I continued my research on my mother’s side of the ancestors of Marie-Jeanne Breton, born in 1778 in Vert-Saint-Denis, where I grew up. As usual in genealogy (and in life!), a surprise led to another. And better than that: it turned out to be a two-surprise discovery!

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Marie-Jeanne Breton’s great-grandparents were Louis Huré (1674-1731) and Nicole Dupont (1671-1734). Louis Huré was born in Champigny (Yonne, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France) and Nicole Dupont in Savigny-le-Temple (10-minute drive from Vert-Saint-Denis). I have yet to research their ancestry.

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First Surprise: their wedding location

Louis Huré and Nicole Dupont were married on September 24, 1697 in Melun, Seine-et-Marne (8-minute drive from Vert-Saint-Denis), in the Church of Saint-Aspais… The same church where my parents were married 269 years later!

While I obviously don’t have a picture of Louis and Nicole’s wedding in 1697 (the beginnings of photography being 142 years later, in 1839), I like to imagine that Nicole was standing at the exact same spot as my mother (her 9th generation descendant) on my parents’ wedding pictures below, in 1966.

Note: not all weddings in France look like theirs! My father, Daniel Revenu, was a famous fencer (foil) (4-time olympian). He was trained by my grandfather, Ernest Revenu, in Melun. So when my parents exited the church after their wedding ceremony, they were greeted with a “haie d’honneur” (guard of honor) of dozens of young fencers.  

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Here is a beautiful painting of the Church of Saint-Aspais by French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne who lived in Melun from April 1879 to March 1880.

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Second Surprise: Louis Huré’s burial location

Another surprise was waiting for me when I found the death and burial record of Louis Huré. I discovered on his record that he was the marguillier (churchwarden) of the church in Vert-Saint-Denis (lay official responsible for maintaining parish records). As such, he is buried in the church of Vert-Saint-Denis, where our family would attend mass every Sunday! All these years, every Sunday, we were standing at church, totally unaware of our ancestor’s presence below our feet…

On his burial record below, he is named Louis Huré “le Père” (the father), indicating that he has a son with the same name (Louis Huré “le Fils”, present at his burial).

Décès et inhumation de Louis Huré “le Père”, Vert-Saint-Denis, 5MI6630 Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures. ( 1688-1736 ), p. 345/385, en bas de la page de gauche (bottom of the left page)

If you click on the link above: the website of the Archives of Seine-et-Marne opens up to the first page (they don’t have a permalink to specific pages). So you will need to type in the page number (345) on the bottom right of the page.

Below is the transcription of the burial record of Louis Huré le Père (I transcribed it as it was written in “old French”, with very little punctuation, typical on old records. I included more punctation in the English translation to make it a little easier to understand):

Note: Vert-Saint-Denis changed names multiple times after its foundation. “Ver” was its name in 1731. “Vert-Saint-Denis” is the current name.

One “funny” thing: just above Louis Huré’s burial record is the burial record of Geneviève Bourdin, the other paternal great-grandmother of Marie-Jeanne Breton!

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The times they lived in

We saw in my previous post that Marie-Jeanne Breton and her husband Pierre Gille François Girault lived during the French Revolution (1789-1799).

One hundred years earlier, Louis Huré and Nicole Dupont, Marie-Jeanne Breton’s great-grandparents, lived during another major event that would have a global impact.

On October 18, 1685, Louis XIV King of France revoked the Edict of Nantes (signed in 1598 by Henri IV, King of France) with the Edict of Fontainebleau, outlawing Protestantism in France. Protestant churches were destroyed; Huguenot schools were closed; pastors were expelled. Huguenots were forced to convert to Catholicism or face severe punishment — imprisonment, galley slavery, confiscation of property. Over 200,000 Huguenots (about 1% of the kingdom) fled France in secret, often leaving behind wealth, land, and family. They resettled primarily in Protestant-friendly countries, where they were welcomed for their skills, education, and craftsmanship (Dutch Republic (Netherlands), England, Switzerland, German states, South Africa, North America, Piedmont/Savoy, Sweden).

Louis Huré and Nicole Dupont also lived through a tragic event that impacted them directly: the Great Frost of 1709 (“le Grand hiver de 1709”), which started on January 6, 1709. An intense cold snap from January 6 to January 22, then at the beginning and the end of February, led to famine and high mortality. France was particularly hard hit by the winter, with a subsequent famine estimated to have caused 600,000 deaths by the end of 1710. It was the coldest European winter in over 500 years. In England, the thaw caused widespread flooding.

When I found that two of their daughters died that year, I immediately thought that they very possibly died because of it.

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Below (in bold) is the timeline of Louis Huré and Nicole Dupont’s lives, and in italic, the major events that happened during their lifetime. (On my “Timeline of Historical Events” page, each block with an arrow is expandable and provides a summary of the event).

• 1671 – Birth of Nicole Dupont (Savigny-le-Temple, Seine-et-Marne)

• 1674 – Birth of Louis Huré (Champigny, Yonne)

• 1685 – Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV

• 1697 – Louis and Nicole’s wedding in Saint-Aspais, Melun (Seine-et-Marne)

• 1697 – (or 1696?) Birth of their daughter Marie (my ancestor; she was a midwife)

• 1701 – War of the Spanish Succession

• 1705 – Birth of their daughter Louise (she died 4 years later…)

• 1708 – Birth of their daughter Marguerite (she died 1 year later…)

• 1709 – (January 6) – Start of the “Great Frost”,  followed with a subsequent famine 

• 1709 – (March 18) – Burial of their daughter Louise (soon after the “Great Frost”)

• 1709 – (May 7) – Burial of their daughter Marguerite (soon after the “Great Frost”)

• 1714 – End of the War of the Spanish Succession

• 1715 – Death of Louis XIV, King of France (he reigned for 72 years, the longest reign of the History of France, and one of the longest reigns of the History of Europe).

• 1715 – Louis XV, King of France (great-grandson of Louis XIV)

• 1731 – Death of Louis Huré (Vert-Saint-Denis)

• 1734 – Death of Nicole Dupont (Pouilly-le-Fort, Hameau de Vert-Saint-Denis)

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