Jean Prieur du Plessis

1638 – 1708

Names

Given: Jean Prieur du
Surname: du Plessis

The formal baptismal name and the name a person was actually called are both kept, and neither is derived from the other. Spelling drift between records is evidence, not noise.

Immediate family

Children: Charl Prieur du Plessis, Jean Louis du Plessis

A life in the record

1638 born Born
1708 died Died

What we don't know

Neither parent is recorded, so this person is not attached to the tree above them.
No dated record ties this person to a specific piece of ground.

A sourced gap beats an unsourced fill. These are the open questions on this person, stated rather than papered over.

Research notes

*** THE HUGUENOT WHO CROSSED, and the head of this trail. *** Father of Charl Prieur du PlessisH (PER-001903), who was born in 1688 - the year of the Huguenot arrival at the Cape - and 4x-great-grandfather of Cecilia Maria du Plessis, buried on Rondabel in 1895.

WHAT THE CHART SHOWS BEHIND HIM, RECORDED HERE AND DELIBERATELY GIVEN NO ROWS: his parents CHARLES DU PLESSIS (1600-1680) and ANNE PRIEUR (1618-1640); behind Charles, JEAN DU PLESSIS (1548-1638) and JUDITH ANNE DU MORNAY (1555-1600); behind Anne Prieur, CLAUDE PRIEUR (1590) and NOELLE DENIERE (1596). *** THAT IS THE GROUND 12 FORBIDS PUBLISHING AS VERIFIED DESCENT - the medieval du Plessis / de Montmorency claim - and a compiled tree reaching 1548 is exactly how such a line gets laundered into fact. Recorded as what the chart says, not as ancestry this project asserts. [TO VERIFY]

[FS] Added 23 Aug 2026 from a FamilySearch fan chart of Daniel du PlessisM supplied by Frans. Thin record; no place imported.| *** BOUNDED BY 9a. *** This is the head of a trail leading out of the district, and the rule is that such a thread 'gets one story and a bounded set of records. It does not get grown.' The generation that CROSSED is recorded; the French generations behind it are written into the note on PER-001905 and given no rows of their own.

*** [23 Aug 2026, CORRECTING THE SAME DAY'S OWN CONCLUSION] MARTHA DU PLESSIS AND DANIEL DU PLESSIS ARE FIRST COUSINS. *** Martha's father is JEAN LOUIS DU PLESSIS (PER-001909, 1691-1768) and Daniel's is CHARL PRIEUR DU PLESSIS (PER-001903, 1688-1736), and both are sons of JEAN PRIEUR DU PLESSIS (PER-001905, 1638-1708) and MARIE MADELEINE MENANTEAU (PER-001906).

SO THE SHARED ANCESTOR IS REAL AND THE COINCIDENCE DID NOT DISSOLVE. Jean Prieur du PlessisH is the 4x-great-grandfather of CECILIA MARIA DU PLESSIS, who died on Rondabel in 1895, and the 2x-great-grandfather of ADRIANA CECILIA VENTER, the root matriarch, and of MARIA CATHARINA VENTER, who held Rondabel by 1829.

Superseded: answered below WHAT WENT WRONG IN THE TEST: LEAD-0272 asked whether Martha and Daniel were SIBLINGS, FamilySearch's sibling list for Charl Prieur's children correctly contained no Martha, and that correct answer was read as closing the question. It closed one relationship and left the obvious next one untested. A negative result is only as wide as the question asked of it.

*** [23 Aug 2026] AND THE SHARED-ANCESTOR CLAIM IS WEAKER THAN IT LOOKS. *** JEAN PRIEUR DU PLESSIS IS THE DU PLESSIS STAMVADER AT THE CAPE, so nearly every du Plessis here descends from him and 'they share Jean Prieur' says little more than 'they are both du Plessis'. What survives is the narrow fact: MARTHA AND DANIEL ARE FIRST COUSINS, their fathers being brothers. Four to six generations back is background, not connection. LEAD-0272.

These are working notes, not finished prose: they carry the reasoning, the corrections and the things still marked to verify. They are kept here so the page itself can read as what is known.