Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

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coming from Lucca, we from Brescia), by the different coats of arms (their escutcheon
being divided into two parts—the upper of deep blue, the lower of deep yellow, with
a wild boar's head in the middle), and by the entire absence of associations. When
our ancestor Jean Rodolphe May was bailiff at Nyon, in 1659-1665, he heard speak
of the Meis of Geneva, and learned from them that the last Mei of Lucca was about
to be chosen bailiff of Bisignano in Calabria ; and
he would have liked to get from
him some genealogical information. But how should he come at it ? He, being a
Protestant, would not have been honored with an answer to inquiries, any more than
the Meis of Geneva. .
. .
" The work of investigation was resumed in 1730, when a letter was addressed to
the Marquis Luchesini, governor of Mirandola. The Marquis was to ask for the
pedigree of the Mei family from the Marquis Bottini, whose mother was the last Mei
in Lucca of the female line, through whom Bottini had inherited all the possessions
of this extinct family. Bottini feared and believed that there was a wish to disinherit
him, and, before complying with the request made, demanded a formal renunciation,
on the part of all the members of the May family of Berne, of all the possessions
once pertaining to the Meis of Lucca. This renunciation, signed by all the Mays, by
the " Avoyer " and by the Two Hundred, was sent to Lucca January 30th, 1735.
Soon after there came from the Republic of Lucca a document signed by the Grand
Chancellor Joseph Vincent Hiccolini, and sealed with the great seal of the Republic.
It contained the testimony of the Government of Lucca that the Mei family was
counted as one of the nobility, that several members of it had been Grand Coun-
cilors, Ancients, and Gonfaloniers—among others, Blaise, Laurence, iEmile, and
Philippe. It was added that on the 21st of January 1628 there had been made a
catalogue of the noble families of Lucca, in which the Meis were included at page 127.
"In 1802 the May family commissioned the Chancellor Frederic May to make
genealogical researches in Lucca itself. On his return to Berne he reported minutely,
without being able to establish any relationship between the two families—which, as
we have already said, never existed.
" The Mei family expatriated itself from Lucca in the middle of the sixteenth
century, for religion's sake. Biagio (Blaise) Mei established himself in 1544 as a
merchant at Lyons. His son Vincenzo, married to a daughter of Martino Bernardini,
came to Geneva in 1550, together with one of his relatives named Cesare, who had
been of the Grand Council of Lucca from 1544 to 1548, and twice acted as Ancient.
The wife of Cesare was named Pelegrina Galganetti. In 1560 Vincenzo Mei became
a citizen of Geneva, where other families of Lucca, the Torrettini, Micheli, Bur-
lamachi [the family of the wife of Rev. John Diodati— see below], and the Passa-
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