Acte de Rectification - Changing a French Birth Register Entry

We were contacted by a Loyal Reader and Supporter of this blog, Monsieur M., with the following about his ancestress: 

Have you ever heard of an "Acte de rectification"?

I have an 2x Great Aunt who's birth name was entered incorrectly in the village register. Salome Fix, born in Climbach, Bas-Rhin, in 1835. Her surname was entered incorrectly into the town register as Fuchs.

When she was 21, she sought to have a correction made, to her actual name. The actual name of FIX, and the error of FUCHS.

One would think this would be a simple matter, right? Correct a mistake? This happens all the time, no? But no.

My relative had to go to a tribunal in the nearby administrative town, and get a ruling from the tribunal, ordering that the register be altered to show her actual name. And she had to produce evidence to prove her own name, which included her father's marriage record, where the correct family name was used. So, the tribunal issued an "Acte de rectification," an Act of Rectification, and a note was duly added to her entry in the birth register.

Ever heard of this? Having never encountered it before (or the degree of legalese involved), it seems unusual to me. I googled it, and not much came up.

Thanks for your work and your blog,

 

He had also discussed this on Reddit, where the responses are, for the most part, quite well informed. One commenter explains the State's ownership of records of civil status; another gives this link to the Code de procedure civile, which explains how such a rectification must be made in France.

Having fought our own battle to change our name, we are most sympathetic with Salomé. It is difficult to do in any country, but the situation in France requires a bit more explanation for the genealogist than the fine folk of Reddit chose to give.

In 1804, the Code Civil was first published. It is a remarkable work. After the French Revolution, the laws and customs of King and Church, insofar as they governed civil society, were abolished. New civil laws, based upon reason, it was intended, were (and still are) the Code Civil, also known as the Napoleonic Code. Page twenty-eight clearly states that any alteration to a civil register entry must be authorized by a court.

It is preceded by the rules for birth, banns, marriage and death register entries. For the banns and marriage, each of the couple had to present a certified copy of their birth register entry. When a man reported for military service, he had to present such a copy. As did any child when registering for school. Thus, any mistake would be perpetuated; it could not, as in other countries, be altered by a customary use. Moreover, for a woman, as was Salomé, the name would not disappear when she married, as it does in other countries; as we explained here, a woman's birth surname is always her legal name in France. Thus, it is clear how important it is for a civil register entry to be correct.

Yet, while we have seen quite a few rectifications, we have seen only one case where a rectification was surely required but never made. In late December of 1877, Julien François Morin was born to an unmarried mother in Bourges. The midwife declared the birth and, the register states, presented the child, who was registered, (see image no. 421 here) as female, the word quite boldly written. A few months later, the child's parents married and recognized Julien as their son. (The marriage and recognition can be seen at image 145 here.) Was this a case of ambiguous genitalia? Of a midwife who mixed up some babies? Of a myopic or drunken civil registrar? Julien Mamet, as his name became after his parents' marriage, lived as a man, serving in the army, marrying and divorcing a woman, but his birth register entry was never corrected. The two marginal notes on it refer to his parents' marriage, which legitimated his birth, and to his own marriage. How did he manage the discrepancy each time he had to present the certified copy of his birth register entry? How was he entered in the Livret de famille? Should anyone of the mairie in Bourge read this, please let us know.

Many thanks to Monsieur M for inspiring this post.

©2023 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

Napoleon's Law on Children's Names

The English section of Radio France presents a regular podcast "Spotlight on France". It gives pithy and perky summaries of the events of the day, with occasional fillers of historical or cultural interest. A recent edition contains something of interest to French genealogists: a discussion of Napoleon's 1803 law on what people could name their children.

Coincidentally (or not?) the law was passed on the 1st of April and remained in effect for one hundred fifty years before it was relaxed a tad. It was not until 1993 that, at long last, parent could name their children what they pleased, with the courts intervening only if they deemed that the name were not "in the interest of the child". (Such names as "Ugly", for example, or "9X", which do make one reflect, not on the courts' intervention into family life, but on some peoples' idea of parenthood.) 

You can hear the podcast here. The portion concerning the law on names begins at at thirteen minutes and eight seconds (13:08). 

Some years ago, we wrote our own post upon the subject and we give that again :

Historically, the French have been very strict about naming. It is permitted to change a name legally, but very difficult, and only with a very good reason. Even when one does, every single official document about one gives one's name as "Monsieur X, who changed his name from Y...." One might as well not have bothered.

Forty per cent of all French surnames are religious, falling into general groupings, as determined by the authors of the Grand Dictionnaire des Noms de Famille (éditions Ambre, 2002)

• Biblical names, such as Adam, Daniel, Gabriel, Levy, or Salomon
• The evangelists' or apostles' names or Mary and Joseph, such as Jacques, Andrieu, Pierre, Marie, Joseph, Lucas, Marc
• Names of saints that may have Germanic, Greek, of Latin origins, such as Arnaud, Lambert, Nicolas, Vidal, or Clément
• Names of religious occupations, such as Clerc or Moine
• Names of religious festivals, such as Noël or Toussaint
• Names of pilgrimages, such as Pelerin
• Names of religious places such as Chapelle
• There are also surnames of a religious nature given to nameless foundlings such as Dieudonné, meaning God-given.

If surnames have been influenced by religion, first names have been even more so, and that religious influence was used by the government for its own purposes. Humorous stories abound of parish priests who imposed the name of a favourite saint upon every child, with generations of children having the name Martin or Martine. No priest would baptize a child who did not have a Christian name. The rigidity was continued by the officers in charge of entries into birth registers. As late as the 1970s, an acquaintance of ours tried to register the birth of his daughter Pénélope. The officer at the Mairie refused to accept the name because it did not comply with the 1803 law. Our acquaintance was stunned but possessed a formidable amount of French dudgeon and won the day; so Pénélope she is.

