The French Genealogy Blog

Last of the Summer Reading: Mutinous Women

Years ago, when we were enjoying a lazy afternoon in the Arsenal branch of the Bibliothèque nationale, we came across some remarkable and fascinating lists of women prisoners sent to Louisiana in the early eighteenth century.

We knew there was a story there to be told, and in the newly published Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast, Joan DeJean tells it very well and very passionately. Essentially, women were rounded up in Paris by the police and imprisoned on false charges, then marched to the coast and loaded onto vessels and banished to Louisiana, where the descendants of those who survived live today. DeJean does more than tell their individual stories. She places them and their fates within the context of the histories of France and Louisiana to explain why they were sent there. The French economy at the time, the rise of the charlatan John Law and his Louisiana project, the French Indies Company (Compagnie des Indes), the wicked prison matron at Salpêtrière, the hopeless colonial administration, etc. are fully described so that the reader can understand the social, economic, legal and political forces that ruled these women's lives, (almost certainly something that they themselves never understood).

DeJean has "taught courses on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France at Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she is Trustee Professor. She has done research in French archives since 1974, primarily in the archives of Parisian prisons held in Paris’s Arsenal Library. It was in the Arsenal that, a decade ago, she came across the earliest documentation describing the arrests and deportations of the Mutinous Women who helped found and build New Orleans." (as per the University of Pennsylvania page about the book.) The depth and breadth of the research is most impressive. To piece together the stories, DeJean had to traipse back and forth across Paris, west to the coastal archives and down to the south of France. She had the help of many researchers in many locations, according to her acknowledgements. Yet, even with help, it would not have been easy, as we know from our own visits to many of the archives facilities on her impressive list. Another reviewer called this DeJean's "archival virtuosity" and we cannot improve upon that exquisite term.

As a history of early Louisiana, as a history of forgotten women, this is a fascinating tale told with excellence, but perhaps the reader is clubbed with the hammer of indignant outrage at injustice a bit too often and a bit too hard? At times, DeJean seems not to be writing as a historian but as a crusader. Her intention seems to be not only to cleanse the reputations of these women of calumny but nearly to canonize them. As she tells it, they all were victims of injustice, none of them committed a serious crime, none was a prostitute. Yet, by her own account, one of them, Anne Françoise Rolland, looks to have lived a suspiciously greedy and dishonest life in Louisiana (see p. 349). She implies that the initial "seditious revolt", e.g. something along the lines of a prison riot, in Salpêtrière, never took place or at least was exaggerated, when, in fact, there was a rebellious event during which the women prisoners took to shrieking en masse, long and loud, attempting to drive their jailers mad. DeJean tells the story of suffering and injustice so well and thoroughly that she does not need to remind us, on nearly every page, that this was wrong; it induces in the reader a sense of being patronized by the author.

Nor, surely, is it necessary to overstate, in every case possible, that some of the women rose higher in status in Louisiana than the people who had denounced them in France could ever have hoped to do. She does this so often that it ceases to point out the very real stamina, intelligence, creativity, diplomacy and diligence of these women but seems to be taunting some snob whose presence is not evident to the reader.

Concerning those women whose own parents asked the police to lock them up because they were recalcitrant, while DeJean expresses the natural shock and disgust that any modern person would sense at such parental cruelty, she fails to state that this was a common practice in France at the time, used by parents against children of both sexes, relatives against one another, neighbours against each other, and anyone else who had a grudge against someone. The entire system of Lettres de cachet was monstrous, and not at all uniquely applied to these women. Why leave that out when she explains so much else so well?

Small but niggling points indicate the publisher's failure to provide a decent editor and proofreader:

• a bourgeois de Paris was not a financier, and Amboise Jean Baptiste Rolland, the father of the Anne François Rolland above, may have had the right to use the term (p. 115)
• Jeanne Mahou's husband Laurent Laurent died on 14 August 1737 (p. 230); though she remarried quickly, it could not have been on 27 January 1737 (p. 231)
•  two or three times, paragraphs are repeated

Do not be put off by these stylistic oddities. On the whole, Mutinous Women is a wonderful work of scholarship that expunges three hundred years of lies from these women's life stories.

