My French Lineage

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When Your Ancestor’s Birthplace No Longer Exists: The Story of Edmée Tircuit

A genealogist researches an old French marriage register on a computer while pondering the mysterious place name “Anstrude” and uncertain surname spellings, illustrated with thought bubbles in a cozy home office.

An illegible surname. A village that no longer exists. Edmée Tircuit’s story shows that genealogy is often detective work.

Sometimes, the hardest part of French genealogy isn’t finding a record—it’s figuring out what you’re actually reading.

If this can happen to a native French speaker like me, imagine the challenge for researchers who don’t speak French. Reading old records in an unfamiliar language can feel overwhelming—rather like the way I feel when trying to decipher old German documents!

One of my own ancestors, Edmée Tircuit, sent me down a rabbit hole involving an almost illegible surname and a birthplace that seemed to have vanished from the map.

Edmée Tircuit was born in 1741 in Anstrude, in the Yonne (89) département of France. At that time, France was deeply entangled in the opening stages of the War of the Austrian Succession and experiencing severe domestic food shortages. Under King Louis XV, the nation allied with Bavaria and Spain to oppose Austria, sending French troops into Central Europe.

Edmée married Léonard Breton in 1772 in Vert-Saint-Denis (77), the commune where I grew up. He was born in 1728. She was his second wife. Both Edmée and Léonard were born during the Enlightenment-era (“Siècle des Lumières”), a period of intellectual and cultural flourishing in Europe and Western civilization.

While checking their marriage record (left page of the register), I discovered that my Edmée must have looked rather “round” (“rondelette“) on her wedding day! On the right page of the register, it says that just four days later she gave birth to their daughter Marie Geneviève Rosalie, who was baptized the next day! (We were very fast and efficient in Vert-Saint-Denis in 1772!!)

(See my post about their other daughter Marie-Jeanne, my ancestor)

Edmée’s last name on their marriage record was my first difficulty. Edmée Firmin? Fircuir? Tircuir? Tircuit? Then, her birthplace…. Anstrude? I searched maps and gazetteers without success.

After digging deeper, I discovered that Anstrude was renamed in 1790 and became the present-day commune “Bierry-les-Belles-Fontaines”, in the Yonne département of France. 

(If you need help understanding and/or locating departments of France for your research, check my “Regions and Departments of France” page).

One question still puzzles me: How did they meet? The distance between Vert-Saint-Denis and Anstrude is about 200 kilometers (125 miles)—roughly a two-day walk today, and certainly no small journey in the 18th century.

From the records I’ve found, Edmée’s parents appear to have spent their entire lives in Anstrude. Her father was a stonecutter (tailleur de pierre). So… Did Léonard travel to Anstrude and meet Edmée there? Or did she somehow make her way to Vert-Saint-Denis and meet him there instead? Did she go with her father to Vert-Saint-Denis when he was working on a construction project there? Unless new records come to light, the answer remains a mystery, leaving us free to imagine their story.

Edmée’s anecdote is a good reminder that when a surname seems impossible to decipher or a village appears to have vanished, the problem may not be your research skills at all. Spellings evolved, handwriting varied from one priest or clerk to another, and some French communes changed names over time.

Sometimes, solving the mystery simply requires looking at the records from a different angle.

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🌿 Genealogy

Here are the links to several pages on my Geneanet tree related to individuals, events or places mentioned in this post: (FYI: on Geneanet, the little “green circle” on an individual’s image indicates my direct lineage with the individuals).

Note: some individuals or events might be “alone” on my tree but check links to other pages.

Individuals:

A few events happening in France and in the world during Edmée’s lifetime:

A little bit about:

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