of the tree owner had written some notes on the tree, including the fact that one of their sons named George born in 1922 had disappeared during the wartime period (thank you Terry). The name and age of the missing son was wrong (according to what I knew about my father), but the circumstances were too much of a coincidence to dismiss. Ellen died in 1955 and William died in 1980, but George still had living siblings and one of them kindly agreed to submit a DNA sample to AncestryDNA for comparison to mine (thank you Jean). The results were consistent with me being their niece.

My father left his parents’ home in Liverpool in April 1937 at the age of 14 after a few rows with his father. My aunt who submitted the DNA sample, now married with a different surname, still lives at the same address that my father provided in his enlistment papers. I now have a copy of my father’s birth certificate giving that address as his place of birth in 1922. The only part of his date of birth that he kept was the day. He changed his month and year of birth and assumed a new middle name which later became his first name. As of 2016, my father has 5 children (two now deceased), 8 grandchildren, 4 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild that I know of. Thanks to technology and persistence, his surviving siblings now know what became of him and his surviving descendants now know where he came from.

See update at: 1939 Register redux.

Finding Family (book review)

Hill, Richard (August 17, 2012). Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA. Published by CreateSpace. ISBN 9781475190830.
From the publisher's book description: "Finding Family is the first book to chronicle the paradigm-shifting application of genetic genealogy to adoption search"
(see also "DNA helps man unlock mystery of his birth father's identity" by Sue Thoms, The Grand Rapids Press)

This memoir is a tale of perseverance over many years in one man's search for answers about his origins. The effort he put into his search is enormous. I understand what drives him because I am still searching. It is one of very few books that incorporate the magic of DNA testing as an aid to crack such a case, although you can encounter many similar stories online now. I would especially recommend this book to those looking for easy answers and those ready to give up, to give them some perspective about what may be required of them and how the passage of time can help them in more ways than one.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (book review)

Skloot, Rebecca (2010). The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Published by Crown Publishing Group, New York. ISBN 9781400052172.
From the publisher's book description: "Rebecca Skloot's fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world forever. Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world."

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is fascinating, eye-opening, educational and engaging. Skloot tells many sides of the story as she grapples with the complex issues of science for profit, informed consent and privacy in a developing field.

The Lacks family ultimately understood the value of their mother's contribution to medicine and thanks to Skloot many others will too. As Henrietta's daughter Deborah says: "if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different."

A major development in the field since the book was published relates to a US court case challenging gene patents (Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics): "On June 13, 2013, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court invalidated Myriad's claims to isolated genes. The Court held that merely isolating genes that are found in nature does not make them patentable." (Source: Wikipedia)

Incidentally, the state of Maryland where much of the story takes place has among the most paternalistic laws relating to genetic testing today, to the chagrin of would-be direct-to-consumer customers. (See "Maryland says, no DTC genetic testing for you" by Frank Hecker.) Regulation doesn't necessarily benefit the individual sources of biological material.

Bird of Paradise (book review)

Cepeda, Raquel (March 5, 2013). Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina. Published by Atria Books. 336 pages. ISBN 978-1451635867.
From the publisher's book description: "Cepeda parses concepts of race, identity, and ancestral DNA among Latinos by using her own Dominican-American story as one example"

I recently read a comment by Bonnie LeRoy, a professor in genetic counselling, in a newspaper article on personal genomics: "people don't feel grounded unless they have an idea of who they are through their genes". I don't know anything about the hip-hop culture in which Cepeda has made a name for herself, or what it's like to be a person "of multiple races" (her words) in a white-dominated society. I do know what it's like to not feel grounded, to be part of a family displaced and scattered around the world where finding out about our past is like pulling teeth and entails literally waking the dead. The last three generations of my maternal ancestors were born and died in different countries. The same applies to at least the last two generations on my father's side, and that line originated in a completely different place and travelled a completely different path to South Africa where I was born, and hence I also know what it's like to live in a society where confronting the concept of race and all the baggage that goes with it on a daily basis is unavoidable. I was therefore very excited to discover a new book talking to this subject.

In Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina, Cepeda explores her Dominican American identity via family interviews, travel and genetic genealogy. The book challenged my perception of what it means to be American, showing how people with indigenous ancestry are treated as outsiders and how such social prejudices do damage from the outside as well as the inside of "multiple race" families. Some incidents detailed in the book are hard to comprehend. I am inspired by the knowledge that this journey, repairing some broken links to the author's roots, has brought her family some peace.

Cepeda managed, with some realistic difficulty, to obtain DNA samples representing quite a few of her ancestral lines for mitochondrial DNA and Y-DNA testing. I can appreciate how rewarding it must have been for her to finally be able to ground herself with confirmed roots in America, Africa and Europe. However, I was disappointed that the book does not mention autosomal DNA inherited from all ancestral lines, except for a Family Tree DNA FAQ regarding their Population Finder tool which does not appear to be part of the testing done by Cepeda. The direct maternal (mitochondrial) and direct paternal (Y-DNA) ancestral lines only represent a tiny fraction of one's ancestry and may reflect little to none of one's autosomal DNA as illustrated by the recent "revelation" that Prince William has Indian ancestry. While autosomal DNA testing is relatively new and the geographical analyses of this data are constantly being refined, a person "of multiple races" is an ideal candidate for such analyses as it is relatively easy to separate autosomal DNA inherited from different continents. Autosomal DNA testing is also better than nothing (other than mitochondrial DNA testing, and Y-DNA testing if one is male) for people like me with family members who opt not to spit.

The Juggler's Children (book review)

Abraham, Carolyn (March 26, 2013). The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us. Published by Random House Canada. 400 pages. ISBN 978-0679314592.
From the publisher's book description: "Abraham investigates whether this burgeoning new science can help solve 2 mysteries that have haunted her multi-racial family for more than a century"

The Juggler's Children is about the Canadian author's "dance between DNA and documentary evidence, science and paper" as she sets out to uncover the mysterious origins of two of her great-grandfathers, one of whom she inherited her surname from ("the juggler"). At the beginning of the book there are two family tree charts, one for the descendants of each of these great-grandfathers who married and fathered children in India but originally came from somewhere else (China and Jamaica, probably). In hindsight I should have drawn another family tree chart for the Crooks family in Jamaica as I read what her research uncovered there, as it was not so easy keeping up with the Crookses, but I was in too much of a hurry to find out what happened next. I guess it could not have been included in the book without giving too much of the story away.

Even though my 100% European ancestry is not nearly as interesting as the author's, I can identify with so much of what she wrote having similar family mysteries of my own to solve. Regardless, I am a sucker for a good detective story. I also learnt some history, geography and science in the process.

The book would also be a good primer for a "genetic virgin". It discusses genetic genealogy in layman's terms and illustrates the various pitfalls of genetic testing and analysis via the author's personal story. Her experiences demonstrate the limitations of both science and paper, and hence the value of using both to corroborate each other. Abraham is a science writer and wove various milestones in genetics and genetic genealogy into her story. However, science has already progressed somewhat since the Abraham family undertook genetic testing. There is now greater emphasis on testing autosomal DNA inherited from both parents and the costs have dropped substantially. Pioneers of genetic genealogy are impatient, and this book gives us some perspective in that regard.

The writing style is well balanced, not too dry given the scientific subject and not overly verbose. The book contains plenty of humour, puns, metaphors and phrases that made me smile such as "typos" regarding mutations, "kiss and tell" regarding the Y chromosome and "old boys' club" regarding Y haplogroups (not having my own Y, I can really identify with that one).

The Juggler's Children is currently available in Canada.

See also: The Agenda with Steve Paikin: Interview with Carolyn Abraham on YouTube

The French priest in my family tree

[This post was first published on 28 June 2012. The subject of the article is my maternal 12th great-grandfather Jean de Leouze.]

While updating my ancestry family tree recently (see The Union soldier in my family tree), I noticed a new surname Delosea relating to one of my Swiss lines that piqued my interest as it did not appear to be Swiss-German like all my other Swiss lines. I traced it back to a Huguenot immigrant, my 12th great-grandfather Jean de Leouze from Provence, southern France. This ancestral line of mine married into other lines of French origin for several generations (de Remigis, Perron, Cordier) before marrying into a Swiss-German line.