Some names were not permitted on the grounds of their not being French. The civil government extended the custom of the priests' limiting of names in order to prevent any child having a name from the suppressed language of lower Brittany. Breton names such as Aezhur or Tangi were not accepted by either priest for baptism or clerk for acte de naissance. The parents had to choose another name. Today, though Breton is still not recognized as a language by the French government (read here an in-depth CNN article on the subject of the Breton language's struggle for survival) such Breton names as Yannick and Annick are beginning to be heard again. 

©2023 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

FGB Free Clinic - Case no. 9 - Marie Fouyol, Parisian wife of Thomas Mansell, part 11 - Fanny Mansell's Sampler

From Monsieur E, we have received the most astonishing of responses to our series attempting to identify Marie Fouyol. He sends us a beautifully told and well-researched study of a lovely sampler by Marie Fouyol's daughter. Read on.

Fanny Mansell’s sampler of 1818

Recently I followed a link to Anne Morddel’s wonderfully helpful French Genealogy Blog and soon came upon her ten-part series of blogposts on her quest for records of Thomas Mansell, the Yorkshire weaver detained at Fontainebleau and then in Paris when renewed conflict between England and France erupted in 1803, and his French wife Marie Fouyol.

I was greatly excited by this because, some years ago, I purchased at an antiques show in Canada a textile sampler (marquoir) made in France by Joséphine Fanny Mansels (sic) in 1818 at the age of seven. The dealer thought it was French Canadian, and somewhat unusual for that reason. [Salahub] But upon doing some research I soon identified Fanny as Thomas Mansell’s daughter, the later Mrs. Greig, and realized her story was a lot more complicated. The wording on the sampler records, in French, the day they left Paris, which she evidently added later. This is the only sampler I have seen that records an act of migration. As it was produced in Paris under French influence it differs from English samplers in a number of respects. And it introduces some new hints about the family’s life in France.

Samplers originated as exemplars: oblong pieces of cloth bearing sample stitches as teaching and memory aids for young seamstresses. Over the course of the eighteenth century they became more ornamental: a demonstration of a young girl’s accomplishments and something to be framed rather than kept in a drawer for reference. Sometimes a series of samplers was produced as a girl gained in knowledge and experience [Mouillefarine 88]; usually only the last was retained once her training was complete. As many were produced in schools and female academies, they reflect standardized motifs typical of their time and place as well as occasional unique elements specific to the maker.

Some scholars view samplers as a form of life writing or autobiography. This viewpoint has been popularized by a spate of articles about an unusually introspective English sampler from the 1830s consisting of the textual lamentations of a servant girl who had been abused by an employer. [e.g. Flower, Pezzoli-Olgiati] Samplers in the English tradition tend to be more didactic than introspective. Many contain moralistic verses derived from books of instruction for children, but most are personalized to the extent of naming the maker of the textile, and stating her age and the date it was made. A location is also fairly standard, and less often the name of the school or instructor under whose direction the child produced the item. Samplers reveal or at least suggest information about the creator’s education and values: or at least the values which the instructor sought to inculcate.

Typically of early 19th century French examples, Fanny Mansell’s sampler was worked in silk threads on linen using cross-stitch. [Pouchelon 5, 108] Her sampler tells us nothing overtly about its creation – she names no school or teacher – but as is typical it gives her name and age and the year. But the text is in French, and the conventions of the sampler are culturally more French than English. Though French samplers are less likely to include moralistic or religious verses than English ones, they are more likely to include religious symbols. Fanny’s resembles other French samplers from the First Empire and Restoration in using an alphabet based on the Encylopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert and featuring discreet Catholic religious symbols and naïve flowers and animals, [Mouillefarine 48] with about 80% of the space devoted to the motifs. [Pouchelon 108]

The top row begins with the monogram of Jesus in blue: IHS with a cross atop the crossbar of the H, but with the S reversed. To the left of the alphabet is an outlined cross atop a stepped base. The alphabet commences, as in most French samplers, with a small cross with equal arms called the Croix de par Dieu:  Sampler historian Catherine Pouchelon explains that a French child reciting the alphabet began by making the sign of the cross and, following the Encyclopédie, model alphabets included the symbol as a reminder to the student. [Pouchelon 91-94]

While many French samplers from this period feature a centrally-placed altar, Fanny’s centres a monstrance (a stand incorporating a glazed shrine for displaying the host) below the alphabet but omits the altar. Above it two birds face a crown, as in an example from c.1814 [Pouchelon 110]. An 1819 example [Mouillefarine 66] similarly shows a crown above the monstrance but flanked by lions instead of birds. Even lacking the lions the crown may reference the Bourbon restoration of 1814. The monstrance in Fanny’s sampler is smaller than many of the other motifs. To the right below her name are five small tools. The third may be an arrow, the fifth a pair of tongs or pincers. If these are intended to represent the instruments of the Passion, a common set of symbols on French samplers, they are given a fairly token presence. Various potted plants dominate, with a few small birds and animals and in the bottom row a windmill, ship, and table-and-chairs, common motifs in samplers of the era.

The alphabet is in blue, with only a few letters having both capital and lower-case letters: Aa, Cc, Mm Nn Qq. The capital Q interestingly is in English form but with the tail pointing left, rather than resembling a backwards P following the Encyclopédie. As in most French alphabets there is no W. Z is followed by an ampersand and the numbers 1 through 10. In the texts toward the bottom of the sampler Fanny employs mostly lower case letters in recording her name and age (also in blue) but with upper case D and G (the lower case letters for which are lacking from her alphabet). But she makes liberal use of the lower case e despite not recording an exemplar in her alphabet. And again we find a reversed capital S. She is careful to include the accent on the “e” where appropriate, something her teacher may have emphasized. In recording her departure from Paris, in red, she employs all capitals apart from in the opening word “quiter”. Her arrival in England is added in white using mixed characters, omitting an “r” from “ARIVé” and abbreviating the month “Juillet” to “Jet”.

