My parents always told me about their ancestors and their trips to
France as young children to meet their relatives, but they didn't know
many particular beyond their grandparents, especially my father. As I
began to investigate out of curiosity a few years ago, I was very
fortunate to fall upon some information in microfiche in an obituary
of a local New Orleans newspaper (L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans)
that clued me in to the previously unknown birthplace of my great
great grandmother Virginie (née Oval) Vitter. I found out that she was
a native of Clerval, département du Doubs, France, near
Switzerland. And after a search on google.com, up popped the full
ship's log of the ship named Lyons which sailed from Le Havre, France
to New Orleans in 1843 containing the entire Vitter family!  
I've since gotten a photocopy of the actual handwritten ship log.  
My subsequent research in the New Orleans library led me to find out 
that my father's grandfather Alfred Vitter was one of 16 children!  
So third cousins abound.

Jean Pierre Vitter (vitter@wanadoo.fr) in Les Issambres, France (near
St. Tropez) has compiled a wonderful history of the Vitter Famiy en
français, entitled "A tous les Vitter du Monde."  He traces Matthieu
Vitter, before his move to Clerval, France in the 1700s, back to
either the Souabe (Schwaben) area, just to the north of Schaffhouse in
Switzerland, or to north of the Rhine in Germany.  He has separately
told me, not mentioned in his book, of a family legend of two brothers
who came to France.  One stayed (conceivably Mathieu), and the other
went to Galapagos.

There are well over one hundred other Vitters in France who are
descendants from a line of Vitters living in the Ardennes region in
France.  They are said to be related to the Vitters of Clerval,
according to family legends, but no one has yet discovered the link.
For that reason, they are not included in this family tree.  However,
you can find them on the web at http://gw.geneanet.org/mickrix1 or by
contacting Michel Vitter, mick.rix@wanadoo.fr.  According to a
colorful legend told by former French Senator Pierre Vitter of Gray,
all are supposedly related to Charles Quint (Charles V)!  There's
clearly much more to explore.