Part I: 1850- 1922 The old world Baptiste and Victoria; Auguste and Yvonne
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| Part I: 1850- 1922 The old world
Baptiste and Victoria; Auguste and Yvonne Ours used to be, like many others, a letter-writing family. Before the advent of the telephone and then internet, people used to stay in touch as best they could using pen and paper, and the postal service seems to have been first-class. They regularly reported family news in elaborate letters that were sometimes read to the gathered relatives at the receiving end during the evening assemblies. And then the letter was put away to be answered with equal commitment, lest the family flow of news dry up. People also made great use of postcards to send news, or just their regards, up to once a day when they felt they were living great times. Our luck is that among our relatives, there was much respect for the written word, either manuscript or in print. Letters were kept first because they had to be answered absolutely. They could be full of meaning and feeling and should not be consigned to oblivion. Courtships were conducted mainly by mail, and the ensuing correspondence could be valued as a keepsake. We can be thankful to “Auntie Helen,” my great-aunt Hélène Bouyssonie (1895-1986), for preserving nearly every scrap of paper she found in the Carennac house, especially what was left of the old mail exchanged between her relatives. This is what has made the first part of this memoir possible, as there are no living witnesses to tell the story, and my own memories are second-hand and scanty. This written evidence will give my text impeccable credentials, with all the details about our forebears backed up on paper from them. I am not aiming at competing with the classic Paston Letters, but all the same, I have found some treasures in our archive, and this memoir is largely based on that documentary evidence. Showing how important letter-writing was the care taken to learn the skill. One of the most antique books found in the attic was precisely a manual “Du Style Epistolaire” (1881) bought for my grandmother Yvonne when she was a young lady. She must have studied carefully, her letters were much appreciated by her relatives for their style and wit. Though of course completely outdated, this little book helps understand the writing conventions and the suitable approach that governed this exercise at the time. Of course, the information contained in the correspondence is still patchy and one-sided, as we have only a few letters sent out by the family to cousins and friends, except the handful that were returned at a later date because of their importance, or. Luckily, courtesy dictated that letters should always start with queries about topics of interest to the addressee, or expressions of sympathy about their concerns, rather than plunge immediately into one’ own news. Many valuable insights into the family’s concerns can be drawn from these titbits. Simple letter-writing did not come naturally, and people, especially children, were often loath to set out on what looked like a duty. Parents would often complain about not receiving detailed enough news from their children, and give advice on how to give some substance to their missives, in the absence of imagination. An example is given by a Montin relative from Le Merle writing to his much younger brother: [Quote here letter from the trenches 10 August 1915] The correspondence also revives these characters long dead: by their handwriting, their style, their choice of words and their ideas, they come back to life, even sketchily, for us. For instance, Esther, my great-grand mother, has the very clearest and prettiest handwriting, so ornate that it looks like embroidery, and also easy to read. But she also very demanding, though courteous to a fault. These details help us understand the evolution of her relations with her sister, who had a very different life. These texts revive the challenges these people faced, and may help us make our own decisions, some issues being quite eternal. My father, Guy Jean Jacques Montin, was born on 22 January 1922 in Biars sur Cère, a small thriving town in the Lot département, in a house just next to the railway station. The house, at 45 Avenue de la République, where he was born is still there much unchanged just next to the railway crossing and the current occupant, Mr Cance, aged 90, is the grandson of the landlord who rented the house to my grandparents.
Chapter 1. Teyssieu Justin, my grandfather, who renamed himself Auguste after WW1, was born in Teyssieu in 1875 into a family that seems to have been a little wealthier than average, thanks to the honest toil of preceding generations. His father, Jacques, born in 1841 was like a majority of the inhabitants, a farmer, but he distinguished himself by being elected to the office of maire of Teyssieu for 15 years(1877-1892). We were able to identify the family house, during a visit in 1999, thanks to indications given by local people who remembered the family even after an interval of 70 years. This is reputed to be the place where stood the inn run by Jacques' own grandfather in the first decades of the XIXth century. We were impressed by its size and the quality of the stonework. Because it had not been renovated, what we saw must have been quite close to what it looked like 100 years before. I have researched the genealogy of the Montin family, and like many other families, ours did not move much from Teyssieu or its environs, however many generations you go back in time. From the records, it appears that this fairly rare name was initially given to a dozen or so farmers or farm labourers living in the vicinity of a village, now only a little huddle of buildings, called precisely Montin. It stands at the top of a range of hills, altitude 677 on the IGN map1, in the area known as Le Ségala. This is a very poor land yielding only the hardiest least productive crops, and it is also called la Châtaigneraie, from its dominant production, the chestnut. Because it is so much better than anything I could write, I copy here a sensitive description of this poor wind-blown area from Pierre Benoit, the first sentences of his well-known novel “Déjeuner à Sousceyrac” (1931): “C’est un sauvage et dur pays que le Ségala, l’un des plus écartés, des plus ignorés de France. A la lisière du Cantal et du Lot, il n’est plus le Quercy, sans être tout à fait l’Auvergne. Abrupt plateau de roches schisteuses, de granits, de grès, il s’élève, par étages, sous les nuées, avec ses noires châtaigneraies, les maigres champs de seigle auxquels il doit son nom, ses landes qu’au crépuscule les troupeaux désertent, et dont les bruyères agitées sans fin parle triste vent de la nuit demeurent seules sous les étoiles. A cette rude région correspond une race plus rude encore, une race hostile aux innovations, farouchement cramponnée au sol. De Labastide-du-Haut-Mont, qui est la commune culminante de la région, on aperçoit, paraît-il, quand le temps est clair, les Pyrénées. Mais qu’importe à l’homme du Ségala cette fantasmagorie bleue et rose ! Il ne se laisse par séduire, il n’émigre pas ; il n’abandonne pas son aire. On raconte qu’il existe là-haut, dans la forêt, de vieilles paysannes qui ne savent même pas ce que c’est que le chemin de fer.2 » In the 50s and 60s, the Sousceyrac restaurant was still famous, and my great-aunt Hélène would now and then motor there with friends or visitors for a lunch, before a ride in the forests of this stark but appealing plateau. The isolation of Teyssieu is still very much apparent, it is truly "in the middle of nowhere". There are at least 10km of winding roads, most of them running through dense mountain-type forest, to reach it. You get the impression that in winter it could be near impossible to get there. The wildest route starts from Cornac, where you don't even see any farms on the way, just forest. From Glanes, the road is easier, with scenic views over the Bretenoux-Saint Céré plain called Limagne. When you get to the village, the quiet is eerie, there is just no traffic at all, at least outside the tourist season. A square tower stands at the centre of a little cluster of solidly built large houses, witness a period of prosperity in the last century. There is a very thorough book about the history of Teyssieu up to 1800, but apart from three small references to Montins, there is little reference to our ancestors, none of whom has left any special mark, though we can be proud that they were all honest people.3 It is interesting to find in the village nearly all the names present in our family tree, which shows that in those centuries of little mobility of populations, at least in this region, if you go back sufficiently far in the past, you are related to most of the families living there. The book on Teyssieu is also fascinating for the insight into the local customs from the most ancient times (the Celts, the Romans, the Middle Ages) up to the Revolution, concerning property, religion, marriage and inheritance, giving us an idea on how our ancestors lived. The name Montin itself can be etymologically associated with heights, though the hamlet of that name, desolate and hilly enough, is not exactly the highest point in the area. It is equally distant (7km) from Sousceyrac and Labastide du Haut-Mont, right in the middle of the Ségala. Having gathered some genealogical evidence at the archives in Aurillac and Cahors, I can confidently state that the name has remained unchanged since the beginning of parish records, in the early 1600’s. Given its relative rarity, it must have originally been given to only a handful of farm labourers