"Jean Mousnier de la Montagne was a Protestant from France. He was born about 1595 and he lived most of his life in exile from France. That much is certain. No one knows where he was born nor where he was living before 1619. No one knows who his parents were nor what the double-barreled name denotes. Does it imply an aristocratic¹ origin? It may literally have meant "the miller from the mountain."

"He may have been a native of Saintonge in west-central France, as Riker² believed, or he may have come from another mountainous area of France. No records have been found in Saintonge³ to support Riker's belief, and all of our ancestor's associations in Holland were with Walloons⁴, French Huguenots from northern France⁵. There is a village named Santes near Lille, which has been suggested⁶ as a more likely place of his origin than Saintes in Saintonge.

"He first appears on record⁷ in the Netherlands on 19 November 1619 when he registered as a student of medicine at the University of Leyden, signing his name in Latin as Johannes Monerius Montanus, a native of "Xanto"⁸. He was twenty-four years old⁹ and was boarding with the family of Robert Botack, a shoemaker on the Voldersgraft¹⁰. He next appears as a signer¹¹ of the round-robin petition of the Huguenot heads of family in Leyden, addressed in July 1621 to the British Ambassador at the Hague, asking for permission to establish a Huguenot colony in Virginia. Permission was not granted to the Huguenots for that colony and so Jehan Mousnier de la Montagne¹² accompanied (4442) Jesse DeForest to the Amazon River and the coast of Guiana in 1623, one of a party of eleven Huguenot men on board the "Pigeon" looking for a site to establish a Huguenot colony. He returned to Leyden on the "Black Eagle" late in 1625, bringing with him the news of the death of Jesse DeForest, the so-called Journal of Jesse DeForest¹³, and the maps of the exploration party.

"He is named as a boarder in the home of the widow of Jesse DeForest in 1626 and again that same year as a medical student at the University of Leyden¹⁴. On 28 November 1626, he married (2221) Rachel, daughter of Jesse DeForest and his wife (4443) Marie Du Cloux, in the Walloon Church in Leyden¹⁵. He was then thirty-one years old; she about seventeen. There is no baptismal record for Rachel DeForest, but her parents were living at Moncornet in Thierache, in the French province of Picardy, between 1607 and 1615. They returned to Sedan to baptize (4443iv) Elizabeth in 1607 and (4443v) David in 1608, but there is a break in the records of the Huguenot Church of Sedan between 1609 and 1617. For that reason, it is assumed¹⁶ that Rachel was also born at Moncornet and baptized at Sedan, probably in 1609, but the record has since been lost."

¹ James Riker. Revised History of Harlem (City of New York), Its Origin and Early Annals. Revised by Henry P. Toler and edited by Sterling Potter. New York: Privately Printed, 1904. Facsimile Reprint. Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, 2001. 79-80. Many descendants take for fact Riker's statement that "His surname might betoken social rank, or, as already suggested, point to a family origin in La Montagne, or both, yet without doubt connects him with the talented family of that name which became so distinguished in the fields of theology, medicine, and literature, during the sixteenth century." The reference here is to Michel Eyquem de la Montaigne, French literary figure still famous for his essays. Michel Eyquem de la Montaigne (1533-1592) was a Catholic and an aristocrat, but he belonged to the Eyquem family, not the Mousnier family. His descendants are well documented and they do not include our ancestor.
² Riker. Harlem. 48.
³ Research report by S. Bonniot, 12, rue Guilbaud, 17000 La Rochelle, France. SDJM Newsletter. Springfield, MO: Society of Descendants of Johannes de la Montagne, Summer 1991. 780.
⁴ He is described as a Walloon by Henri van der Zee in A Sweet and Alien Land, 74.
⁵ The DeForests were from Sedan and Avesnes, the DuCloux were from Chateau Regnault, the Maillards from Felleries, the DuFossets from Mons, all part of what used to be called Wallonia.
⁶ Chris Brooks, "What About Santes near Lille?" SDJM Newsletter. Springfield, MO: Society of Descendants of Johannes de la Montagne, Winter-Spring 2001. 1742-1743.
⁷"Rectore Reinero Bontio 1619." Album Studiosorum Academiae Lugduno Batavorum 1575-1875. Printed version of the records of the University of Leyden, printed at Leyden in 1875. 144. Photocopy made by N. Plomp, Deputy-manager of the Centraal Bureau Voor Genealogie, Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 22, Postrek 65260. The Hague, Holland.
⁸Since "Xanto" is in Latin, it is not really clear if it refers to Saintes or to Santes or to yet another location .
⁹ Therefore, he was born in 1595.
¹⁰ Riker, Harlem, 79.
¹¹ Two men, both single, named Mousnier de la Montagne, signed the round robin petition. It is assumed that the other man, who signed J. Mousnier de la Montagne, was an older brother of Jean, possibly named Jolant, since that name is given to several descendants of Jean Mousnier de la Montagne. Riker speculated that the brother might have died in Brazil. He notes, "One La Montagne, captain in the Dutch service in Brazil, was killed in the Portuguese assault upon Fort Hinderson, 1646." Footnote in Riker, Harlem, 85.
¹² His name is recorded as Jehan in the Journal of Jesse DeForest.
¹³ DeForest, Jesse and Jehan Mousnier de la Montagne. "A Voyage to Guiana; Being the Journal of Jesse de Forest and His Colonists 1623-1625." Sloan MS 179b in the British Museum, London. Printed in French and translated into English in volume 2 of Mrs. Robert DeForest's A Walloon Family in America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1914. 2 volumes. The journal is a record of the entire trip and recounts the death of Jesse DeForest and the return of the other men. Clearly, even if the journal was started by Jesse DeForest, it was continued by some other writer, believed to be Dr. Jean de la Montagne.
¹⁴ Riker, Harlem, 85.
¹⁵ Marriage records; Leyden Dutch Church, Leyden Walloon Church; Leyden, Netherlands. Original records photocopied, transcribed, translated, and printed in the SDJM Newsletter, 18:2; 2120-2121.
¹⁶ DeForest, John William. The DeForests of Avesnes and of New Netherland. New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1900.