A Leobon By Any Other Name…

I thought about posting some of this information last week, but it would have been out of turn.  We must let everyone have their turn!  I think it will work out well anyway.  The topic has changed a bit from what I had thought of last week.  I had even thought of doing something entirely different, but a few things happened this week that made me decide to go with the flow.

The thing that started it last week was this bit of information I found a few months back.  If you can’t read it, it says that Leobon Patureau was baptised in Palluaud, France, in 1768 and that he was born on Aug. 1.  That was what struck me last week – it was the sestercentenneal of of his birth.  Or is it semiquincentennial?  Whatever you call it, he was born 250 years ago.  Now that’s a milestone.

Then, earlier this week, some Patureau family members were remembering the anniversary of a loved one’s death.  A new mausoleum was built in the honor of Elmo Leobon Patureau, Jr.  who was known by family and friends as “Pat.”  He was the father of Dana and Byron.  There was a service for family and friends for his new resting place.  It is a beautiful monument.

The thing that really decided it was that I started looking back at those old French documents and noticed the repetition of that name Leobon.  It’s not a common name, yet it has been in the Patureau family for quite a while.  The Leobon that was born in 1768 died in 1851 in France.

He died that February, and then the name was continued later that year when his grandson Ferdinand Pierre Patureau named his firstborn son Louis Leobon Patureau (Pat’s great grandfather).  Ferdinand was about 14 when the family moved from France to the US, so he probably had some fond memories of his grandfather.

Louis Leobon went by the name Leobon.  He later married and named one of his sons Louis Leobon, Jr.  The son died at the age of 16, so the name Leobon was not carried down his line.  His next older brother was named Charles Allen and he had a son named Elmo Leobon.  He, of course, named one of his sons Elmo Leobon, Jr.

But that Leobon Patureau born in 1768 was not the first one in the family with the Leobon name.  If you look at that old baptismal record, you’ll see that his godfather or “parrain” was a Leobon Mounier. Leobon’s mother’s name is given as Marie Sicaud.

I looked at more documents and found that Marie Sicaud was the daughter of Pierre Sicaud and Jeanne Mounier.  So I’m thinking that the Leobon name was actually from our Mounier side of the family.  I found a document from 1742 that records the death of a 72-year-old man named Leobon, and Pierre Sicaud was a witness to the death.  Pierre was married into the Mounier family at that time, so it’s possible that the man was a family member.

So that Leobon name might have been in the family for almost 350 years.  Do I see a semiseptcentennial in our future?  We’ll have to find further verification before we do that!  So we’ll just have to be satisfied with a sestercentennial.

Go on.  Celebrate!  Just be careful with all those candles!