 

A PDF list of women who sailed on the Mutine can be seen on the website Mémoire des Hommes here.

A very nice map of early New Orleans, showing where some of the women  lived, can be seen here.

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

Summer Reading - Books to Help You Find Your French Mariner Ancestor's Vessel

In our little book, American Merchant Seamen of the Early Nineteenth Century : a Researcher's Guide, we explain that, in researching a mariner, one must follow the vessel to find the man. It is just as true when researching French mariners. However, it is not easy, for two reasons in particular:

1. It is difficult to know on which vessel, or more likely vessels, a mariner sailed, and
2. It is not easy to track the movements of that vessel

For French vessels of the Revolutionary and First Empire period, there is the added difficulty of a lack of records. This is partly because much was lost in the chaos of the Revolution and, at the end of the First Empire, much was destroyed to prevent retaliation by the returning Bourbon king and his supporters.

 

In addition to the research possibilities we outline in that chapter, there are a couple of books that are especially helpful in tracking French naval vessels.

Dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours (The dictionary of french naval fighting ships), by Jean-Michel Roche, is a whopper of an achievement. Naval enthusiasts will thrill at the many facts given in each little essay concerning a vessel: where and when she was built, how many guns she carried, in what battles she fought, what was her demise. The value for those researching a single man on board is that, where possible, each essay also gives the vessel's whereabouts in certain years. Sailors were boarding and leaving vessels all the time. If you have traced an ancestor to a vessel but then lost him, the list of places where she was (admittedly, a very short list, usually) can help you to pick up his trail again.

French Warships in the Age of Sail 1786 - 1862 : Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. The title says it all. This is a prettier book than the Dictionnaire des bâtiments, with illustrations, ship plans, a nicer typeface and better layout altogether and resembles Winfield's other books, on Royal Navy vessels. And, of course, it is in English. French Warships covers a much shorter time period than does Dictionnaire des bâtiments, eighty years as opposed to well over three hundred years. The essays about each vessel cover the same material in both books. French Warships has the vessels arranged by class, a vast category that we, Dear Readers, have not memorized,  so one spends a lot of time with the index. Dictionnaire des bâtiments, is purely alphabetical, and so, much easier to use.

For some time, we have been researching a particular vessel, the French naval frigate of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Incorruptible. Apparently, there were at least five American seamen serving on her, and we would like to verify that. Here is the essay on her in French Warships :

This is what Dictionnaire des bâtiments has to say about her:

So, the French work gives more detail of her career. From this, we surmise that our American seamen boarded her at Flushing. 

A third useful work, found all over the Internet is Troude's Batailles navales de la France, written in the 1860s. The charming, literary style and lack of an index make "Find" options a god-send. From this, we learned a bit more about the Incorruptible's battles against Royal Navy vessels and, crucially, the name of one of her captains: Billiet.

Knowing a captain's name is incredibly helpful when searching for a vessel online. Typing "Incorruptible" will bring a load of nonsense results. Adding words such as French navy vessel, or those words in French, is not much better. Typing, "Incorruptible" and "Billiet" however, gets very precise results.

Lastly, the archival finding aid on Naval Campaigns:

  Download FONDS MARINE CAMPAGNES. Inventaire de la sous-série Marine BB 4. Tome premier AVERTISSEMENT

which came up in those last results, gives many more captain's names and more of the Incorruptible's career and locations. We now have many more avenues for researching our mariners, and more places to seek a crew list that might show their names.

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

Summer Reading - Two Books for Those Researching a French Naval Ancestor

The pandemic was a horror and the lock-downs around the world caused suffering to many; about this there can be no dispute. Yet, amongst those fortunate enough not to fall ill, some turned to creativity and productivity while confined. Les marins français, 1789 - 1830 : Étude du corps social et de ses uniformes is such a lock-down creation. It  is a treasure of a book, with lovely illustrations of uniforms and weapons, and a remarkably clear explanation of the changes in French naval uniforms during a most fraught period in French history. The author, Eric Shérer, is a Vice-Admiral in the Navy and a life-long collector of all things naval. He came to writing history through his collecting and this is his third book.