The de Leouze surname is also spelt de Leuze and Deleuze in France and de Losea and Delosea in Switzerland.

Jean de Leouze born c1490, the son of an écuyer (rider) Carl (Charles) de Leouze who died in Marseilles in 1548, was a canon at the Abbaye Saint-Césaire in Arles, Provence. He joined the Church Reformation and moved to Switzerland in 1523. His descendant Anna Maria de Losea, my 7th great grandmother, married into the Anneler family from Thun, Canton Bern, in 1707.

One of Jean de Leouze's descendants, Jean de Losea, was granted citizenship of Murten in Canton Fribourg on 20 July 1618. Below is an extract from Der Stadt Murten Chronik und Bürgerbuch (p335), with my English translation:

"De Losea oder de Leauzea.
(de Ilice.)

Das Wappen besteht in einem in die Quere getheilten Schilde, dessen oberer Theil blau, der untere Gold ist, auf welchem eine ausgerissene Steineiche zu sehen. Oben im blauen Felde befindet sich auf jeder Seite desselben eine fünfblättrige Rose; über dem Helme erheben sich zwey Büffelshörner."
[The coat of arms consists of a divided shield, with upper part blue, the lower is gold, on which an uprooted holm oak can be seen. Above on the blue field located on each side are identical five-petalled roses; two buffalo horns are raised above the top.]
"Johann, der Erste dieses Geschlechts in der Schweiz, war zuvor Canonicus in einem adelichen Stifte zu Arles in der Provence. Er trat zur reformierten Religion über und verehelichte sich mit einem Fräulein von Remigis, einer Nichte des Barons von Grignan. Im Jahr 1523 kam er nach Genf und bewarb sich um eine geistliche Anstellung. Sein Gattin reiste ihm bald, in Begleitung verschiedener, der reformirten Religion zugetaner, Personen nach Genf nach. Im Jahr 1536 kam er nach Lausanne, wo er also Lehrer angestellt wurde, und im Jahr 1562 erhielt er die Pfarrey zu Dompmartin."
[John, the first of the line in Switzerland, was previously a canon in a noble chapter at Arles in Provence. He crossed over to the reformed religion and married a Miss de Remigis, a niece of the Baron de Grignan. In the year 1523 he came to Geneva and applied for spiritual employment. His wife travelled to him soon, accompanied to Geneva by various persons associated with the reformed religion. In the year 1536 he came to Lausanne, where he was employed as a teacher, and in the year 1562 he received the parish Dommartin.]

Sources (in addition to other data sources noted on my family tree):
FamilySearch marriage record of Hans Rudolf Anneler and Anna Maria de Losea
Abraham de Losea in Thun, GAMEO
Der Stadt Murten Chronik und Bürgerbuch by Johann Friedrich Ludwig Engelhard (1828)

I look French, as you can see from this old mugshot of me (don't laugh!), and it's good to finally have a known French ancestor to attribute this to. I inherited my colouring from my Swiss-Irish maternal grandmother, believe it or not my German-Canadian Scouse father and my English maternal grandfather were fair with blue eyes.

I found an explanation of the meaning of the de Leouze (de Ilice) surname online in Infos Saint Martin No. 204 December 2009 (a pdf download of a monthly information magazine issued by La Ville de Saint-Martin-de-Crau in the Provence region), which I have translated into English below:

[Postcard:
The de Leuze wood
industrial zone

This zone of activities extends over a tenement that was an agricultural domain. According to Provençal custom, the name of the owner is attached to his property.
The origin of the name is explained in "Les Meyran et leurs alliances" by Baron du Roure:
"Paulet GRILLO (brother of Opissin) legatee of 25 florins in the will of his aunt Jaumette Roux, wife of Guillaume de Leuze (8 March 1506) [de Ilice] merchant of Nîmes."
The word [ilice] comes from the Latin [ilex], yeuse (in French) which provides this contribution to Trésor de la Langue Française: "ilex: a sort of oak tree, yeuse (holm oak) in Provence, … borrowed from the Provençal euze, ancient Provençal elzer;... Osco-Umbrian form of the Latin ilex, ilicis in feminine, translated as yeuse."