living at or in the close neighbourhood of the place. All the other local place-names are also used as patronyms, so there is nothing unusual there. My research has shown that during the 17th to late 19th centuries, few Montins ventured out of the Ségala, only moving from one farm or hamlet to another by marriage or by trade within a radius of 10 km. Gradually, some of our ancestors moved to crafts, and to dwelling in the tiny towns of the region instead of on farms. There are parish records of Montin “births, marriages and burials” virtually everywhere on the Ségala, as shown in my “historical table” of the Montins. They are most numerous in Sousceyrac, Saint Saury, Siran, la Ségalassière. It is only in the XXth century that the economy offered the locals the possibility of improving their condition by emigrating to lower lands and the cities. Some went as far as Paris directly as “bougnats” while many, like our branch, only moved to better land down in the valleys. Our direct Montin ancestors had been in Teyssieu at least from the early 1700s, but probably earlier. Delving into the records quickly hits the problem that most of the men are called Jean or Jacques (with my father inheriting both these names to show respect for the tradition), and the women Jeanne or Antoinette. The best way to distinguish each individual is to look at the name of his wife. Because of the high rate of infancy deaths, the same name could be used twice or more by the same parents, making it difficult to distinguish which were those that survived long enough to get married and have children. The earliest direct certified Teyssieu ancestor is Blaise Montin (circa 1690- 1772), who was a winemaker (vigneron). His son Pierre Montin (1715-1773) was a carpenter in an outlying hamlet, Planavergnes, and had three children: Antoine (b. 1735), Madeleine and Blaise (1744-1827). Family tradition passed on by Guy remembers that a member of the family died probably ingloriously at the battle of the Beresina, one of the disasters of Napoleon's Russian campaign with the Grande Armée. In other parishes, where older records are available, there are even older dates, the most ancient being of a Louise Montin, born in Siran in 1615. In fact there are so many births in the parish records that the two censuses, of 1836 and 1886, were most useful to get a better picture of the Montin families actually living in the town. The memory of the Montin hamlet had been lost in our branch, which only harked back to the Teyssieu origin. It is only in the 1990’s that the Merle cousins showed me this epicentre of the name on the 1/50.000 scale map, where “Montin” appears in the commune of Saint-Saury, about 20km from Teyssieu, at the limit of the Lot and Cantal departments. Before that, based on the known fact that the name is quite common in the North of Italy, particularly in Venice, the family tradition was that the connection may have been due to the financial links between Quercy and Piedmont, at the end of the Middle-Ages, a theory I now regretfully have to write off. The coincidence of names in Italy and France comes from the common language, Occitan, that reigned throughout these regions from early on. I have not pursued the genealogical search further, as it does not add much once you have established that the ancestors lived in the same region, with probably very few outsiders entering by marriage. Also, a proper genealogist would also have to check the mothers’ lineages, and the task would rapidly become overwhelming, and yield very little of human interest, as we would not expect to uncover any grand heroes or proud aristocrats. But one thing is sure, we are distantly related to about all the families with Segala names. To name a few, Justin’s mother’s maiden name was Venries, his grandmother a Pouilhac, and great-grand-mother a Sainte-Marie. I have produced a decent genealogical tree spanning 10 generations, that could still benefit with some additional research. I found it more interesting to check who were nowadays the bearers of the name, in the hope of establishing some distant cousinships. Thanks to information technology development since the 1980s, I have been able to collect a lot of data on our name, at the French, but also international level. I published an article on my findings in a genealogical review, run by a great expert whom I met during my research in Aurillac, and who pointed out to me, from memory, the right communes to check for the name. Instead of in-depth genealogy, I took an interest in researching the extension of the name worldwide. In 1997, I created a website called “Montin Registry”, to help trace the name across other countries, except Italy, where it is too common, in both the Montin form and the Montini, which is the Italian equivalent. I was able to make contact with a number of holders of the patronym in other places, notably as a Finnish colleague called Ann Montin in Luxembourg, and a few others around the world. Some holders of the name have done considerable work and documented the name over several centuries. The most interesting information I have come up with concerns Scandinavia: - In Sweden, the name is illustrious and may originate from a companion of Murat, a Lotois general of Napoleon, who became king of Sweden; in recent years, there was a moderately well-known Swedish ambassador bearing our name; - In Finland, the name has been particularly well documented, with full genealogical tables going back to the 1600’s, and one theory is that there was a time in the 18th century when it was the fashion to take up Latin-sounding names to distinguish oneself from the local Nordic names. Now the fashion has gone full way in the opposite direction, at least for firstnames. Naturally the American Montins are of various origins, among which the French are a tiny minority as far as I can judge. I now have lost interest somewhat in that research, but all my findings are collected in the 1999 article and a voluminous file, much of which is online. Recent history of the Teyssieu Montins From memories passed on and from some written evidence, it seems that our branch of the Montins had gradually risen on the Teyssieu scene, becoming the owners of some land and at least one fairly impressive town house. Two characters stand out: Jacques Montin (1786-1868). In addition to his agricultural interests, he was an inn-keeper, hence the size of the house, probably bought from several generations of savings on the proceeds from a growing number of plots of land scattered in the neighbourhood . At the time, any slightly bigger house could declare itself an inn, so you would not expect to find much comfort there, and in such an out-of-the-way place, it must have been reminiscent of Mérimée’s auberge espagnole, where the only things you find there are those you have brought yourself. Thanks to the help of our Merle cousins, we have a copy of Jacques’s marriage contract, signed just before he was married to Jeanne Sainte-Marie in 1808. The bride’s father, wanting to provide a dowry, gave his daughter one quarter of the family estate including the furniture, to be taken in addition to her heirloom . There would be nothing special about this way of proceeding, but only the indication that it was worth going to the expense of a contract. The Montin name may have been honourable at that time, as there is a record of a man called Sainte-Marie dit Montin, perhaps because he was not religiously oriented, or he may have been an orphan adopted by a Montin. Both his town and country interests were continued by his son Jean (1809-1891). Notice that both men lived into their 80s, in spite of the harshness of conditions at the time.
Key to the historic background of the Montin family is the story of two brothers who, having been properly educated in the new public schools of the Republic, felt confined by the cramped and struggling lifestyle of the Ségala. Joanny and Justin, both born in Teyssieu respectively in 1873 and 1875 both broke with the 200 year family connection with Teyssieu and each in his own way were the prime movers of the prosperity of their respective branches. But while Joanny made good use of the family’s expertise in land dealing, later buying our mythical Merle domain4, Justin sought adventure, enlisting as a soldier in 1894, and later launching various business ventures after World War II. Joanny. Judging by the style and content of his letters, Joanny must have had a fairly good education at Teyssieu, in the last decade of the XIXth century. While his father Jacques (1841-1915), the maire, continued farming in Teyssieu, Joanny put to good use his own talent and perhaps the accumulated experience of generations of dealing in land and livestock, and a skill at interpreting the meaning of obscure customs or rural rights, to become an expert evaluator of land and stock, with an accreditation to civil courts. He settled in Estal, where his wife's family had a large farm, still close enough to his parents in Teyssieu, but already half way down towards the blessed wine-growing slopes of Glanes. He wrote a good hand and was probably shrewd enough to put aside for himself the best offers that came on the market. Thanks to the cooperation of our the widow of his grandson at the Merle farm, Roseline, aged 90, we have a dozen or so letters written by Joanny that show him up as a rural empire-builder. It is important to know that branch of the family, first because the two brothers stayed close throughout their lives and shared many values and opinions, but also because the Merle was a magnet and a reference for the town-dwelling Montins of Orthez and elsewhere during my father’s childhood.