Shérer 's structure is logical, giving two chapters to each time period, the first on naval ranks and responsibilities, and the second on the uniforms of those ranks during that period. We translate the chapter titles:

• Sailors at the End of the Ancien régime (with a very good explanation of naval conscription)
• Uniforms of Sailors at the End of the Ancien régime
• Sailors During the Revolution
• Uniforms of Sailors During the Revolution
• Sailors During the Consulate and First Empire
• Uniforms of Sailors During the Consulate and First Empire
• Life on Board Ships in the Fleet for the Marines and for the Crew
• Naval Staff at the Arsenals
• Sailors of the Coast Guard
• Uniforms of Sailors of the Coast Guard During the Consulate and First Empire
• Sailors During the Restoration
• Uniforms of Sailors During the Restoration
• Naval Uniform Buttons from 1786 to 1830
• Bibliography and Archival Sources

Even if you cannot read French, the charts and illustrations are incredibly useful. It is a thorough study and will greatly inform your research into your French naval ancestor.

Les Marins français 1789-1830 : Etude de corps social et de ses uniformes. Eric Schérer. 2022. 50€, ISBN: 978-2-7587-0241-2

 

 

France really excels at biographical dictionaries. They are well-researched, well-sourced, well-structured (straight-forward alphabetical listing by surname) and very useful. This one, Dictionnaire des Marins français,  runs to five hundred forty pages and covers documented naval personalities of note from as early as 1341 to 1931. The biographical essays give the date and place of birth, career details, and date and place of death. If you are lucky enough to have an illustrious naval ancestor, the essay on him will delight you and possibly aid your research. For the rest of us, the real use of this book is in helping to follow the career of an ancestor who served in the French Navy, for here, you may find your ancestor's commanding officers and, through the essays about their careers and movements, work out where your ancestor was as well.

Dictionnaire des marins français. Etienne Taillemite. 2002. ISBN: 978-2847340082

 

Using these two books, with our highly recommended further reading, could break down your brick wall concerning your French Navy ancestor.  In our next post, we tell how you can track the vessel on which he or she may have served.

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

Reflections on Genealogy and "That New Yorker Article"

A few weeks ago, a New Yorker article by Maya Jasanoff, entitled "Our Obsession With Ancestry Has Some Twisted Roots" drove some in the world of genealogy into quite a tizzy. The title is misleading, having the air of being a copy editor's creation and, though the author is a distinguished historian who has been awarded prizes for her writing, in this case she is not terribly coherent or clear. It is obvious that the she does not know much about the techniques of genealogical research, or establishing genealogical proof or kinship determination, but that does not diminish the validity of her concern. She is worried about how genealogy is used not, as Elizabeth Shown Mills, herself a historian, brilliantly showed on facebook in response to this article, to understand how one's family fits into history, but for power, injustice and exclusion.

"The truth is, all genealogies are selective, often by design" she writes. Her concern here is exclusion. Her wording is imprecise, we believe, in that it is not genealogies that are exclusive, (or inclusive, for that matter). Genealogies attempt to show all familial connections in the most factual, documented and verifiable manner possible. It is when we place values on those families, their extended families, their tribes, and say that one is good while another bad and establish that belonging to one gives rights while to another deprives one of rights, that we are misusing, even abusing genealogy. Every hereditary genealogy society requiring a lineage proof for membership commits this type of abuse. Every immigration law based on a person's heredity commits this type of abuse. Dr. Jasanoff is right to raise the issue and to be concerned.

She does not dispute the pleasure that family history can give to us, that "Genealogy as a technique may bring individual rewards, but," she adds, "as a historical paradigm it has tended to serve those in power, and such effects are not diminishing." Her point is that those in power use genealogical research and techniques, including DNA research, to legalize injustices toward certain people based upon their heredity. This is a legitimate and important question which Dr. Jasanoff is asking us to examine: "We know that “race” is a social construct. We need to acknowledge the ways in which “ancestry” is, too."

Perhaps we genealogists and family historians should participate in, even lead this examination. There certainly has not yet been much written by genealogists asking just what "ancestry" is and what it means. Surely, the many times that we have seen how DNA evidence can contradict documented identity should have opened such a discussion amongst us by now. Additionally, so much of our focus in our work has been on good research and sound reasoning that we have not looked at just how our reports and studies might be used by the unscrupulous. 

The Code of Ethics of the Board for Certification of Genealogists makes no mention of how genealogy might be misused or of what a genealogist could or should do to prevent it. In fact, helping people with their applications to lineage societies is such a staple of most genealogists' work that it is unlikely that any professional genealogists' organization has questioned if it is desirable to help anyone to join a club that expressly keeps out others who do not have the same or a similar lineage. Maybe it is time for us to do so. Maybe it is time for us to add to our Codes of Ethics clauses to the effect that we will not contribute our research to activities that use genealogy as a basis for exclusion or injustice. Going further, we might add clauses to the effect that, in order to protect the honour of our profession, we will make every effort to stop such abuse.

It is sad and even somewhat horrifying that these abuses, that the nonsensical idea of superiority or inferiority based upon bloodlines, heredity or genealogy, are again a worry, when we should have thought all modern societies would have most vigourously crushed such idiocy by now. Dr. Jasanoff's essay may be a bit muddled but her points are most valid and we would suggest that those whose first reaction was to sense an attack on their profession and/or pastime and to retaliate pause to give it another reading.

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

In response to the above, we have had this e-mail from Monsieur W:

"Dear Anne,

There are very few propositions that have universal application. The only one of which I am aware is René Descartes’ “Je pense, donc je suis” (or, if you prefer, “cogito, ergo sum”), which is both universal and irrefutable, even though it may be only momentarily true.

Your proposition that genealogy should not be used to establish exclusivity or defend exclusions does, I believe, require some limitations. To apply it universally may have unintended consequences.

Australia’s recognition of Aboriginal land rights arises from a principle that Aboriginal nations existed before European settlement, and that they were peopled by indigenous language groups whose members have living descendants, comprising at least 4 percent of Australia’s current population. To meet the requirements of Aboriginality, you must satisfy three genealogy-based measures:

· The person must identify as Aboriginal.

· The relevant Aboriginal community must recognise the person as Aboriginal.

· The person must be Aboriginal by way of descent.

A member of an Aboriginal language group may enjoy exclusive benefits. He or she may live on land that others would require a permit to enter. He or she might share exclusively in royalties from mining companies extracting resources from that land.He of she

These hereditary rights have been established in Australian law through a recognition that they embody rights and laws that were not extinguished by colonisation.

I am in full agreement with you that lineage societies, and their ilk, need to be put under an ethical microscope, but I would suggest this is a complex problem that needs to be approached cautiously. What is the intent of the society? Does its manifest cause harm to those who cannot meet its criteria? Has it crossed the line between fellowship and snobbish superiority? Do its members gain advantages that should be equally available to others? Are there actually people who want to be taken into a genealogical family, even though they have no genealogical connection with that family? Would such a demand, in itself, be legitimate?

Your blog will, I hope, stimulate this debate, and I’m sure many of your readers will be interested in following its development."

The Men of the Gardes Mobiles Who Joined the California Gold Rush

Dear Readers, we are quite chuffed to be able to tell you that our article about the men of the Gardes mobiles who went to California to find gold has appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of The California Nugget the journal of the California Genealogical Society. As some of you may recall, we have been working on this subject for quite a while, writing about passenger lists of the California-bound here, and writing reviews of books on the subject here and here. It was in the last that we read the essay, Une émigration insolite au XIXe siècle, Les soldats des barricades en Californie (1848-1853), by Madeleine Bourset, and learned for the first time of the men who had fought in Paris during the Revolution of 1848 and who were sent to California afterward. 

Who were they? Their names could be found nowhere, had been published nowhere. What was their story? It took many years, many visits to archives and even more e-mails and letters to archivists before we, at long last, had the complete list of all the names of the Gardes mobiles who went to California. We cannot take full credit for finding it; the last hunt was done by a superbly diligent and generous archivist in the naval archives at Toulon, Madame Boucon, under the auspices of Monsieur Triboux,* but we shall take credit for persevering, even pestering, in the quest. 

We are grateful to the editors at The California Nugget for accepting our article, with the entire passenger list of the guards' names, for publication. They then did some very impressive further research to discover the stories and descendants of as many of the men as possible, producing biographical sketches on the following men:

• Deligne
• Ducroquet
• Dulac
• Gaillard
• Lucien
• Mené
• Pelissier
• Sauffrignon
• Souillié
• Tridon

With this issue, the editors have created what we believe to be the definitive study to date on the Californian Gardes mobiles and we are quite honoured to have been a contributor to it. Should you have an ancestor  amongst this fascinating and hitherto unnamed group, we hope that you will find this issue of The California Nugget to be of aid to your genealogical research.

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

* Read here of other generous acts of research on the part of French archivists.

French Noble Emigrés in Bath and Jersey

Those of you who have been reading The French Genealogy Blog for a while may have discovered that we despise the principle of aristocracy, the premise that those born to privilege, power and vast swathes of property are somehow superior human beings. It is an illogical premise promoted only by its beneficiaries, and one that almost daily evidence disproves; generations of power and wealth have not produced people of superior intelligence or beauty or prowess or morality. Rather, there would seem to be some evidence to indicate that numerous generations of people who delude themselves that they are better than others and that those they consider to be inferior are somehow sub-human have produced a disproportionate number of psychopaths.

Nevertheless, if you have them among your ancestors, we see no reason not to research them and we remind you that we have written about such research a number of times:

• Ancestors Among the French Nobility
• Nobles on the Net
• The Cabinet des Titres
• The Beleaguered Nobility of Brittany
• Aristocracy Comes and Goes
• Everyone Wants a French Noble Among Their Ancestors

Today's topic is an interesting aspect of researching those nobles known as émigrés for having left France, their heads on their shoulders, during the French Revolution, specifically, researching those who went to England. The émigré period, when people of the nobility went abroad to escape both the Revolution and the First Empire but, with the First Restoration, felt it was safe to return, is generally given as being from 1795 to 1814.

Family life did not freeze while they were away; some died, some married and many were born, events which were recorded in notebooks of the local Catholic churches in their places of exile. Gildas Bernard wrote that these notebooks were produced in "various chapels in London and others in Southampton, Winchester, Bath, Jersey, Guernesey".¹ They contain a great deal more than the usual detail, for the nobles involved were keen to assert their identities. However, the notebooks were not discovered until 1949, in the French Embassy in London. Before that, diligent researchers of a different kind of nobility went to Jersey and to Bath and conducted original research in the records of the churches there, publishing their work in :

• Les Familles françaises à Jersey pendant la Révolution, by the Comte Régis de l'Estourbeillon in 1889. This is a massive work of more than six hundred pages. Families are listed alphabetically but really, as the names have so many articles and extensions, that is not much more help in finding them than one has with the correct Arabic names given alphabetically in Brill's Encyclopaedia of Islam. For each family, a brief history is given, then major alliances are listed, then the heraldic escutcheon is described. After this, the events that were recorded in the church during the family's exile are listed in full.
• "Les Emigrés Bretons réfugiés à Bath pendant la Révolution", by Charles Robert in Revue de Bretagne, de Vendée et d'Anjou, June 1898. A much smaller work because there were fewer refugees in Bath, this simply reproduces, verbatim, the baptism, marriage and burial entries from the church register.

One of our Dear Readers showed us a rather delightful way in which some of the information given in the works above can be verified. When they returned, the émigrés went to work reclaiming their property and re-establishing themselves. Some, wanting to be sure that all was in order, went to the local courts with all of their documents, including their certificates of baptism, marriage or a relative's death abroad, to have all of them legally accepted in France. Some then went to the town hall with the court approval and all of the documents and had all of the births, marriages and deaths entered into the civil registers.

Thus, the family of the Marquis de Kermel de Kermesen were living in Bath when a number of children were born. Charles Robert in his article confirms this in his lists of births there. In the Guingamp civil register of births for 1833, the births, and a very great deal more about the family, are entered, as can be seen in these pages from the website of the Departmental Archives of Côtes-d'Armor. It took eight pages.

If this happened more than once, which seems likely, then you, Dear and Noble Readers, could try starting at the end of the trail to trace your returned émigré ancestors. Try searching in the civil registers of the towns where one of them was living, examining the pages through a number of years after their possible return. Try searching in the Jersey or Bath publications mentioned above. You may get lucky and find them in both!