Familienwappen Delosea
(von Bern, ehemals von Murten)
Quelle: Berner Wappenbuch, 1932

Le Trésor du Felibrige gives éuse, euise, elze, éue, éuve, eve, to designate the yeuse that is an evergreen oak. On the picture dated 1974, the wood in the neighbourhood of the farmstead was composed of pines, over an area of a half-hectare.
At the Arles media library, in the Véran collection, the de Leuze farmstead is mentioned for the first time in 1468. It belonged then to the Chapter of Arles. In 1803, it was the property of Louis Joseph Martin, merchant. It was measured at 210 setérées.

(Setérée = name of an agrarian measure equivalent to an area sowed with a setier of wheat. Setier = former measure of grain that contains about 156l.)]

Familienwappen Delosea
(von Bern, ehemals von Murten)
Quelle: Berner Wappenbuch, 1932

Quercus ilex (holm or holly oak) is a large evergreen oak native to the Mediterranean region. It is mentioned in the de Losea coat of arms description in the Murten Bürgerbuch dated 1828 and I found two Delosea coats of arms from the Bern heraldry book dated 1932 which incorporate the evergreen tree, the one pictured on the right here more elaborate than the one pictured above left, which could be the original French coat of arms based on further information about the de Leouze family detailed below.

Below are some images of old postcards from the La Crau area in Provence, which might give some indication of what my French ancestors looked like.

Les jeunes filles de la Crau
[Photographie: Collection personnelle de Jean Marie Desbois]

Saint-Martin de Crau (Mas-de-Gouin) - Le Chai [Image source: CPArama]

Nobleman Antoine de Leouze, an écuyer (rider), the brother of Jean de Leouze who moved to Switzerland in 1523, died in Marseilles in 1584 without a male heir. His surname and his arms were passed on by will to Gilles d'Alix, his nephew (actually a son of a first cousin), who also inherited from him among other things the property of St Jean du Brest. Gilles (born d'Alix) de Leouze, Sieur de St Jean, the son of a nobleman Laurent d'Alix, an écuyer (rider) who established himself in Marseilles in the fifteenth century, and Bellone d'Aguillon, was baptized in Marseilles on 10 January 1538 and married Marguerite de Pol on 30 April 1580.

There is an entry for the (d'Alix) de Leouze family in the Dictionnaire universel de la noblesse de France:

"DE LEOUZE
De Leouze, en Provence, famille ancienne, qui portait autrefois le nom d'Alix. Laurens Alix, vivait en 1550; il eut un fils appelé Giles Alix, lequel hérita d'Antoine de Leouze, son parent, par testament du 11 mai 1577, à la charge de porter son nom et ses armes. Il quitta le nom d'Alix, pour prendre celui de Leouze, qu'il transmit à ses descendants. D'argent, à un chêne arraché de sinople. (Armes parlantes: un chêne vert étant nommé éouze, en idiôme provençal.)"
[My translation: De Leouze, in Provence, ancient family, who formerly went by the name d’Alix. Laurens Alix, lived in 1550; he had a son called Giles Alix, who inherited from Antoine de Leouze, his relative, by will of 11 May 1577, dependent on the bearing of his name and his arms. He left the name d’Alix, to take the name de Leouze, which he passed on to his descendants. Silver, an uprooted oak tree of sinople (vert tincture, green). (Heraldry: an evergreen oak tree given the name éouze, in Provençal language.)]

Sources:
Dictionnaire universel de la noblesse de France by Jean B. de Courcelles (1821), p431
Histoire héroique et universelle de la noblesse de Provence, Volume 3 (1786), p339
Un artifice contre l'extinction des familles? La substitution de nom et d'armes à Marseille (fin XIVe-fin XVe s.), Christian Maurel (1990)

"Harvest at La Crau, with Montmajour in the Background" by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)