Despite the muted Catholic symbolism and the attempt at an anglo capital Q, Fanny’s sampler suggests she was raised in the Parisian cultural milieu of her mother – French and Catholic – rather than in a self-isolating English émigré community. In the 1901 census of Carleton Place, Ontario, Fanny stated her mother tongue as French, again suggesting she was raised and educated in a French Catholic environment. As her father seems to have been illiterate, this should not surprise.

Needlework was an integral part of girls’ education whatever their social rank, whether that education was formal or informal, though the formal education of girls in France lagged behind that in England. From practical exemplar to demonstration of accomplishment, learning this dexterous manual work was integrated with other types of knowledge. While some girls may have been instructed by their mothers, the samplers resulting would likely be less elaborate than those that were worked under the tutelage of a skilled needlewoman.

We have a clue to the possible identity of her instructor. Fanny’s godmother at the time of her baptism in 1814 at the age of two years and two months was Joséphine Thomassin, Mme. Cartier, a chamareuse [Morddel parts 2 and 6], one who decorates clothing with trimmings, lace, and braid. [Reymond n.p.] This implies that Thomassin made her living through sewing rather than embroidery and indeed chamareuse was accounted a humble occupation. But Mme Cartier was able to sign her name capably, and she may have worked below her skill level. Anne has traced Thomassin’s background, found record of her marrying Jean Baptiste Joseph Cartier in 1802, living in rue du Petit Lion Saint Sauveur, and having children in 1810 and 1812. While she has not tracked her beyond 1813 when she stood godmother to Françoise Joséphine Mansell (who likely took her middle name from her), the fact that her death has not turned up makes it plausible that she was still living in 1818 when Fanny made her sampler.

It is interesting that though she was baptized as Françoise Joséphine, she stitched her name as Joséphine Fanny Mansels, including the proper accent on the e but giving the name by which she was known, Fanny rather than Françoise. That she spelled Mansels with an s adds another spelling to the list of variants associated with documents relating to her English father, who was stated in French baptismal records as unable to sign.

The sampler includes an unusual biographical element in recording the date Fanny left Paris (April 1, 1819) and the day she reached her destination (July 20), presumably where members of the wider family were then living in Yorkshire. This was perhaps Strensall just northeast of York, where Thomas’s brother Robert lived in 1809, and where his brother John married in 1817. More likely Thomas joined his mother at Nunnington, in Ryedale, 21 km north. Here his father George had acquired a freehold by 1807 (having returned to his parish of birth) and had died in 1816. His widow Frances died there in 1829.

The information about the return from Paris appears to have been added later. The move is dated a year after the sampler itself, and the text breaks the symmetry, as for that matter does Fanny’s signature, which intrudes into the bottom tier of motifs. It is as if the idea of signing the sampler occurred as it was nearing completion, and even later the details of her travels were inserted in a small space remaining to the left.

Fanny understood the significance of leaving France, and gave it a permanent record here, and thus far this is the only record discovered of the precise dates of the family’s departure and arrival. She did not record their destination, but she did not have the space, and perhaps she thought they would be remaining there. Later changes to samplers are not unknown but they are unusual. Several authors refer to samplers in which the age or year have been unpicked later in life in an attempt to conceal a woman’s age. [Scott 47] Leaving Paris, journeying to England, and settling in rural Canada was also a major cultural shift for Marie Fouyol. Living in an Anglophone milieu, in localities where the Catholic minority was mostly Irish, she became Mary and appears to have made no attempt to retain her Catholicism. (Though recorded as Church of England in 1861 and in her death certificate, in the 1871 census the space for her religion was left blank: her son Alfred was Anglican but his wife was a Scot and she and the children were Presbyterians.) Did Fanny’s sampler move with her to Carleton Place, or 120 km north to Westmeath where Mary lived with Alfred? Hanging in either parlour, as it likely did, it was a tangible reminder of an earlier and very different life.

The story was not forgotten as Fanny’s gravemarker in the Auld Kirk Cemetery near Almonte, Ontario, records her birth in Paris, and the story is recounted in somewhat more detail in her newspaper obituary.[Morddel part 1] There are one or two factual errors due to the story being recounted by one of her children rather than by Fanny herself. Her younger brother Alfred was not born in England, as her obituary suggests, but rather in Elizabethtown Township near the St Lawrence River before the family relocated 90 km north to Ramsay. In the 1901 census Alfred gave his birthdate as April 28, 1821, and his death certificate states his place of birth as Elizabethtown. [Ont. d. cert. 1907/027101] This is consistent with Fanny’s obituary stating that the family lived at first near Brockville, though they may not have resided there all of the four years it claims.

Select bibliography

• • Flower, Chloe. “Wilful Design: The Sample in Nineteenth-Century Britain”, Journal of Victorian Culture 21, no. 3 (2016): 301-21
  • Lukacher, Joanne Martin. Imitation and Improvement: The Norfolk Sampler Tradition. Redmond, WA: In the Company of Friends, 2013
  • Morddel, Anne. French Genealogy Blog, Free Clinic, Case no. 9: Marie Fouyol, Parisian wife of Thomas Mansell (10 parts). https://french-genealogy-typepad.com
  • Mouillefarine, Laurence. Les Marquoirs Anciens de Catherine Pouchelon. Éditions Mango Pratique, Cahier du Collectionneur, 2005
  • Pezzoli-Olgiati, “’As i cannot write I put this down simply and freely’: Samplers as a Religious Material Practice,” Journal for religion, film, media www.jrfm.eu 7, no. 1 (2021): 95-122
  • Pouchelon, Catherine. Abécédaires Brodés du Modèle a l’ouvrage. Paris: Les Éditions de l’Amateur, 2001
  • Reymond, Paul. Dictionnaire des Vieux Métiers. Paris: Brocéliande
  • Salahub, Jennifer E. Quebec Samplers: ABCs of embroidery. Montreal: McCord Museum of Canadian History, 1994
  • Scott, Rebecca. Samplers. Botley, Oxford: Shire Publications, 2009

 

Thank you so much Monsieur E!

