The Mershon ancestry goes back to the Huguenot (a member of the Reformed or Calvinistic communion of France in the 16th and 17th centuries; a French Protestant) progenitor, Henri Marchand of Caen, Normandy, who with his oldest son, Henry, a lad of thirteen, came to New York about 1685. He must have been satisfied with America as a haven from religious persecution, for he left the son with friends and started back to France to bring the remainder of his family, but was not again heard from.