Family Disputes Found in Notarial Acts Bring Joy to the Genealogist

Ah, Dear Readers, notarial records can yield such delights of familial disharmony, as they document spitefulness, resentment, vengeance or, most useful of all, the fierce desire of some to cheat their nearest and dearest of every last sou to be found amongst the clan. Our example comes from the notarial archives of Paris, the Minutier Central des Notaires de Paris in the Archives nationales. In the carton with the code MC/ET/XV/1645  (MC = Minutuer central. ET = étude. XV = 15, the number in Roman numerals of the étude. 1645 = the carton number of that étude's archives.)*

The document reveals that Françoise Eléonore Barrière, a woman who had buried three husbands, finally succumbed herself and was buried in Paris in 1819. Her sister, Magdeleine Thérèse, claiming to be her only heir, quickly requested that a death inventory be made of the deceased's effects. It was done and in it, she was named as the only heir to the estate. However, there was a son and, though he lived somewhat remotely on the Île d'Oléron, he got wind of his mother's death and his aunt's shenanigans. Of unpleasant portent for Magdeleine Thérèse, he was a "man of law", and he was annoyed. He arrived with a copy of his baptism register entry (nicely included in the act) and his mother's cousin, Marie Françoise Durand, Madame Girault of Orléans. 

It proves that he, Léonard Marie Durand, born in Paris on the fifth of January 1764, was the legitimate son of Françoise Eléonore Barrière and her (first) lawful husband François Durand. (A different copy of his baptism survives in the "reconstituted" registers of Paris and can be seen on the website of the Archives de Paris here (go to image number fifty).  Therefore, the act concluded, the first inventory was wrong and the sister was not the sole heir of Françoise Eléonore Barrière, widow of Pierre-Henri Mulet de la Girouzière (her third husband), the son was the sole heir.

This act of recognition (acte de reconnaissance, which normally serves quite a different purpose) required that Magdeleine Thérèse Barrière recognize that her nephew existed and was the sole legitimate heir. She did not show her face. She sent a representative, duly authorized, who signed for her.

This family is not easy to research, so how very nice to come across a single document that gives so much genealogical information. Dear Readers, we shall never cease to tout the value of notarial acts and we urge you never to cease looking for any that may relate to your research.

©2023 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

*See our booklets on Notarial Records and Parisian Genealogy to learn more about this type of research.