As with Joanny, there is next to no information about the childhood and education of Justin. As a younger son, he would be expected to make his own way in life. That is probably why, aged 19, he travelled to Cahors and enlisted in the army for four years. This military career seemed to have been totally forgotten by my father, who never mentioned it once. The facts were easy to find, because everything related to WW1 is now being preserved in homage to their sacrifices. Justin was a soldier, then a non-commissioned officer, from 1894 to 1909. I copy below the fiche found on http://archives.lot.fr/f/RegistreMatricule/tableau/?&debut=75 (page 233 du register 1895) Justin Montin, né le 24 février 1875, classe 1895 numéro matricule 1180 Degré d’instruction (générale) : 3 Taille 1,69m Engagé volontaire pour quatre ans le 12 mars 1894 à la mairie de Cahors. Arrivé au Corps le 13 mars 1894 n° mle 2090 Brigadier le 28/9/1895 Maréchal des Logis le 8/4/1897 Maréchal des Logis fourrier le 9/5/1897 Rengagé pour un an le 12/3/1899 au tire du 15è régiment de Dragons Rengagé le 20/12/1898 pour 2 ans à compter du 12/3/1899. Maréchal des Logis le 11/4/1900 Rengagé le 7/11/1900 pour deux ans à compter du 12/3/1901 Rengagé pour 5 ans le 3/9/1902 à compter du 12/3/1903 Rengagé pour un an le 8/2/1908 à compter du 12/3/1908
Intérieur : du 3 au 15 août 1914 campagne simple Zone des armées : du 16 août 1915 au 25 novembre 1915 campagne double Intérieur : du 26 novembre 1915 au 14 avril 1916 campagne simple Zone des armées : du 13 avril 1916 au 26 décembre 1918 campagne double Libéré du service militaire le 1er octobre 1921 Corps d’affectation Armée active : 15ème Dragons Disponibilité ou réserve de l’armée active : Régiment de Dragons de Montauban Armée territoriale et réserve : R. de Dragons de Montauban, 57ème R. d’Artillerie, 3è R d’Artillerie à pied, 13è R. d’Artillerie, 18è R.A.C. à Agen Localités successives habitées 26/9/1923 : Orthez, 1 rue St Gilles The Dragoons are mounted infantry, i.e. soldiers using horses to get to the battlefield, where they fight on foot. In the XXth century they would be known as cavalry.
When he retired from the military, he set up a business in Plagnes. In doing so, he was perhaps taking up the only other calling open to Ségala lads with some personal talent and a little financial backing. He became a négociant, the nightmare of the real farmer, who takes his cut for shipping the crops from the farm to the market or the railway station. This enterprising spirit may have been at the origin of his flattering marriage in 1906 to Jeanne Landes from Plagnes, a village in the lower hills of the Ségala where the Landes family were quite prominent landowners. Like the Montins, the Landes bear the name of a hamlet, but in their case, the location, probably not he only one in France, was just up the road 4 km from Plagnes. But they already counted a notaire and a chemist in the family, as well as an abbé who rose to become chaplain of Rocamadour. No doubt they must have looked down a little on the young ex-peasant Justin. By moving from Teyssieu to Plagnes, Justin was not really leaving the Ségala. Plagnes not was quite the one-horse village that it is now: but from Saint-Céré, you have to drive up 12km on a narrow winding road, with no villages in between, only chestnut trees overhanging the road. But at the time, it may have been a proper village with about 100 inhabitants. It belonged to the commune of Molières near Leyme. This last little town is the capital of the plateau and is not unlike Alvignac. Plagnes is now only a small group of houses with no more than 20 inhabitants and no church in sight. Plagnes, as its name may indicate, is on the plateau, though in a small dip, and therefore could be cultivated, albeit with poor yields. The house inhabited by Justin with his first wife Jeanne seems to have remained largely unchanged, another sign of the decline of agriculture over the century. It is a slate covered rather big building, with an immense barn on the side, which must have been useful for the business of storing grain and fertilise. That is where he must have operated his “Maison des Cultivateurs” . He was selling animal feed, fertilisers, but also wine and spirits. During that time, his brother Joanny, with whom he had very good relations, was an estate agent in Estal, a village half-way between Teyssieu and Glanes. The profitable connection for Justin can also be assessed by the portion his wife Jeanne received in the donation-partage from her parents in October 1909. The list of farmsteads, chestnut tree plantations (châtaigneraies) and other pieces of land in Plagnes and Terrou (a neighbouring village) is impressive. It is contained in by a legal act of 1929, when Justin, then re-married to his third wife Louise in Orthez, sold up all his Landes inheritance, as well as his Saint-Céré small house (worth only 7,000 francs). Two letters, respectively from Joanny his brother, and Charles, his son, throw some light on the commercial haggling had taken place, but the total yielded by the 1928-29 sale was in excess of 100,000 francs, which must have been a small fortune. The legal act is full of picturesque details about rural life, such as issues of ditches for rain water, access to irrigation water x number of days per week, servitudes de passage to enclaved plots of land, etc, and is worth taking a look at. It is quite possible that the advantageous marriage allowed Justin to leave the army, and set up a business in his wife's village. Justin’s first son Charles was born in 1907 at Libourne, where the young couple were settled in the garrison. When he grew up, Charles seems to have been considered a brilliant young man. In 1926, aged 19, he was a student in pharmacy, domiciled in Gramat perhaps with family on his mother’s side. More about him in later chapters. Together with his wife Jeanne, Justin bought a house in Saint-Céré in 1910 (rue de l’Ancienne Visitation), after leaving the army, probably with money borrowed from relatives. He may have realised that Plagnes was not the best place to operate a profitable business, and Saint-Céré, though not on the train line, offered more potential as it was connected by a tramway to Bretenoux and Biars. This house has undergone many changes over the century, but I was able to speak to a local resident who remembered Justin. Sadly, Jeanne died in March 1914 (cause of death unknown) while her husband was away in the trenches. She had bequeathed the “quotité disponible” to her husband, who therefore was later to share the Landes inheritance with his son Charles on a one third/two thirds basis. The first world war This major event was the moment when the destinies of the two brothers started to diverge. Whereas for Justin it proved to be an opportunity for promotion, for Joanny, who throughout had tried to defer being called up (he knew it would damage his business), it was a time of hardship with no tangible reward. Joanny’s war Even after he was called up, which happened not right at the beginning of the conflict in August 1914 but a few months later, Joanny continued to run the farm through the agency of his wife Maria, planning for instance the construction of a second barn. It is well known that the women often replaced the men who were away, and many discovered how competent they could be. The correspondence between Joanny and Maria shows him as a devoted husband who while sounding the conventional military heroics, was mainly concerned about surviving and coming back to business and family. Here is his letter to his wife Maria dated 5 May 1915, worth quoting in full because presumably our ancestor Justin must have been much in the same frame of mind at that time. Bien chère épouse Je viens de recevoir de vos chères nouvelles et je suis tout heureux de voir qu’elles sont toujours bonnes. Je suis toujours en bonne santé et je ne mentais pas en faisant le menu du mardi de Pâques. Il est vrai qu’il n’est pas toujours aussi varié et que c’est l’exception. Cependant nous avons toujours de quoi boire et manger. Nous sommes assez bien couchés et depuis bien longtemps je n’ai pas supporté de pluie. Le temps est chaud et orageux, il fait un temps printanier tel qu’on ne puisse désirer mieux. Il serait préférable que ce soit vous qui ayez un temps pareil. Ne vous faites pas du mauvais sang pour moi, je ne souffre que de la séparation, vous pouvez vous en rendre compte. Au sujet du placement, je préfère que vous mettiez 1000 francs en obligations à la défense nationale, et ce que vous aurez en plus en Bons du Trésor 6 mois ou un an plutôt, car alors même que la guerre finirait bientôt ce dont je doute fort, je crois que l’emploi n’en sera pas si urgent car pour faire une grange, il faut commencer les préparatifs au moins un an à