Upper Canada Sketches

THERE is no reason to doubt that the progenitor of the Conant family in England and America came originally from Normandy, in 1066, as one of the followers of William the Conqueror. Frederick Odell Conant, of Portland, Maine, whose exhaustive work, “History and Genealogy of the Conant Family,” entitles him to be quoted as an authority, has arrived at this conclusion.

Edward Nathaniel Conant, of Oakham, Rutland County, England, a member of the English branch, told the author, when visiting Lyndon Hall, in 1894, that he had seen the name Conan—from which Conant has been evolved—on a castle archway in Normandy. In 1896 the author met a Frenchman of the same name in Melbourne, Australia, who was, no doubt, a descendant of the branch of the family that remained in Normandy when the others came over with William to the conquest of England.