©2023 Monsieur E

French Genealogy

Secret Mother? Friend? Midwife? Who Is That Woman On the Birth Record?

If you have been researching your French ancestors for quite some time, you almost certainly will have come across a birth register entry on which the father was not named, père non dénommé. The father may have been present when his child was born, may have wanted to acknowledge it and give it his surname but, if he were married to a woman who was not the mother of the child, he was forbidden, by law, to acknowledge a child born to an adulterous relationship. This then becomes a possible clue. An unmarried, unnamed father could later claim or legitimate the child and your research would reveal this. An unnamed father who never legally claimed the child might possibly have been a married man, and that possibility can inform your research.

At times, the mother may also be unnamed, mère non dénommée. When it occurred that both parents were not named, the child was given two or three first names. The last could serve as a surname if the child were never adopted or as a middle name if they were. Such children were immediately put into care or given up for adoption. (We have only ever seen one case in which the mother was not named but the father was; highly unusual.) Here is an example of such a birth register entry for a child named Emile Léon Marcel, born in Paris in 1900, on which we have marked the key phrase, son of unnamed (or not identified) father and mother*:

Naturally, as a genealogist, you want to try to identify the father and mother. There rarely will be clues, just a few names. In the above, the names are:

• Henri Jules Bourrelier, the officer in the city hall of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, who is writing out the entry
• Marie Brunot, married name Romieu, the midwife (sage-femme) who made the birth declaration
• Séraphin Brunot, a mechanic, who may well have been the midwife's son or some other type of relation, present as a witness
• Louis Delevallé a printer who was also a witness

Before jumping to the conclusion that the printer, an extra witness, may have had a connection to the child, read through a few pages of the register to see if Louis Delevallé does not appear again and again as a witness, indicating that he was one of those people who made a bit of extra money by waiting around the City Hall and volunteering as a witness whenever one was needed. This same task can prove useful with the following example, the October 1905 birth of Draga Madeleine:

 

We have marked for you these details concerning the declaration:

• The baby was born at Avenue d'Italie, number 50, in the 13th arrondissement, to an unnamed father and mother
• The declarant was Emilie Prévost, married name Martin, aged forty, a seamstress, who lived at the same address and who was present at the birth.
• The first witness was Louise Anken, married name Calmon, aged thirty-eight, a hairdresser, living at Avenue d'Italie, number 11.
• The second witness was Louise Dumur, aged fifty, the concierge at the building of Avenue d'Italie, number 50.

None of the three women, the declarant and the two witnesses, is identified as a midwife. Two lived at the same address as where the baby was born. It is very tempting to wonder if one of them may not actually be the mother of the child, but beware ! Do not make such an assumption without doing a bit more work.

Firstly, check through the register, looking at other entries. Doing this, we found that they did reappear. The next day, Lucien Victor Wagner, a legitimate child whose parents were both named, was born at rue Nationale, no. 117. The declarant and witnesses were:

• Emilie Prévost, married name Martin, aged forty, a seamstress, who lived at avenur d"Italie, no. 50, and who was present at the birth.
• The first witness was Louise Anken, married name Calmon, aged thirty-four, a hairdresser, living at Avenue d'Italie, number 11.
• The second witness was Louise Dumur, aged fifty, the concierge at the building of Avenue d'Italie, number 50.

 

On the 12th of October, Marie Alice Guénot was born at the home of her parents in rue Albert. The same three women made the declaration and were witnesses:

We found two more birth register entries in the same month with the same three women as declarants and witnesses. Clearly, none of them is the mother of Draga Madeleine. They are not identified as midwives but would seem to have been operating as such.

Secondly, check to see if your women are registered as midwives. The Paris Police published regularly a list of doctors, health officers, midwives, dentists and pharmacists who were licensed to practice in Paris, Liste des docteurs en médecine, officiers de santé, sages-femmes, chirurgiens-dentistes et pharmaciens : exerçant dans le ressort de la Préfecture de police, of which many issues may be found here on Gallica. There is no issue for 1905; the closest year is for 1897. None of the women appear in the list of midwives. However, at avenue d'Italie, no. 11, the address of Louise Anken, there was a doctor, Emile Laurent. He was still there in 1913, the year of the next available issue of the publication. Perhaps Anken and Dr. Laurent had some sort of association or perhaps not. None of the women appears in the 1913 issue as a midwife.

So, even though the women in the birth register entry are not identified as midwives and though they are not registered as such, they were obviously performing that function, as evidenced by their repeated appearance in the birth register, and by the many children born at the address of two of them, avenue d'Italie, no. 50. None of them was the mother of any of the children they registered. As for little Draga Madeleine, the only clue as to the identity of her parents may be her highly unusual name, Draga, which could indicate that at least one parent was Serbian and that they had requested the midwife give that name to her.

The lesson here is to read more of the register than just the entry that interests you. Much can be learned and mistaken assumptions may be prevented.

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

 

*All of the images used in this post come from the website of the Archives de Paris: https://archives.paris.fr/ 

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

Passenger Lists From Morlaix - Crossing the English Channel During the Napoleonic Wars

We have been extremely busy, Dear Readers, working with a wonderful set of passenger lists from the early nineteenth century. Though England and France were at war from 1803 to 1815 (with a small break for a tenuous victory), travel between the two countries did not cease, not at all. There was a fairly steady stream of people moving in both directions, including:

• Released British prisoners returning home
• Released French prisoners arriving from Britain
• American diplomats and merchants voyaging between Paris and London
• Wives and children of British détenus returning to Britain
• French civilians going to and returning from Britain

They all had to travel via Morlaix, the only port in the French Empire from which it was permitted to sail for or arrive from England. The set of passenger lists with which we are working are the original departing passenger lists from Morlaix (arrival lists seem not to have survived), signed by the port officer, the Commissaire de la Marine à Morlaix, a Monsieur Dusaussois, and countersigned by the British port authority on arrival, usually at Dartmouth. We have not finished with them but they appear to cover the years from 1810 to 1814, and give some very interesting and useful details for the genealogist and for the historian. For each passenger, is given the:

• Name
• Place of origin - this can be just a country but is usually a city
• Age
• Profession or status, e.g. seaman, captain, passenger, etc.
• If a prisoner of war returning to Britain, where they had been captured
• Details and dates of their passports, which often reveal where they had been in France

Here, we have a passenger list from July of 1812. (War against Great Britain had just been declared by the United States but these passengers may not yet have had the news.)