UPDATE: Dear Reader Monsieur O sent via e-mail the link to the Bath Burial Index, which you may search for French ancestors who may have died there during their self-imposed exile.

 

©2019 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

 

¹Bernard, Gildas. Guide des Recherches sur l'Histoire des Familles. Paris : Archives nationales, 1981, p. 306

Gallipolis and "The French 500"

One of you, Dear Readers, has written, asking us to write about the poor French dupes of some early American scam artists. Known in Ohio as 'The French 500", they were a group of people, some of the nobility, some artisans, and their families who thought that they might have a better future anywhere else than in revolutionary France. A glib Yale man who spoke French, Joel Barlow, and who had more passion than integrity, took advantage of their fears and hopes and sold them land that neither he nor the company he represented, the Scioto Company, actually owned. The Wikipedia article on Barlow states that "Scholars believe that he did not know the transactions were fraudulent."

Oh, yes he did, and the superb, definitive study on Gallipolis, proves it, using French notarial records, beyond any doubt. Gallipolis : Histoire d'un mirage américain au XVIIIe siècle, by Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli, is the book published from her thesis and it is a masterpiece of historical research clearly presented. She explains first the background to land speculation in America, and then describes that shady character, William Duer, and his creation of the Scioto Company. We like that she sees, in this context, the American Dream as the American Mirage, and property speculation as a uniquely American tradition, (reminding us of our father, a very unsuccessful realtor who truly believed that every next deal would put us on Easy Street). She digs deep into notarial records of the sales, examines the economic, social and historical reasons that people might quit Paris for the wilderness of the Northwest Territory, and reveals the types of people who went.

For most of you, Dear Readers, language throws up its proverbial barrier, for the book is in French. We really do think there is a call for it to be translated into English for there are many who would appreciate it, so please do urge your friends in publishing to consider it. We will here extract what is perhaps the most genealogically useful information.

With very impressive sleuthing, Ms. Moreau-Zanelli has identified seven vessels that carried French emigrants:

• Recovery
• Pennsylvania
• Patriote
• Liberté
• Mary
• Lady Washington
• Nautilus of Scarborough
• Union
• Citoyenne de Paris

Not all of their ports of departure are known but she discovered their three ports of arrival as Amboy, Alexandria and Philadelphia. For two of the vessels, the Patriote and the Liberté, departing passenger lists survive in the Le Havre passenger lists on the website of the Departmental Archives of Seine-Maritime. (Both are on roll number 6P6/19) They have been transcribed by  the "Gallia County Genealogical Society OGS Chapter, Inc." reached via their page on The French 500.  Beware that these are partial transcriptions and that some names have been missed. For example, on the Patriote, there were André Joseph Villard, his wife, Noel Agathe Sophie Demeaux, and their two daughters, Constance Eugenie Etiennette and Félicité, along with two domestic servants. The transcription misses out six-year-old Félicité.

It will never be possible to compile a list of all of the passengers' names, for the documents have not survived. Additionally, many of the aristocrats, not wishing to voyage with the hoi polloi, booked their own passages, often by way of Saint-Domingue. However, Ms. Moreau-Zanelli has compiled a superbly helpful list, entitled "Tableau de Ventes", with over three hundred names of people who bought land from the Scioto Company through Barlow. In the table, she gives about each purchaser his or her:

• Name
• Profession
• Sex
• Place of origin
• Amount of land purchased
• Amount paid

This table, along with the two surviving passenger lists, will probably be the the most complete list of names of The French 500 that will ever be possible. We hope that you will be able to find your ancestor among them.

Please, we beg of you, if you have an interest in this subject, to buy Ms. Moreau-Zanelli's book and to encourage others to do so; do not steal her hard work and put it on some Rootsweb list. That is the sort of thing that brings scorn upon all of us who are genealogists.

Gallipolis : histoire d'un mirage américain au XVIIIe siècle

Jocelyne Moreau-Zanelli

published by l'Harmattan in 2000

ISBN-13: 978-2738489173

458 pages

 

©2019 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

Article Review - Women in the French Military Archives

Some years back, we reviewed here the stellar tome on genealogical research using France's military archives, written by the archivists at the Service Historique de la Défense,  (SHD) Sandrine Heiser and Vincent Mollet. Inexplicably, when we listed some of the chapter headings in that review, we neglected one on a subject for which we have, of course, a rather natural affinity: women in the French military. We may have missed "Votre ancêtre était ...une femme" ("Your ancestor was a woman") because it is only three pages long, with half of those pages filled with photographs, or we may have to confess that we missed it because our work was not up to standard that day, for which we apologize with bow and scrape. Happily, Madame Heiser expanded on that chapter in an article written for the Revue Historique des Armées (it may be downloaded as a PDF). For those who cannot read French but have women to research, we give here a summary. 

Madame Heiser divides her subject into nine categories:

• Femmes militaires et filles débauchées - "Military Women and Debauched Girls", are covered by a small group of archives, just one carton, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and concerns mostly women who were spies or who served in the army disguised as men. This carton also includes cases against those camp followers who were prostitutes, the "debauched girls".
• Cantinières, vivandières et blanchisseuses - "Canteen-keepers, sutlers and laundresses", including not only the women who did these jobs but the wives of any men who did them, from 1791 to 1900. There is no index to the names of the women included, so a researcher would have to spend some time reading the files.
• Les femmes « pensionnées » ou « décorées » - "Women Who Received Pensions or Military Decorations". Those in the category above, as well as widows of men in the military, often had to petition for a pension and the records of those petitions are in this group. 
• Mères et épouses de militaires - "Mothers and Wives of Men in the Military". Would it not be grand if this were an archive of all such women, and with an index as well? It would, indeed, but it is not. Madame Heiser explains here that these women may be discovered by reading a soldier's individual service record. It is true, as she says, that the details are rich and there are often, in a man's file surprise bonus documents, but in no way is there such a collection about these women; they are incidental in the information about the men.
• Les femmes « personnel civil » - "Women Who Were Army Civilians", a large group of many thousands of women, mostly employed during the two World Wars. The archives of all Army civilian personnel are held at a facility in Châtellerault, described here.
• Agents secrets et espionnes  - "Secret Agents and Spies", a series dating from the eighteenth century and including the file on the infamous and unlucky Mata Hari.
• Vers un statut militaire - "Toward a Military Status". Here, Madame Heiser explains that women could not join the Army in any capacity until 1940 and that their files are held along with the men's, divided only according to the branch of the military in which they served.
• Des femmes militaires témoignent - "Women in the Military Bear Witness". Within the archives oral history collection are many accounts by women, especially of but not exclusively of their service in the Air Force.
• À Pau, 100 000 dossiers de femmes - "At Pau, 100,000 Files on Women". In the city of Pau is the Central archives concerning modern military personnel (CAPM), all those born before 1983, and many of them are women. 

Most of these archives are not online but the finding aids, increasingly, are. By studying those, you may be able to narrow your search enough to request copies from the SHD. Otherwise, you may have to hire a researcher. Unfortunately, now is not the time. The SHD at Vincennes is closed for the month of August and the website is down, yet again, for maintenance. Plan to tackle this in the autumn.

There is a pair of battered, blue binders filled with old, typed finding aids at the SHD in Vincennes that are probably our favourite books in the whole place. They cover the series in GR Y, all of the oddities that fit nowhere else in the vast system. Many of the archives described above are in GR Y, containing the stories of remarkable women. We do hope one of them is an ancestor of yours.

©2019 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

 

A French Gold Miner Ancestor in California?

We have been contacted by a Dear Reader seeking research suggestions on hunting French prospectors of gold in California. Our own ancestor, a cantankerous and surly fellow by all accounts, was one of a group of enthusiasts from Virginia who bought a ship, sailed it to San Francisco, sold it there and dispersed to the gold fields to find their fortunes. He did well enough to buy a ranch in the Central Valley. Did your French ancestor do the same and, if so, how to trace him or her?

No point in our reinventing any wheels here, so we will point you to the best resource, online or off, which is A.P. Nasatir's "French Activities in California: An Archival Calendar-Guide".

 

 

 

Nasatir gives an excellent introduction that gives a brief but thorough discussion of the French in the Americas. He tells of Balguerie's commercial venture in 1816, sending the Bordelais to Valparaiso, San Francisco and onwards. He tells of the important publication about the beauties of California by de Morineau, Notice sur la Nouvelle Californie. He discusses, with some humour, the few French ships that went to California just before the discovery of gold, and those that went there afterward. He then goes on to give every possible resource to be used in researching the early French arrivals in California, including a discussion of what may be found in the Diplomatic Archives, or Archives diplomatiques. A good example of such research, which may be helpful, is Jean-Nicolas Perlot's Goldseeker:

 

Nasatir's book was written in 1945 and published by Stanford University Press. It was probably read by about four people pursuing their studies during the war. Since then, it has been quoted widely in other academic sources, but was most likely of use only to academics wth travel grants. The Internet being the new gold rush, you may now, Dear Readers, use this book* to find much to help with your research of that gold miner ancestor.

Plongez!

©2016 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

*Nasatir wisely renewed the copyright, which is why some pages of the book are not online.

Some rather helpful comments have been added below.

FGB Free Clinic - Case no. 3 - Pierre Jacob Gaubert - at the XXIII Congrès national de Généalogie

As we have written, the 2015 Congrès national de Généalogie seemed a subdued affair. The word going round was that the villain was the Internet, that people are now doing all of their research online and are no longer joining or purchasing from the many genealogy associations and that, as a consequence, the associations are struggling to keep going. If this be the case, it is a great pity, for these associations are invaluable. Clearly, the Internet is a boon to genealogical research, but it is a complement to and not a replacement of the accumulation of expertise to be found in the membership of the genealogy associations. Just as no library cataloguing system will ever take the place of the brain of an experienced reference librarian, so the Internet, which is a generalist, cannot replace the expertise of the genealogy specialists who populate the associations.

One of the things we most like to do at these conferences is to take our research bugbears to these experts and see what they can find in their own collections and among their colleagues. Just before leaving for the conference, we had this request from Mademoiselle G.:

My ancestor Pierre Jacob Gaubert was born in Nantes and left sometime between 1772 (b.) and around 1800 to come to Louisiana.  I have no idea if he made stops along the way.  I have kind of done a "hit and miss" search for him but nothing methodical and I don't know the sources to research.  Also, I know very little French so I'm at a disadvantage there.

We strolled up to the stand of the Centre Généalogique de Loire Atlantique when there was a rare moment of it not being crowded with visitors. We presented the above puzzle and the kindly lady started searching the private databases of the CGLA. (It is worth noting here that all of the cercles and associations have numerous databases from many sources, not only parish and civil registrations, and not all of these have been rented to the commercial genealogy companies. Usually, with membership to the specific association, some may be searched on their own websites. Not all; it may still be necessary to write a query.) She found nothing. Then, she rummaged in the heaps of books and cartons on the floor behind her, et voilà!

She hauled out a very battered copy of Les Acadiens en France : Nantes et Paimboeuf 1775-1785 by Gérard-Marc Braud. (ISBN 2-908261-47-2) On page 117 she found a very large amount of information on Pierre Jacob Gaubert and his family, listed under the name of his father, Guillaume, which we give here in part:

As family no. 173 in the book: Gaubert, Guillaume (s), born abt. 1742 in Eparsac, Tarn-et-Garonne, son of Jacques Gaubert and of Françoise Perier, a doctor, in the parish registers for St.-Similien, Nantes. He was married to 1) Marie-Modeste Gaudet, in La Rochelle, in the parish of Saint-Nicolas and 2) Marie Gaudet in Nantes. Pierre-Jacob Gaubert was his first child from his first marriage, baptised on the 21st of January 1777 in St.-Similien, Nantes. 

There is a great deal more information, running to two pages on the families concerned. It gives the names of the seven ships on which each individual travelled to Louisiana in 1785 as well as references to various other types of documentation in which they appear. The book is in both French and English, which will be of use to those who, like Mademoiselle G. have little French. Eventually, we would have come across it via the Internet, but it would have taken some time. Here, it took five minutes, because the expert knew where to look. 

Keep these associations going; join one, please.

©2015 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy