The fraudulent Coligny-Rapalje descent

Abstract

Jerome B. Holgate, in his American Genealogy (fictitiously dated 1848), derives the Rapalje family from an alleged Gaspard Colet de Rapalje "born in France, at Châtillon, sur Loire, in 1505." We suggest that this personage was manufactured from the record of an actual Gaspard de Coligny born at Châtillon, but who never used the additional surname de Rapalje, and who was in fact born in 1554 and died (unmarried) as a youth.