l’avance, surtout pour les planches et en attendant on verra d’ailleurs nous trouverons toujours quelqu’un pour nous rendre service en en attendant, cela nous rapporterait. J’espère que vous serez de mon avis, il faut placer mon argent, car dans l’armoire cela ne rend service à personne. Ma chère amie, qu’il me serait doux et agréable d’être à vos côtés mais j’espère que nos prières et nos sacrifices seront récompensés. Embrassez tout le monde pour moi et recevez avec mes meilleurs baiser toute mon affection, (signé) Montin You may notice that he says ‘vous’ to his wife. We would need to establish whether this was because he was a little old-fashioned or because the couple aspired to a degree of gentility. After all, the Montin family was a cut above the common Teyssieu stock at that time. In another letter, he speaks about his duties in the army on campaign, in a deliberately low-key manner, to soothe his wife’s anxiety: “J’ai le meilleur emploi de la compagnie. Je m’efforce d’ailleurs de faire pour le mieux, et de rendre à chacun ce qui lui revient, ce qui me procure l’estime de mes chefs. » Another insight into Joanny’s character as a family man is given by a letter dated 13 February 1905 (year uncertain) to his son Jean on the occasion of his father’s (also named Jean) decease: Mon cher Jean Te voilà devenu chef de famille charges bien lourdes pour de jeunes épaules. J’espère néanmoins que tu seras à la hauteur de ta nouvelle situation, rappelle-toi l’honneur la justice et la charité doivent présider à toutes tes actions. Rends visite à Maman le plus souvent possible pour lui être agréable et si elle te demande quelque chose, fais ton possible pour le lui procurer. Sois un bon père pour ton frère et rappelle-toi que tu es responsable de sa conduite, tiens moi au courant de ses faits et gestes. Je compte sur toi et j’espère que mon espoir ne sera pas trompé. Je vous embrasse tous les deux du plus profond de mon cœur. J. Montin
Toujours en bonne santé et pas trop malheureux. Nous n’entendons plus depuis hier le canon de Verdun où les Boches se sont fait amocher une fois de plus. Quelle rage mais leurs crocs impuissants finiront par se rompre devant notre héroïque résistance. Courage ! et patience ! La victoire est au bout . Tu me donneras des nouvelles de la foire le plut tôt possible. Embrasse Henri et maman pour moi, bons baisers de ton père, Montin Henri was one of his sons, who turned out to be the only war casualty in the family, and not a glorious one. Joanny had been given home leave from the army for dysentery. He survived, but Henri, who had nursed him, came down with the disease in 1916. Contrary to Justin, Joanny was not released before the end of the war, in spite of a number of applications for exemption on the basis of his agricultural duties, or for being the father of three children. It seems that these interventions (see the two certificates signed by the maire of Estal) may have backfired as he was not immediately demobilised even after the armistice in November 1918. The first certificate is interesting as it indicates that Joanny was the owner of 14 hectares of land, which must have been a lot in those days. Justin’s war Justin had been an early volunteer (enrolling before the draft calling him up) for military service in 1894, and he followed an military career on ‘active duty’ for 16 years, followed by five years in the reserve. During this period, France was in a mood of febrile preparation for a new confrontation with Germany to recover Alsace and Lorraine. At that time, probably outside working hours, he served as a teacher of spelling and maths to soldiers5 in their barracks and military hospitals, for which he was awarded in 1908 a diploma of honour by the minister of agriculture. This may have been for patriotic reasons, or because Justin saw the advantage of perfecting his own education by such dedication. Whatever the reason, it seems the service was an opportunity to become more world-wise than the average Ségalien. During the First World War, to which he was called right from the start, 2 August 1914, with the other members of the reserve, Justin fought with the same strongly patriotic spirit as most of his contemporaries. A letter to his parents, dated 11 November 1914, gives us an insight into his frame of mind: Mes chers parents J’ai reçu hier votre lettre du 22 octobre et celle de mon frère du 1er novembre. J’ai été bien malheureux de voir que vous n’étiez pas encore guéri cher père de vos jambes, c’est bien long mais prenons patience, si vous voyiez tous les malheureux qui courent les routes par ici, sans abris et sans pain, leurs maisons brûlées ou démolies, leurs bêtes volées ou dispersée, leurs récoltes encore dans les champs nous nous estimerions moins malheureux, surtout lorsqu’on voit des malheureuses femmes trainant deux ou trois petits-enfants et un autre prêt à naître, quand il ne naît pas sur le bord de la route., et le mari à la guerre. Pensez-vous qu’ils soient à plaindre ceux-là ? Conservons donc un peu d’espoir, ayons confiance en Dieu, tenons-nous prêts à aller à lui, c’est le seul moyen de prendre patience. Je remercie mon frère de tout le mal qu’il se donne pour moi, et je suis bien heureux qu’il ne soit pas encore parti, vous en avez tant, tant besoin. Peut-être en attendant ça s’arrangera, en tous cas, je ne crois pas qu’il aille sur le front des armées. Quant à moi depuis un mois, je me repose, nous sommes toujours à la même place, nous faisons la chasse aux espions qui fourmillent. Mais pour ce service, on n ‘a pas besoin de moi, je ne m’occupe que de la comptabilité, je suis bien tranquille. Au revoir, chers parents, guérissez vite, tenez-vous chauds, et priez le bon Dieu de vous conserver longtemps, Votre Auguste 10 D.G.E. 3ème groupe de D.B 3è Armée, par Chaumont (sur l’enveloppe : 10ème Dragons, Montin, Chef). In one of the richest document on file, he presents his frame of mind in the face of death in the trenches, and makes his will (4 September 1915). It is addressed to his brother-in-law Laurent Landes, possibly a notaire. “Ne crois pas que j’aie envie de passer l’arme à gauche, ce soir, ni demain. Mais nous sommes en train de cuisiner une salade, où il peut se faire, qu’à certains moments, notre peau ne vaille pas cher le mètre. Mon intention est de ne pas la ménager, mais je veux la faire payer le plus cher possible. Maintenant que j’ai mis un peu d’ordre dans mes affaires, je veux te mettre au courant, car après tout, comme je le dis plus haut, d’ici quelques jours, j’ai l’impression que cela va chauffer. Et comme jusqu’ici, on ne nous a pas ménager la peine, penses donc ‘7 mois d’Argonne’ on ne pas nous ménager les honneurs, nous serons de la fête et des premiers paraît-il. Tant mieux, nous sommes prêts et décidés, il faut en finir.6 »
“ Montin Justin n° matricule 07207. Remarquable sous-officier. Etant versé dans l’armée territoriale est parti sur sa demande dans la réserve avec le premier échelon. Au front depuis le début de la campagne, a donné des preuves multiples de son énergie et de son dévouement, s’acquitte en toutes circonstances avec autorité et sang-froid des fonctions de chef de peloton. Déjà proposé avant sa libération du service actif et reproposé pour la troisième fois depuis le début de la campagne (mérite la Croix de guerre). Aux armées le 12 septembre 1915, le capitaine commandant, J. Courtois de Vicoze ». He finally left the service with honour late in 1918. The two Teyssieu brothers came out quite differently from the conflict, which disrupted the lives of millions of families, and made so many victims. - while for Joanny it had been a nuisance serving away from his family and business, not to mention risking his life, it had been a rather short and on the whole a positive experience for Justin. It may have been this preceding peacetime contribution that got Justin an early demobilisation; - while Joanny only rose to caporal, Justin was made a adjudant (two grades higher) on account of his past services, and received the military medal, achievements that would have been an asset on returning to civilian life. Better war credentials would be useful especially in business, further facilitated by the new connections such as his colonel de Vicoze. The Merle branch after the war When he did finally return from the army late in 1918, Joanny ran his farm in Estal for a few more years, probably doing deals and further extending his assets. It seems that his wife, Marie (called Maria) Fouilhac, brought him a number of properties, including a house in Estal where he lived after his marriage in the hamlet of Le Verdier). Then, probably after receiving his Teyssieu inheritance, as his father had died in 1916, he sold up all his properties in 1923 and moved to much better land between Bretenoux and