1. John WASTON [possibly WATSON], of Ireland, aged 11, Student, Passport of 15 June 1812, delivered by the Commandant of the Depot of Prisoners of War at Verdun on the decision of His Excellency the Minister of War of 19 March preceding. 

2. Allen CASE, of New Bedford, United States , aged 34, ship captain, Taken by the privateer, ESPADON, from the ship, MASSACHUSETTS, which he commanded. Passport from the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America at Paris on 10 June 1812, no. 250, visa given by the Minister of External Relations and by the Police General on 12 and 19 of the same month. To embark at Morlaix.

3. Lazarus LEBARON, of Rochester, [Massachusetts]  aged 23, Mate, Included on the same passport.

4. William MILES, of Montgomery, aged 24, Seaman

5. Isaac STEWARD, black, of Philadelphia , aged 25, Seaman

6. John HERRIGTON, of Chatham, America, aged 21, Seaman

7. Samuel SKILDING, of Stramford [Stamford?], aged 20, Seaman

8. Eliza TUCKER, Mrs. HICKMAN, English, aged 24, Passenger, Road pass, dated 24 June 1812, no. 330, delivered by the Commandant of arms at Longwy, following the order of His Excellency the Minister of War.

9. Caroline HICKMAN, English, aged 20 months,Within the same Passport.

10. Mrs. Eliza HOLMES, widow of William ARNOLD, Lieut. R.N., of Mortonhall, aged 24, Passport dated 8 June 1812, no. 426, delivered by the Mayor of the City of Verdun, visa given by the prefecture of Police at Paris on the 30th of the month of June, no. 36738.

So, above, you have a young Irish boy, the crew of a captured American vessel, the MASSACHUSETTS, travelling to Britain, presumably expecting it to be easier there to find a vessel going to the United States, and three British women passengers coming from the prison depots at Longwy and Verdun.

These French documents have not survived in French archives but, remarkably, in the National Archives of Great Britain at Kew, in the Admiralty series ADM 103/480. Joyously for those of you, Dear Readers, who wish to see them, they are online on FindMyPast.co.uk, where the quality of indexing is, as we see so often on these commercial websites, abysmal. (For example Mme., the abbreviation for Madame, is repeatedly indexed as a first name. This sort of shabby work hinders rather than helps research.) We are profoundly indebted to Monsieur B.C. for helping us to find this series.

Further to the same pursuit, we recently embarked upon our first research voyage since the beginning of the pandemic, and visited the Municipal Archives of Morlaix. For years, it has been on our list of important archives that must be seen. It was in the Town Hall of Morlaix, facing the viaduct, in a lovely room of tall book cases.

These archives are open only on Thursdays and visits must be booked in advance. The archivist, when we booked, warned us that there was not much from the First Empire. He did not lie; there was next to nothing from that period. Our hopes of significant discoveries were dashed. 

However, we did come across a very pertinent government publication of instructions concerning passports for French citizens and for foreigners, that goes a long way to explaining the passport notes on the Morlaix passenger lists, above.

For those of you researching an ancestor of this period, particularly but not exclusively a British prisoner of war in France, these passenger lists may be most useful.

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

Women's Studies, Gender Studies - Suggestion for a Research Topic

Dear Readers, let us take a moment to step away from the ChallengeAZ to look at a topic that we find most curious and well worthy of further study - by someone else.

A few years ago, we wrote a post entitled "Did English Women Take Advantage of Anonymous Birth Laws in France?" and we are now quite convinced that the answer to the question is an emphatic yes. We have seen repeated many more times since writing that post the pattern that we described there: a small child appears, seemingly out of nowhere, on a British census, living with his or her mother. The mother and the child may or may not have the same surname, but there is no father in the household. The UK census shows that the child was born in France, often "in Paris". A possible French marriage may or may not be mentioned. Yet, while the illegitimate birth at times may be found in French registers, a search for the marriage will be fruitless.  The comment to that post, by Madame R. makes it clear that, in the last thirty years or so of the nineteenth century, the social stigma for a woman who had a child while not married would have been quite dreadful to endure. Those who could have afforded the voyage and stay, might have considered spending the confinement in France, where it would have been possible to register the child's birth either under a false name or completely anonymously. 

We think this would make an interesting study. In our own research, we have noticed that rather a lot of such births happened at small clinics in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just to the west of Paris. It would be possible to comb through the birth register entries of Neuilly for, say, the last three decades of the nineteenth century, seeking all births for which the mother had an English-sounding name. One would want to look at how many were illegitimate births versus how many were legitimate. Then, one could note the addresses where the births took place and check those addresses in the census returns for those decades. Did a majority of the illegitimate births take place at the same clinic or with the same midwife? (A list of Neuilly's maternity clinics and midwives would have to be compiled.) Did some of the women show up in the Neuilly census returns with the children? Were they at the same addresses? Finding the women and children afterward in the UK census returns would be the next step. Were they concentrated in the same regions or cities?

