The Bicentennial of Ferdinand Patureau’s Birth

Last month I talked about a 200-year anniversary of an ancestor on my mom’s side of the family.  It was a name that I had discovered nine years ago after many years of searching by various family members.  This time I’m talking about a family member on my dad’s side of the family, and there has never been a time of mystery concerning his name.  Mainly because his father didn’t die at a young age and his mother didn’t go on to marry someone and take on a different last name.  That’s what happened in the last situation.

There was a slight mystery, however.  Ferdinand Pierre Patureau was the son of Pierre Ferdinand Patureau, yet the birth record for father and son only lists their names as Pierre Patureau.  The mystery was solved for me when I went to the Pierre Ferdinand Patureau Collection at the Tyrrell Historical Library in Beaumont, Texas.  One document showed that the family decided to go against tradition and skip the Pierre, Sr. and Jr. naming convention.  Instead, they called the father Pierre Ferdinand, and the son was then called Ferdinand Pierre.  It works.

There is another slight mystery as well.  This time it’s not about his name; it’s about his birth date.  The record shows Pierre Patureau as the son of Pierre Patureau, boulanger (or baker), and Anne Machet.  His mother was known as Anne Rose Machet.  They do not have middle names listed on this record, but I’ve seen them on others.

The record is a baptismal record and the date on it is October 27, 1826 (du vingt sept octobre mil huit cent vingt six).  It goes on to say that he was born (naissance) the day before (ne l’jour d’hier) at 8 o’clock in the evening (a huit heure du soir).  So that would put his birthday on October 26th.  Yet, his gravestone shows that his birth date was October 27, 1826.  

I thought I would give a little background history of the family at the time of Ferdinand’s birth.  As we saw on that record, his father was Pierre Patureau who was a baker.  Pierre was the son of Leobon Patureau, who was from Palluaud, France, and Jeanne Lanson from Bors-de-Montmoreau.  Leobon was employed as a schoolmaster in Juignac, which is near to Bors.  This must have been how they met.  After they married in 1787, they settled in La Roche- Chalais, which is about 19 miles south.  Pierre was around the seventh of eight children born to the couple there.

Ferdinand’s mother was Anne Rose Machet of Maruil, France.  She was the daughter of Louis Machet, whose profession in Mareuil was chapelier.  He was a hat maker, as was his father before him.  Anne’s mother was Marie Louise Roux, who was from Bazac.  Those villages are almost fifty miles apart and I don’t know how Louis and Marie Louise might have met.  Maybe Marie Louise was a fan of his hats.  They were married in 1793 and settled in Mareuil.  Anne Rose was the third and last child of Louis and Marie Louise.  Sadly, Marie Louise died less than three years later.

So, Pierre Patureau grew up in La Roche-Chalais and became a baker.  Anne Rose Machet grew up without a mother with her father and two brothers in Mareuil.  These villages are over fifty miles apart and again I don’t know how Pierre and Anne met.  But they did, and they were married on July 24, 1820, in La Roche-Chalais.  I don’t have the official record of that date, but I found the same date from two different family sources (one in France).  It wasn’t long before children came along.  The first child born was a daughter Jeanne born in 1821.  I found a birth record for her, but there is no other mention of her in the records.  Then came Anne Victorine in 1824 and “Ferdinand” Pierre in 1826.  

When Ferdinand was born, he was greeted by his parents, one (or two) older sister(s), and his three remaining grandparents.  They were living in La Roche-Chalais, which is a charming little village in southern France.  His father was a baker at a local boulangerie – possibly owning his own shop.  Ferdinand would later be the older brother of brother Abel and sister Elisa.  Yet, the family eventually decided to immigrate to the United States in 1840.

And that’s why there are over a thousand descendants of Ferdinand Patureau in southern Louisiana and beyond.  Let’s give Ferdinand a nod in honor of his birth all those years ago.