Saint Céré, le Merle ‘domain’. Spread over initially about 20 hectares, it contained a valuable sheep enclosure surrounded by slats, and a sizeable house which still stands, mostly unchanged since its renovation in the 50’s. A letter from the former landlord shows that it was sold by a Parisian who had inherited it from a farmer uncle, and who had no interest in living and working in the country. It was not exactly a sale, but an exchange7 of a great number of small pieces of land and building (more than 25), against the big chunk of fertile land in the valley. Of course, there is suspicion that this was a way of avoiding excessive conveyancing taxes, though there was a compensation of 30,000 paid by Joanny to Mr Lescure, the vendor. For Joanny, Merle was definitely a step upwards, as it could support vineyards and walnut crops, more profitable than the chestnuts and other poor crops of the Ségala. The most striking feature of the Merle is that it comprises two enormous barns, both crowned with pretty pigeonniers, dwarfing the house itself. A sure sign that the landlords put business first, acknowledging the proverb: "quand la grange dépasse la maison, c'est bon signe pour la maison."8 The next two generations continued to increase the size of the property, which is now about 27 hectares. The grandson Pierre also bought a forest and a flat on the seaside.9 It seems that Le Merle was, at the beginning, a profitable concern, and replaced Teyssieu as the cradle of the Montins. Justin and Joanny kept an affectionate brotherly regard for each other. Justin was keen on his son Guy inheriting the family regard for agricultural knowledge and values. The economic success of the venture may have slowed at some time in the 20s or 30s, but by then, Joanny had continued to make money with his real estate activities in Saint-Céré, that were profitably continued by his son Jean. It is possible that it was during Jean’s tenure, marked by the European support of agricultural prices, that Merle was the most successful. Jean himself was reputed to have been rather bright at school, and this perhaps contributed to his developing a slight dissatisfaction with the restricted life of an independent farmer, expressed by his eccentricity. He also knew that his siblings were taking advantage of what afterwards came to be known as the “trente glorieuses”, those years when growth touched most sectors of the economy. His sister Marie-Jeanne made a good marriage, and his brother Fernand, considered something of a maverick in the family, got quite rich with a baby-clothes shop in Tarbes. Jean10 is one of the more colourful characters in this story, and not unlike his cousin Guy in many respects, though some 20 years older, especially when it came to laughing at respectable institutions. He liked to overdo the rough peasant manners to shock his presumably finer contemporaries and go against the conventional values of his relatives in his language and dress, while possibly longing for a more adventurous life. A farmer who may not have left Merle except for his war experience, he looked up to Guy’s wandering life, once they had renewed contact after the prodigal cousin’s return from Australia (1957). Jean was actually quite well known at Saint Céré for his eccentricity but probably envied also for the wealth he possessed in the shape of a number of apartments in that town. Guy used to tell with great glee of having come across Jean in front of the bank sockless in his sabots (clogs), counting out in cash the rents he had just collected from his tenants. He also collected a number of horse-powered vehicles in the two great barns on le Merle. This mutual appreciation seems to have been inherited by at least the next generation of Merle, judging by the fact that Pierre and Roseline are the only family members to my knowledge to have printed Guy’s book ‘Dream Alive’ from the internet site, without even having been told of its presence there. Inheriting the farm may have in the end been a curse, judging by the relative positions nowadays of the various branches of the Teyssieu descendants. Jean’s brother Fernand successfully set up a business in Tarbes, where I remember visiting in the early 1960s. It was only a shop selling children’s clothes, called La Poupée but seems to have been extremely profitable, perhaps it catered to the tastes of the emerging bourgeoisie. Fernand Montin and his wife Odette were able to buy a big house a stone-throw from the beach in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, which at that time was the ultimate sign of wealth in Béarn and the Pyrénées well-off families. Their two daughters made good marriages, but nothing more is known about them. While all contact has now been lost with these cousins, Guy liked to visit the Tarbes Montins at least until the death of Fernand. At the next Merle generation there was only one son, Pierre (1931- 2010), who willingly stayed on the farm, which did not undergo much renovation during his tenure. He attended a good catholic school in Aurillac (St Eugène), which he left in 1948 for an agriculture college. He married Roseline Fouilhac, from the neighbouring village St Jean Lagineste. Pierre's wife Roseline was already a school teacher specialized in disadvantaged children when she married into the family, and seems to have been influential in breaking the family farming tradition. Her only son Jean-François will not take up the family farm but has worked all his life at France Télécom and is planning to retire to the Merle. What will happen to the farm is unclear. Auguste after the war We have a fairy good picture of Auguste’s financial position in 1915 thanks to the will that he wrote while in the trenches, a few weeks before he was demobilised. The will unfortunately lists only the rural properties and the rents to be collected, not the capital assets. The business debts, for an amount of 27,000 francs, had probably been contracted to buy his house and start his business. He owed 5,000 francs to his brother-in-law Laurent Landes and 6,000 to the abbé Landes, which had not been fully paid off by 1920. Nothing is said about the house in Plagnes, only that he had left his papers in a secrétaire while away, or the house in Saint-Céré. He indicates that his share of the Teyssieu succession, when it comes, can be estimated at 5,000 francs. Though the figures do not fully tally, a few details emerge from the will: - he was receiving about 1,200 francs a year from the rents of several properties in Plagnes, probably those inherited by his wife; - he was engaged in a business association with A. Quercy (wholesale fruit and vegetables) who owed him 500 francs. The brighter part of the testament conveys his recommendations to Laurent for providing and educating his son Charles. He quotes his deceased wife asking to make him “a good Christian” to which Justin adds “and also a good Frenchman”. Shortly after being demobilised, he was sent on a mission to Morocco as a commercial investigator or representative, by a company selling small mechanical objects such as bells, air pumps and batteries, with interests in Africa (P. Maury Ing. E.P.). On file we have three reports he sent to the headquarters in Asnières in March-April 1919. They make interesting reading about French interests and projects in Morocco at the time, but do not contain any personal information. Justin seems to have been a perceptive businessman, and good at establishing professional relations, qualities he may have honed doing business on the Ségala. His writing is clear and to the point, and his handwriting very clear (there were no typewriters in those days). This job may have been given to Justin on the recommendation of his colonel already mentioned as a kind of protector, and he locally met former colleagues from his regiment. It is not clear how this Moroccan mission combines with the wholesale trading company for fruit, vegetables and eggs, in association with this A. Quercy, unless he was a sleeping partner. The company operated from Saint-Céré (no address given on the letterhead). The town was connected at the time by tramway to Biars11. After Justin broke his association with A. Quercy, the company developed considerably, and older people in Saint Céré remember the name as a by-word for business acumen. In 1920, it was time to consider getting married again, if only to find a mother for the little Charles, and his marriage to Yvonne Bouyssonie will be told in chapter 3. Conclusion of chapter 1: Teyssieu today I recently trundled up to Teyssieu, to meet the maire and the president of the Amis de la Tour, to investigate for this memoir. I was overwhelmed by the cordiality of the welcome. Both contacts came with genealogical trees to show our distant cousinship. The village, with now less than 200 inhabitants, is even quieter than Carennac, where there is at least some drive-through traffic. But it does offer an open restaurant cum grocer on a weekday, where for the normal menu price, you are spared the "portion congrue". The soup and main course arrive in serving dishes in which there is at least twice as much as you can eat. I had not seen that since the days of the Hôtel Laveyssière. And whereas Carennac is somewhat constricted by the hills around, Teyssieu sits in the bowl of a pleasant open valley, and you are always close to the country. The Amis de la Tour are active in promoting local history and culture, with an emphasis on the prehistoric findings; they have spearheaded the tiny museum displaying Paleo and Neolithic artefacts. The Montin house stands unchanged externally, but now hosts a prestigious international film set constume maker (Nelly Van Hoff from the Netherlands). Chapter 2: Gignac: The Bouyssonie lines Whereas the research on the Montins is somehow interesting because of the continuity of our name, the study of my French grandmother’s side is perhaps more relevant to us because we are connected to these ancestors by the Carennac house and its contents, which are a kind of living memory of those generations. The distant cousinships, more numerous than their Montin counterparts, also provide plenty of human interest stories and contribute to our sense of belonging in this particular terroir. In doing so, I will of course disregard the prejudice that the maternal lines are not as worthwhile an object of study, rejected by Marguerite Yourcenar: "Du fait de nos conventions familiales basées sur un nom transmis de père en fils, nous nous sentons à tort reliés au passé par une mince tige, sur laquelle se greffent à chaque génération des noms d'épouses, toujours considérées comme d'intérêt secondaire, à moins qu'ils ne soient assez brillants pour en tirer vanité. En France surtout, lieu d'élection de la loi salique, "descendre de quelqu'un par les femmes" fait presque l'objet d'une plaisanterie. Qui -- sauf exception -- sait le nom de l'aïeul maternel de sa bisaïeule paternelle ? L'homme qui l'a porté compte autant, néanmoins, dans l'amalgame dont nous sommes faits, que l'ancêtre du même degré dont nous héritons le nom." (Marguerite YOURCENAR, in: Archives du Nord) My grandmother Yvonne was the daughter of Pierre Baptiste Bouyssonie, born in Gignac in 1858 and Victoria Maria Vergnes born at La Saule, Bétaille in 1860. I will summarize the result of the research into those two lines of ancestors, one of which is the root of our impeccable Carennac credentials. The Bouyssonie line
Rose died in 1886 after bring seven children into the world, without counting those who died in childbirth. For some strange unknown reason, this Pierre changed his name from Baussonie to Bouyssonie around 1855, or there was a mistake at registration. My theory is that the spelling of the double ‘s’ with its flourish could be mistaken for a ‘y’ once this florid handwriting had gone out of fashion. Research is greatly hindered by the fact that most men were called Pierre at birth, only to change this on reaching adulthood. In this case, the original 1818 Blénie Baussonie two sons both christened Pierre: Pierre Baussonie, the eldest and heir to the farm, and our own ancestor baptised Pierre (Bouyssonie) but immediately or later called Jean-Baptiste or simply Baptiste. It is possible that the tradition of keeping the same Christian names was an additional marker of membership of a specific branch of the family, like a clan. The practice only gradually ceased when the descendants moved to the cities and were given ID cards. It only applied in the male line of descent. The family photo album is quite rich, with pictures of Baptiste's six brothers and sisters, and their offspring. Here is a summary of this exceptionally large family, especially in the context of the time where rural families were intent on avoiding the excessive splitting of farming land. 1/ The eldest, Pierre, nicknamed "Baussonie" was born in 1849 and naturally inherited the La Blénie farm, presumably expected to pay off his siblings their portions called "légitimes". This could be difficult when in presence of numerous brothers and sisters. A letter of 1893 with poor spelling and handwriting informs Baptiste that the farm is "finished", "Nous sommes cuits" as he put it. "Nous avons un peu de blé, voilà tout ce que nous aurons…. Il vaut mieux que tu aies ton argent chez moi que sur le Panama. Je te paierai quand tu voudras mais si tu peux attendre tu me rendras service". It is difficult to determine whether or not Baussonie paid up in the long run. The farm did not go under in spite of that gloom and was passed on to Adolfe, who later changed his name to Rodolfe for a reason one can guess. This Adolfe married Marie Rose Vergne, who lived to be 100 and have her story told in the newspaper in 198813. The grand'son Pierre came to Hélène’s funeral, but there has been no contact since. There is one descendant, a doctor Martine Bouyssonie in Saint Céré, and a Julithe Baussonie (no spelling mistake) living in La Blénie. Louise, daughter of Baussonie, married Sylvain Bousquet, a butcher, and lived in Brive, where she raised a numerous family. She maintained very good relations with her cousin Victoria, exchanging family news. 2/ Anastasie, born in 1851, two years after Baussonie, married Louis Veysset from a sheep farming family at Souzet (the family farm), commune de Nadaillac (Dordogne) and had 8 children. Best kwown to us is the 7th, Germain Veysset (1887-1967), who is the grandfather of our distant cousins Marthe and Cécile from Glanes. As I am not the only one recording family history, I can draw a few interesting details from the 30,000 words memoir drawn up by Marthe's nephews, recording, just as I am doing, her memories of the old days. It is extremely detailed and absolutely worth reading, as quite a few details would be common and not too different from what the Montins were experiencing at the time. Germain went to school in Gignac, the closest village, by crossing the woodland and the hamlet of Musée. He got his certificat d'études, and had a fine handwriting, and correct spelling, by today's standards. La maison de Souzet était composée d’une grande cuisine, avec dans l’angle près de la grande cheminée, un lit caché par un rideau rouge, une grande chambre avec plusieurs lits, il y en avait encore au grenier. Plus tard une autre pièce a été ajoutée et servait de chambre et de salle à manger. Tous les soirs, la prière était faite en commun, devant la cheminée, et le dimanche ils allaient à la messe à Nadaillac qui était à 4 kms, mais un peu moins loin en prenant des raccourcis à travers bois. In 1916, he married Marie Thérèse Mespoulhé (1888-1965), who was a good friend of the Bouyssonies, and a great character, though slightly less fine than her Carennac cousins. Marie-Thérèse failed from a rather affluent family in Glanes, judging by the fact that they had two servants, whose sleeping quarters were in the barn. I remember her well, we were often invited to Glanes for long and abundant Sunday lunches, as she was a good friend of Hélène, with whom she had shared an English experience during the first world war. Marie-Thérèse had two daughters, Marthe and Cécile, born respectively in 1920 and 1924, both alive and well at the time of writing. I am in friendly touch with two of Cécile's children, Nicole and Daniel. One of the most notable anecdotes is the family feud that occurred between Marie-Thérèse and her sister Irène Vidal, on account of an unequal division of their parents' inheritance. I remember as a child shuddering when passing in front of this "bad auntie's" house, just outside of the village on the road to Bretenoux. Just opposite is the barn that went to Marie-Thérèse, and which was destroyed by "the Nazis" and rebuilt as a house with the war reparations. It fell to Nicole at the next generation, but she sold it, not having any use for it, preferring to live in the Gard (Sommières). The Glanes people are particularly faithful to their family history. Daniel Bachala, my contemporary, inherited the family house where we used to go during my childhood, and lived most of his life in Glanes. He succeeded Marthe as secrétaire de mairie and director of the rest home, and is now retired. 3/ Julienne, born 1855 married in 1881 Antoine Espitalier, a widower and a butcher from Le Roc, in 1881; 4/ Marie, born 1856, became a nun as Soeur Félicité, of the order of the sisters of Nevers. The Sisters of Charity of Nevers (Congrégation des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers), also known as Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction, is a religious institute founded in 1680 in Nevers, Nièvre, initially dedicated to helping the poor. During the nineteenth century they were more oriented toward the middle classes (and most of the novices were middle-class girls), and by the 1860s operated 260 convents in France. The order is well-known for having had Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879), also known as Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, as a member in the motherhouse at Nevers. After receiving her Marian apparitions, she entered the school run by the Sisters in Lourdes14. Our great-aunt Soeur Félicité is said to have tended Bernadette in her old age. She worked at the hospital in Brive, where all family members visited her on a regular basis. 5/ Pierre dit Baptiste, my great-grandfather, born 1858, whose life will be described in detail later in this chapter; 6/ Jean dit François, (b. 1861) became the abbé Jean-François Baussonnie (François for his family), who was a missionary in Bangalore and died at the age of 84 in 1945 after more than 50 years in India. Here is his official biography online BAUSSONNIE Jean-François naquit le 8 avril 1861 a Gignac, hameau Lablénie (Lot), dans le diocèse de Cahors. Après avoir fait ses études et reçu la prêtrise dans son diocèse, il entra prêtre au séminaire des Missions Etrangères le 27 juin 1887, partit le 22 août 1888 pour le Maïssour. En 1897, il fut affecté au ministère à Mysore. Il intervient dans la conversion du Prince Arasu, de la caste des rois de Mysore. Il lui fit subir I'examen, qui devait permettre, par exception, de le baptiser sans les délais voulus, tout en lui donnant cette armature spirituelle, qui devait lui permettre persévérer et de résister à la passion sinon aux menaces des gens de caste. En 191 il était à Chikballapur. En 1914, il s'occupait de la conversion la caste des Porchers et essaya de transformer ces nomades invétérés en cultivateurs, pour les fixer à la terre et les grouper en noyaux de chrétientés. En 1938, il poursuivit sa mission à Bangalore. Il mourut, le jour anniversaire de sa naissance, le 8 avril - 1945, âgé de 84 ans.15 He is buried in India and Guy visited his tomb with his family on his way back to Europe in 1956. This great-uncle should be remembered as the first relative to have learnt English, and lived in a foreign country. He is still the only family member to have a biographical notice on line, for his dedication to missionary work. He wrote many letters to his brother and sister-in-law, as well as his siblings, and took a great interest in their children. He unfortunately (by today’s standards) had a tendency to preach his siblings and his letters are somewhat grandiose, but slightly off-putting. A good example is the letter collectively addressed to his brothers and sisters just after the death of their father. We learn in it that his father did not approve of his choice of calling, and we are left to imagine that he may have been a free-thinker but his son forgave him for it. Because it is so representative of how religious people could speak in those days, it is lucky that the letter finally came to rest in our archives, but it is unfortunate that we do not know whether François could sometimes get on the nerves of his siblings with his religious exhortations: “Oh ! N’est-ce pas, frères et sœurs bien-aimés, qu’elles sont d’une infinie douceur, les consolations de notre religion sainte ! Pour qui ne croit pas, la mort c’est le néant, et ce mot de néant, pour les cœurs qui aiment, me semble bien cruel aux abords d’une tombe." François encouraged Hélène to learn English, sending books to her in that language, among which Cobbet’s history of the English Reformation which still sits in our library. He may have been concerned to avoid any noxious Protestant influence from years in the UK and study of English language and literature. It is just possible that his example had a lasting influence on the family, first through Hélène, then my father. Marthe Lamothe (our Glanes cousin) researched this character and says that he was promoted to bishop before he died, but there is no confirmation in the official biography uploaded by the Missions Etrangères in Paris. 7/ Jean Baussonie dit Cadet, born 1864, could be said to be the military guy of the family. He enlisted as an "enfant de troupe" in Tulle, and became a sergeant in the 7th Artillery Regiment. He married Irma Hortense Durand in 1891 and had three sons. Pierre Henri Baussonie, born in 1893, also embarked on a military career, as a soldier in the 5th regiment of tirailleurs algériens. He died in combat at Launois on 28 August 1914, right at the beginning of the war. Jean Baussonie, of which nothing is known, had a son called Pierre, who died 30 october 1944 ("Mort pour la France") at the age of 21. In keeping with usage, an ex-voto16 was printed in memory of him. I remember seeing a letter written by the nun who nursed him, to his parents, and describing in detail his wounds, the treatment in the military hospital and his courage in his last days. There were some family difficulties, not clear from the file, from his family which resided in "Gare de Turenne", called "la Gare" in family correspondence. There is only one letter in the archive from the Gare, written by cousin Sarah Elodie in 1887, posted from Gare de Turenne, but the writer, in a beautiful hand, devotes most of the space to explaining why she hasn't written earlier, so this document is not much use. 8/ Maria, born 1866 married Victor Gratias in 1884, a colleague of Baptiste. She was in close touch with Victoria all their lives, giving light reports about her life in her husband's various postings (Saint-Sulpice in the Lot and Nontron in Dordogne).. Their son Georges seemed to have a crush on Yvonne, judging by the number of postcards17 he sent her, especially during the war. He belonged to one of the very first Air Force squads, with which she was sent on operations in North Africa, the Balkans and Greece. He then became a watch-maker. Later, the granddaughter Georgette was a bosom friend of Hélène, and a devotee of the Padre Pio. The connection is now unfortunately extinct. In spite of that very numerous family, and having had four sons, the original Pierre from La Blénie does not have any male Bouyssonie descendants. Hélène used to deplore the extinction of the name in our branch, which invites us to medidate on the vanity of wishing our name to survive the course of time. Baptiste Bouyssonie (1858-1944) The fifth of this numerous family just described, Baptiste would not inherit enough land to become a farmer, so he must early on have had to have his sights elsewhere. We know very little about his education, except for two exercise books18. The first contains papers written between October 1878 to January 1879. According to the custom of the time, the book is embossed with the name of the school: "Pensionnat des Frères de Figeac" and belonging to Baussonnie Pierre Baptiste. Baptiste would have been just over 20, and from one of the essays, it seems he was studying for the baccalauréat ès sciences. The exercises cover a multitude of subjects from spelling to history, literature. There are both very simple tasks like copying words, to complex topics such as ""du naturel dans le style." The second book is entitled "Cahier de style épistolaire appurtenant à Baussonnie Baptiste19, containing examples of good letter-drafting, mostly in an administrative context. So perhaps Baptiste was late getting an education, and it seems it was during this spell as a "student" (as indicated in his call-up papers) that Baptiste was unlucky in the military service draw which was practised in those days20, and was conscripted for nearly five years in the Navy (more specifically the marine infantry) from November 1879 to 1884. His time as a sailor must have been harrowing, as it included a passage of Cape Horn and a stay in Nouméa (perhaps conveying convicts)21 but he rose from the ranks to be made sergeant after 2 years.22 His release a few months before the 5 year term may have been due to a grave illness which kept him in hospital for some time in Nouméa. His time abroad, which lasted about a year (counted as three campaigns) and general good behaviour earned him a certificat de bonne conduite. But more importantly, along perhaps with his early education, it got him a temporary post as préposé des contributions indirectes at Villeroy (near Meaux) on his exit from the service, a position reserved at that time to ex-non-commissioned officers. Perhaps the exercise books were studies he resumed once in a job, to prepare the concours. This admission into the tax administration, Excise division was the opportunity that would change his life from a landless farmer to a tenured civil servant and later a rentier with a pension, a rare privilege in those days. But in the meantime, he had some years of obscure toil before succeeding in attracting the attention of his superiors and securing tenure. During those nine years as a préposé, he must have lived in worry that his employment would be terminated. It did not prevent him from immediately setting out to marry. Chapter 3: Carennac: the Vergne/Teilhac ancestry This chapter holds a special attraction for me, and I hope for my family readers too, as it is centred on our very own house and the ancestors who lived in it during the last 200 years, and where we now seek a break from work and the bustle of our city lifes. And here, I will quote Anatole de Monzies, speaking about his love for his Saint-Céré connection, including a venerable noble house; much in the same frame of mind as I am writing this memoir. "Trop longtemps, j'ai ignoré la nécessité, sinon le devoir, pour tout homme, d'immobiliser un peu de soi dans un cadre fixe, d'installer quelque part le relais de ses curiosités et la station terminale de ses impatiences. Sottement j'ai redouté l'ennui des jours pareils et la confrontation uniforme de la veille avec le lendemain. C'est à Saint-Céré que m'est venu le goût du repos spirituel…"23 Many little countries (terroirs) have been celebrated by poets or writers, and our own little corner of paradise has its fair share, like this short text of Henry Miller24: A few months before the war broke out I decided to take a long vacation. I had long wanted to visit the valley of the Dordogne, for one thing. So I packed my valise and to the train to Rocamadour, where I arrived early one morning about sun up, the moon still gleaming brightly. It was a stroke of genius on my part to make the tour of the Dordogne region before plunging into the bright and hoary world of Greece. (…) To me this river, this country, belong to the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. It is not French, not Austrian, not European even: it is a country of enchantment which the poets have staked out and which they alone may lay claim to . It was the nearest thing to Paradise this side of Greece. Let us call it the Frenchman's paradise, by way of making a concession. Actually it must have been a paradise for many thousands of years25. (…) I believe that this great peaceful region of France will always be a sacred spot for man and that when the cities will have killed off the poets this will be the refuge and the cradle of the poets to come. I repeat, it was most important for me to have seen the Dordogne: it gives me hope for the future of the race, for the future of the earth itself. France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men." Now zooming on our part of that blessed region, I will quote a text that describes the rail trip from Brive, but does not capture the emotion that I feel every time I approach it on arrival from our northern cities: "L'express de Paris avait dépassé les toitures en ardoise de Brive disparues dans le sillage du train sur le tapis roulant des jardins et des prairies. Il dévalait les dernières glissades du Limousin, en route vers le Quercy, Capdenac, Toulouse, les horizons crépitants de soleil au sortir des châtaigneraies toujours un peu rêveuses dans les effluves océaniques qui les baignent. Deux stations présentèrent leurs bâtiments humbles tandis que des vocables sonnaient aux portières avec des orgueils d'histoire ou de terroir: Turenne, les Quatre-Routes. Maintenant ce serait Saint-Denis-Martel et la fuite luisante des rails au pied des premières falaises quercynoises.26" And now for our familiar scenery, that we face from the vantage point of the terrace café on the square in Vayrac: "I looked out over the Dordogne valley, a mile or so across, to seemingly endless hills beyond, with the wide, clear river, still in places and with mirrored spires of poplars in it, forming islands and small cascades in others. In the valley, I could see countless little homesteads, innumerable plots of cultivation. Near the river itself and on the slopes adjoining were lush-looking pastures. Up the steeper slopes were the vineyards, above them woods, which reached up to the top of the hills, whenever the sides were not too steep for a tree to find footing. It was a panorama that spelt wealth to me, true wealth. All was bounty and beauty, God-given, and man had not desecrated it. He had substituted his crops and fruit trees for wild flowers and bushes, he had utilized the river to drive his water-mills, he had felled trees from time immemorial according as he needed them and filled up the gap with seedlings. He had in fact been wise enough to make return for aught he had taken.27 " Carennac itself was celebrated by the amateur poet but great (religious) writer Fénelon, whose "Ode to Carennac28" has since it was written been quoted by all travelogues. Here are the last lines: En quelque climat que j'erre, Plus que tous les autres lieux Cet heureux coin de la terre Me plait, et rit à mes yeux ; Là pour couronner ma vie, La main d’une Parque amie Filera mes plus beaux jours ; Là reposera ma cendre This part of the story starts as early as the last days of the XVIIIth century among the “two or three” leading families of what was then a big village of over 1200 souls. The Revolution had not been too painful in this Church-owned land, there were no prominent assassinations or sacking of castles as a result of political unrest or revolution. And apart from the cloister, which was appropriated and turned into stables by among others the ancestors of the Fraysse family, not too much destruction of buildings, which were just left to degrade, with no regular maintenance. These leading families were the Teilhac, the Valrivière and the Geniès, the latter sometimes claiming a particule. The Dunoyer de Segonzac were also on the scene but somewhat in the background, or not permanently living in Carennac, and not displaying their particule for a while after the Revolution. How do we know about their prominence in the absence of any written accounts or living memories? There are a few signs in the birth registries. A few apparently distinguished individuals, very few in number, are given a more respectful term of address such as “Sieur”, “Dame” or “Demoiselle” in the records of births, marriages or burials of family members. This distinction is totally lacking for ordinary citizens. These people also were alllowed, in what was probably mimicry of the aristocracy, to state their profession as “propriétaire”, or even better, “sans profession”.That usage remained for a very long time, since even Baptiste had a calling card (you could not call it a business card) bearing that indication in the 1930s. These families held their influence from being a little richer than the others, through ownership of land and buildings, though they did not possess any nobility titles. Some of their ancestors had held public offices, such as member of the regional parliament, or solicitor or notaire, which had to be bought until the Revolution. The advantage for us of these early distinctions is that it attracts genealogists in search of a prestigious past, with the result that the Teilhac ancestry has been particularly well researched, from the early 1600s up to now. Another surprising discovery is the resilience of their prominence across the generations, probably due to limited social mobility. Even now, the Teilhac have managed to maintain some status, and they have managed to marry a few particules in the XXth century, perhaps without any other claim to excellence than the prominence of their XVIIth century ancestors. The social links between these three or four families would be shown at baptisms when they would act as godmothers and godfathers to each others’ offspring. Beyond these select few, a second tier of families also competed on the scene: the Carbonnières, the Vernet, the Trassy and a few others, with now and then two brothers marrying two sisters of one of the other families. Consanguinity did not seem to be high in spite of this, with very few couples needing to get dispensation from Rome for over-narrow blood ties. These families also shared in political influence, by keeping control of the newly created function of maire. In the first decades of the XIXth century, after the initial turmoil of the Revolution, the families each served twice at the head of the commune’s executive, as seen from the list of the first incumbents: Pierre MOUREAU 1793 1794 Jacques VAYSSE 1794 1796 Jean Pierre VALRIVIERE 1796 1800 Denis LAPLACE 1800 1802 Jean Baptiste GINIES 1802 1819 Eusèbe VALRIVIERE 1819 1825 Jean-Pierre TEILHAC 1825 1840 Louis GINIES (de) 1840 1841 Antoine Eloi TEILHAC 1841 1842 Download 438.63 Kb. Share with your friends:
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