Ultimately, the most interesting question to answer would be "How did they know to go to Neuilly?" Did the French clinics advertise in British newspapers? Would the UK census returns show that they lived near a specific doctor or midwife and could that doctor or midwife have advised them to go to France? We now have seen too many cases of this for it to have been coincidence. In some unknown, perhaps "underground", way women in the early stages of pregnancy in England were learning that they could go to a rather obscure suburb of Paris to have their child under a different name or giving no name at all, then return to England with the child to claim on the census there that it was her own, the product of a fictional French marriage, or a friend's, later to be adopted. 

Any post graduates in gender studies and/or women's studies out there looking for a topic?

UPDATE:

We have had this very interesting comment on the above from Madame L.: 

"I imagine the topic of travel would have come up on the grapevine: that is in gossip between their mothers at some local event, like a church bazaar or a children's party, or perhaps through an intimate conversation with a school-friend. The other alternative for middle-class women, a 'nervous breakdown' in a distant private nursing home was so much more demeaning. I don't believe a respectable newspaper would have carried an overt advertisement, though the subject might have come up in a salacious gossip column, probably in the indirect code which English society uses and understands. Working-class women might stay with an aunt, but without a sympathetic relative or money, there was only the workhouse."

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

FGB Free Clinic - Case no. 9 - Marie Fouyol, Parisian wife of Thomas Mansell, part 8 - Next Steps - Know the Sources

To summarize, Dear Readers, we have looked at our few records in a number of ways  in an effort to find the origins of Marie Fouyol:

• We have analyzed the Paris baptisms of three of her children, the burial record of one of them, and some Canadian records concerning her life after emigration.
• We have looked at the French prisoner of war records concerning her English husband, Thomas Mansell
• We have studied various contexts concerning the couple while they were in Paris: historical, geographical, social
• We have analyzed signatures
• We have studied various Parisian families with variations of the name of Fouyol

To no avail. No other record or document could be found to give even a hint as to the origins of Marie Fouyol. Most frustrating. We would have expected to have found, at the very least, one of the following:

• One of her reputed two marriages. The Canadian obituary of her daughter stated that Marie was the widow of a French officer when she married Thomas Mansell. Given that it was war time, the marriage and death of an officer is plausible. Not to be able to find one marriage is frustrating, but not to be able to find either is most curious.
• A death or burial record for the child Pierre George Alphonse. We found the burial record for the baby, Jeanne Richard, but not for Pierre. Did he die in England? In Canada? Did he die in France, at the home of a wet-nurse, as was the case with one of the daughters of the Cartier-Thomassin couple? (Recall that Joséphine Thomassin was the godmother of Françoise Mansell.)

There is another puzzle. Marie Fouyol was probably Catholic, for it seems likely that she, and not her English Protestant husband, insisted on baptizing the children in the Catholic Church. Why was their first child not baptized until she was two years old? Were they away? Perhaps in England? (As odd as it may seem, travel between the two warring countries was still possible.) 

However, it is possible that the failure to find all of the records: the two marriages, the three birth register entries, the two children's death register entries, the death register entry for an officer whose widow was Marie Fouyol, can be explained by the destruction of the Paris Town Hall archives during the Paris Commune, if and only if every single one of those events, including the officer's death, took place in Paris. It is possible, but a bit unlikely.

In no way can this be termed a "brick wall", a complete lack of information on a person and a complete inability to identify the person. We have exhausted only what documentation and archives are available online, with the addition of a couple of prisoner of war files seen in the archives; we still have to get through a plethora of material that has never seen the lens of a camera.

Where to look next? We propose pursuing the following lines of enquiry:

• Thomas Mansell was a prisoner of war on work release, more or less. We know from his prisoner of war file that he reported that he had lost his papers in 1809 and that he was permitted to remain and work in Paris but under surveillance. 
  • The archives of the Paris Police contain records of just such reports in Series AA, as can be seen here on the Geneawiki page, which links to images of many of them. Unfortunately, they do not go up to the year of 1809, though they probably should be searched anyway.
  • The Archives nationales contain the police surveillance files of the period, as well as any surviving passport requests by foreigners, as explained here. Either could contain something on Thomas Mansell, which might also mention his wife and her origins.
  • There are a number of other possibilities in the Archives nationales but it is not entirely clear from the series descriptions if they would have something on Thomas Mansell:
    • Dossiers des détenus des prisons de la Seine. (Files on those held in prisons of the Seine department) It is not clear if this is purely criminals or also the foreigners briefly held in prison, as was Thomas Mansell at Fontainebleau, nor are the dates given.
    • Demandes de résidence à Paris. Dossiers individuels (an IV-an XI) (Requests to reside in Paris, individual files, 1795/6 to 1802/3) Thomas Mansell certainly requested to remain in Paris, and his employer probably made a request in his name in about 1802. It is not clear if this collection includes foreigners or not.
• Neither a civil nor a religious record has been found for the Mansell-Fouyol marriage, so the precise dates of the marriages are not known. Marie Fouyol Mansell had her first known child, Françoise, in 1811. If she were single while pregnant, between her two marriages, it is possible that she may have had to make a pregnancy declaration, even though these were almost outdated.
  • Again, the archives of the Paris Police contain records of some of the declarations in Series AA, and Geneawiki has arranged the digitization of some of them. Unfortunately, not all arrondissements of Paris are included and most do not go as late as 1811.
• Michel Fouyol of rue de la Tabletterie, who is a reasonable candidate to have been the father of Marie Fouyol, is slightly documented.
  • The Archives nationales have the originals of the cartes de sûreté, or security cards, which contain the subject's signatures. Some of these have been digitized by Geneawiki volunteers, but they have not yet reached the number of his card, 142296. Obtaining a copy of his signature for future comparison would be very useful, should we be so lucky as to find more documents concerning him.
• Many other weavers and machinists were held prisoner with Thomas Mansell at Fontainebleau. There are prisoner of war files on some of them:
  • George Archer
  • John, Thomas and Charles Callon
  • John Dean
  • James Flint
  • William Fleming

These files should be read to see if, as often happened, a mention or even a page about Thomas Mansell did not end up in someone else's file.

• Looking much more broadly:
  • British records could be searched for the death of Pierre Mansell and even the Mansell-Fouyol marriage
  • All Marie Fouyols born in 1782 or 1783 outside of Paris could be identified, with each being followed through civil registers until she can be ruled out as a possibility. Special attention should be paid to those in towns known to have been the origins of some of the Fouyols of all spellings identified in Paris.
  • The lives of the godparents could be pursued further, especially to see if any of them emigrated to Canada.
  • The Fouyol-Ackermann couple who had the one promising marriage in Paris in 1780 cold be researched thoroughly, to see if they had children.

Any other ideas, Dear Readers? If so, please let us know.

SUGGESTIONS SENT BY READERS:

• Madame T wrote: "...regarding the death of the child Pierre George Alphonse , he may have died aboard ship and his burial was at sea. If Marie Fouyol was going to and from Canada to France/England, she would have been on a ship. Are there any passenger lists that document her or her husbands travels?"

With this post, we will pause this case study to give Madame J time to pursue some of the avenues above.

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

FGB Free Clinic - Case no. 9 - Marie Fouyol, Parisian wife of Thomas Mansell, part 7 - Name Study

So, Dear Readers, to date, we have had little luck in our search for the identity of Marie Fouyol prior to her marriage to Thomas Mansell, her place of origin, her parents' names, her supposed first husband, and so forth. Bearing in mind that two thirds of the burned Paris archives have never been replaced, we will sort through what does exist, examining occurrences of her far too changeable name. We found people living in Paris at the time as she with the following variations of the name:

1. Fouillolle
2. Fouillol
3. Fouyolle
4. Fouyol
5. Foulliol
6. Fouyeul
7. Fouieul
8. Fouilleul

There are slight differences in the pronunciation. Numbers one through four are all pronounced the same, with the last "o" similar to that in the word "no" in English. Numbers six through eight are pronounced the same, with the ending "eul" sounding, to an English speaker, pretty close to the way Peter Sellers says "bump" in this scene. Number five is in a class of its own but is more like the first four than the last three. Spoken in a crowded marketplace, they all would have sounded pretty much the same. 

Marie would seem to have pronounced her own name with more of an "o" sound in the second syllable, as the spelling versions used for her name in the baptisms of her children are numbers two, three and four. She was not the only person to spell the name in more than one way. Many of the individuals used two or three of the above spellings.

Looking at the website Géopatronyme, it can be seen that none of the first four spellings survived to the late nineteenth century; number seven also does not survive. There is only one case of number five and a few cases of number six. It is number eight, Fouilleul, that dominated. It is found predominantly in the west of France, in Mayenne, and less so in Manche. The name means, by the way, "leafy" or "shady", which could occur anywhere, including a spot in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe.

In Paris during the period of roughly 1770, when the parents of Marie might have married, through 1830, some ten years after she left, all but one of the above names is found on the Right Bank, clustered around Les Halles, the vast warren of shops and markets, in the parishes of Saint Eustache, Saint Merri and Saint Germain l'Auxerrois. The Foulliol family, number five, lived to the west, near Invalides, where they also worked. The Invalides Foulliols were studied to some extent, through baptism, marriage and death register entries, as well as through probate inventories until, eventually, it became clear that Marie could not have been a member of this family. The remaining couples of interest are:

• Michel Fouyeul, a widower from Saint Maurice du Désert in Orne, who married a second time in Saint Eustache in 1786.
• Michel Fouieul, of rue du Poirier, who married Marie Jeanne LeLièvre in Saint Merri in 1807. They had a son, Michel Victor, in 1808.
• A man named Baratte, whose wife was Françoise Fouillol. Their son, born in 1805, married in Saint Merri in 1831.
• Michel Fouilleul, who married Jeanne Ackermann in Saint Germain l'Auxerrois in 1780.

Recall that there could have been a dozen or more couples of equal interest of whom all trace was lost in the burnt archives. Nevertheless, working with what we have, Michel Fouieul and Françoise Fouillol Baratte may have been of an age to have been siblings of Marie Fouyol. The two remaining Michels each could have been the father of Marie Fouyol, the widower from his first marriage, in 1778, to Margueritte Pinson, and the Michel Fouilleul who married Jeanne Ackermann in 1780, two or three years before Marie was born.

There is also a lone man of interest, Michel Fouyol. His carte de sûreté, issued in Paris on the 23rd of May 1793, on which his surname was entered as "Fouyolle" but his signature was "Fouyol", gave his address as number 103, rue de la Tabletterie, near Les Halles. He was aged fifty-three, a cleaner of animal skins and furs, and had lived in Paris for twenty years. He had been born in Le Teilleul, Manche. Apparently, he was a keen revolutionary, perhaps a true sans-culotte, for the author Darlene Gay Levy, in her book Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795, cites archival documentation showing that he denounced a neighbour who did not support the Revolution. It took little time to find the birth on the 25th of July 1740, in Le Teilleul, of a Michel Foüilleul, son of Julien and his wife, Jeanne Geffroy. Is this the same person? Did he go to Paris, marry and have children there? Could he be the same man who married Jeanne Ackermann in 1780 and could they have been Marie's parents? That would be tidy, indeed, but, Oh! Dear Readers! what a lot of work  and luck would be needed to prove all of that.

In our next post, we will look at further avenues of research Madame J can pursue and how to determine the most likely resources to use.

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

 

 

FGB Free Clinic - Case no. 9 - Marie Fouyol, Parisian wife of Thomas Mansell, part 6 - Community Context

Context remains our focus, Dear Readers. We have looked at the historical context in which we found Thomas Mansell and Marie Fouyol and at the most complicated geographical context of Paris after the Revolution and during the First Empire. In the previous post, in looking at the prisoner of war file of Thomas Mansell, we also looked at the political context in how the wars affected him. In this post, we shall look at the few friends and co-workers we have been able to discover, their community, and its context.

Our only sources for acquaintances of Thomas Mansell and his wife, Marie Fouyol, are the baptism register entries for their three children and the prisoner of war file. Researching each of the employers or work acquaintances of Thomas Mansell mentioned in his prisoner of war file brought, as expected, no mention of Marie Fouyol.

• John Glasin, Mansell's employer in Paris at rue Menilmontant number 2, apparently spent some time in Bordeaux. There, he and his wife had a stillborn son. The child's death registration, dated the 23rd of July 1802, names the parents ass John Glasin and his wife, Kitty O'Connor, and that they lived at rue Doidé number 14 in Section Two. In January of 1808, he was looking for work, having placed an advertisement in the edition of the 4th of January of the Affiches, annonces et avis divers "To Manufacturers of hemp and linen - An Englishman and his two sons, knowing how to construct machines and knowing very well spinning technology, desire employment. Contact Mr. John Glasin at rue d'Arbalète, number 26."
• Burdin and Caret, the company, located in rue de Charenton, went bankrupt in 1811. The first names of the individuals could not be found online.
• Daniel Heilmann, whose cloth Louis Bergeron said was of poor quality, may not have been a manufacturer. In 1813, he and his wife, Adelaide Le Blanc, had a son, Ferdinand Daniel. The birth document gives his address as in rue de Charenton and his profession as a professor at the Imperial Institute for the Blind (Institut Impérial des Aveugles)

Recall that Thomas Mansell wrote to the Minister of War that he had worked to help set up a spinning factory for the blind, Aveugles. This was most likely the Institute where Daniel Heilmann worked and it may have been connected to Burdin and Caret as both were in rue de Charenton.

Looking at the godparents of the Mansell children:

• Josephine Thomassin, the wife of Cartier, living in rue du Petit Lion Saint Sauveur, was the godmother on the 1814 baptism. She married Jean Baptiste Joseph Cartier in Paris in 1802. They probably met in Paris, as he was from the department of Nord, possibly from the city of Valenciennes; she was from a large family in the department of Haute-Saône. They had at least two children in Paris. In 1810, a daughter, Geneviève Françoise Cartier, was baptized in the church of Saint Eustache. The baby died a year and a half later at the home of a wet-nurse in the department of Oise. In December of 1812, the couple had another daughter, Louisine Françoise Cartier. Josephine Thomassin's birth register entry was not found, but the 1782 entry for the death of her mother, Louise Ronot, was found. Thus, Josephine Thomassin was born before that death, making her the same age as or slightly older than Marie Fouyol. Her husband, Jean Baptiste Joseph Cartier, was a bit older, as his mother died before his father, a charcoal maker, remarried in Valenciennes in 1777, making him about the same age as Thomas Mansell.
• Jean François Varrinier, who ran a boarding house in rue du Cloître Saint Benoît number 17, was from the town of Dunières in Haute-Loire, where his brother, Joseph, and his sister, Marie, remained. On the 12th of March 1796, in Paris, Varrinier married a divorcée from Belfort, Marie Thérèse Metrot. Her first husband was Jean Pierre Erhard, whom she had married before 1785, when their son, Pierre Antoine Erhard, was born in Belfort. Thus, the wife of the godfather, Jean François Varrinier, Marie Thérèse Metrot, born by at least 1770 and probably earlier, was old enough to have been Marie Fouyol's mother. Varrinier's brother was born in 1768 and his sister in 1774; if he were about twenty-five when he married, he would have been born in about 1771, betweeen his siblings, making him slightly older than Thomas Mansell. No documents for children of this couple were found.
• After struggling with the handwriting in the 1816 baptism, we now think that the person we initially identified as Marguerite Cocq... had the surname of Coigner, possibly spelt Coignet or Coigné. In all cases, the name is so common and the details so few that nothing about this specific person could be found with any certainty.
• The same commonality of name and lack of detail applies to the godfather in the 1816 baptism, Pierre Rey. Numerous men of the same name in Paris were researched, with the goal of finding a document with a signature that would match the bold one in the baptism register, but none was found. The name, Rey, seems to have originated in Franche-Comté.
• Thomassine Lorguilleux, the godmother in the 1818 baptism who lived at rue des Bourguignons number 6, was from a family of textile printers in the town of Corbeil in the department of Essonne, where she was born in about 1793, making her about ten years younger than Marie Fouyol. In 1819, four years into the Restoration, Thomassine Ursule Lorguilleux married an English textile machinist named James Wilson in the British Embassy Chapel in Paris.  That same year, their son, Auguste Achille, was baptized in the church of Saint Jacques du Haut Pas. They left Paris for a while for, in 1824, in Charenton-le-Pont, in the department that is now Val-de-Marne but was then Seine, they had a second son, Henry Victor Amedé Wilson. Thomassine Lorguilleux lived a long life, long enough to appear in the 1872 census, which shows her as aged seventy-nine, the widow Wilson, living with her second son in the town of Saint Pierre du Perray in the department of Essonne, about four kilometers from Corbeil, where she was born.
• James Wilson's prisoner of war file shows that he was held at the prison camp at Valenciennes from at least 1808. He was released, with thirteen others, to work for a French textile manufacturer, Samuel Joly in the town of Saint Quentin in 1809. Joly posted security bonds for them all.

The names of neither Marie Fouyol nor Thomas Mansell appear in any of the documents related to the research into the people above. They were not godparents to the children; they were not witnesses to the marriages. Recall that the Paris records were lost and many of the recreations are not full copies so, the names we seek may have been in the original records that were lost.

More importantly, not a single person in the Mansell-Fouyol community was a native Parisian. They came from Haute-Loire, Nord, Haute-Saône, Essonne, Belfort and England. They were working class people who lived in small accommodation in Paris, part of the great influx of people from the provinces to the capital that began even before the Revolution. This community of provincials in Paris poses the question: was Marie Fouyol also from the provinces? 

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy