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In response to many inquiries for information on our research in France in July 1997, I have reprinted the account of our trip, as well as the two translations, that were made of the material that we extracted from the Rivierre Journals. The account of our trip was published in The Bobo Roots-Cellar later in 1997. I thought it best that we print this account when all was still fresh in my memory. The translations were published in the Roots-Cellar several months later. These translations were reprinted in 2000 on the Compact Disk version of our family history (“Descendants of Gabriel Baubeau”) along with Outline Descendant Trees and Genealogical Reports for the various branches of the family. These translations are not meant to replace Scott Johnson’s “Huguenots In The Back Country” but are intended as a supplement to it. They do, however, include all of the material found in Scott’s manuscript.
Bob BOBO Gives First Report on Research in Europe
COUSINS:
My wife Marlyn and I arrived in London on Sunday, June 29. Our first stop was in Soho Square where we visited the French Reform Church formerly of Threadneedle Street. Threadneedle Street is the banking center of London and the original church was razed long ago to make room for a bank. We attended the noon worship service and had lunch with the parishioners after the service. They assured me that they had no records there and directed me to the London University Library, a fifteen-minute walk away.
We spent the afternoon at the library and with the assistance of the curator searched through everything that they had. The only thing that we were able to find was the reference to Suseane Beaubo witnessing the baptism of Suseane GODIN, daughter of Jean GODIN and Estere CALEAU on 1 Sept. 1706 at the French Church in Threadneedle Street. (Huguenot Society Quatro Series, Register of the French Church of Threadneedle Street, London, p. 276). Strangely, the name later appears as Susenne BETENBO.
Two weeks later we were in Rome, but with a full schedule for our two-day visit. We did manage three hours of free time and took a taxi to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. The Basilica is the second largest Roman church after the Vatican and stands on the burial place of the Apostle according to Catholic tradition. The original building was started ca. 385 and had been rebuilt several times. A total reconstruction was begun in 1824 after a disastrous fire destroyed the building. Many works of art including many irreplaceable Papal portraits, frescoes and mosaics were destroyed. (Many folks are now aware of the plaque on the Cloister wall of the Basilica describing the assent of Giacinto Bobo to the Papal throne in 1190. The translation of the plaque can be found on the CD “Descendants of Gabriel Baubeau” as well as in the Vatican Church records on the Internet.)
We discovered that the plaque concerning Pope Celestine III that was of interest to us was in the Cloister and not open to the public.
Our last evening in Paris was spent dining with a cousin who lives in Paris and works as an interpreter. We had sent her a note a month earlier informing her of our upcoming trip and asked if she had any suggestions as to how we might go about getting around in the back country of France with absolutely no knowledge of the language. She gave us a note with the name of a town called Couarde, which she suggested that we visit. Since the name meant nothing to us and wasn't one of those mentioned in Scott Johnson's manuscript, we put it aside.
We had rented an 8th century castle in the village of Surin for the week which was about 12 miles South of Rom and spent our first evening in the Vienne District plotting a course for our search around those towns and villages which appear in Scott's manuscript. We decided that the most likely place to get any information was in the churches, so we would seek out these first and possibly find someone who might lead us to find old records.
On Sunday morning, July 20 we headed for Rom. Along the way we spotted some cemeteries and decided to stop to investigate. We didn't expect to find anything of value but decided to look anyway. We immediately found inscriptions for several of the spellings suggested by our US Bobos and those are recorded below. There were no other variations that were even close.
Of course, all of this proved nothing except that some of the variations that we had been aware of were prominent throughout this part of France into the 20th Century.
CEMETERIES:
Genouille
Several tombstone inscriptions with the name BABEAU
St. Leger de la Martiniere
Several tombstone inscriptions with the names BAUBEAU and BEAUBEAU.
Couhe
The town of Couhe is about three miles immediately East of Rom and equivalent to what we might call a county seat. It appears to have been the center of what was the Protestant movement in the 17th Century.
Louise BEAUBEAU d. 28 Feb 1936
Rene BEAUBEAU b. 1912 d. 1936
Albert BEAUBEAU b. 1887 d. 1963
Bertha PHEMOLANT b. 1891 d. 1957 spouse of Albert
Jacques BEAUBEAU b. 1846 d. 1898
Henri Nicole BEAUBEAU b. 1886 d. 1960
Madelaine BEAUBEAU b. 1856 d. 1929
Madelaine BEAUBEAU b. 1884 d. 1983
Florentine BEAUBEAU b. 1894 d. 1976
Louise BEAUBEAU b. 1885 d. 1898
Auguste BEAUBEAU b. 1894 d. 1914
Jean Edmond BEAUBEAU b. 1878 d. 1958
Lucien BEAUBEAU b. 1906 d. 1997 prisoner during WW2
Edmonde BEAUBEAU b. 1920 d. 1994
Brux
Eugenie BABEAU b. 1873 d. 1969
Henri BEAUBEAU b. 1914 d. 1962 French army 1939-1945
Rom
No BOBOs here, but about 25 US Army graves all dated July 7, 1944.
Melle
Louis Albert BAUBEAU b. 1917 d. 1990
Marie Beaubeau NIQUET b. 22 Dec 1860 d. 28 May 1940
Lucien BAUBEAU d. 1 Dec 1916, 52 years old
Eugene BAUBEAU d. 28 Dec 1958
Clementine BAUBEAU b. 1864 d. 1948
Armance BAUBEAU b. 1896 d. 1977
Louis BAUBEAU b. 1893 d. 1980
Melanie Pierre b. 1895 d. 1981 spouse of Louis
Famille BAUBEAU-PUOIT Tombstone without Christian names.
Vanzay
Famille BAUBEAU-MICHEAU
Pierre BEAUBEAU d. 20 May 1907, age 71
Marie Louise Jousseaune d. 25 Feb 1901, age 55, wife of Pierre
Mark BAUBEAU b. 1912 d. 1939 Military- Lieutenant (photo)
Charles BAUBEAU d. age 8 days
Marie Luce BOUCHET b. 1855 d. 1892 spouse of Charles
Charles BAUBEAU b. 1852 d. 1911
Alphonse BAUBEAU d. 10 May 1965, age 85 years
Madeleine FOUCHEe d. 18 Aug 1975,age 88 years, spouse of Alphonse
Madeleine BAUBEAU d. 7 Apr 1904, age 65, spouse of Gabriel Gagneir
Gabriel GAGNEIR d. 3 Feb 1907 age 78
Suzanne BOBAU d. 2 June 1880
Lezay
Famille BABOU
Modeste BABOU b. 13 Aug 1869 d. 26 Jan 1958
Suzanne BEAUBEAU b. 20 Oct 1841 d. 29 Jan 1886 spouse of Alexander BRANGER, "she was a good wife and mother"
Lusignan
Jean BOBEAU d. 1890 2 years old
Joseph BOBEAU b. 1892 d. 1967
Marie Louise b. 1906 d. 1983 spouse of Joseph
The names MARSAULT, EPINCHARD and BEAU appeared frequently in nearly all of these cemeteries.
There were many small villages along the way, most of which had only one church (usually 8th to 15 century vintage), and I felt a little uncomfortable about walking into a Catholic Church on a Sunday morning and possibly during a service. My fears were allayed however when we walked into the first church in Genouille. The building was completely empty and obviously no longer in use, dust everywhere, the Holy Water Font covered with cobwebs, and the only sign of life, a vase of fresh flowers on the alter. That scene was repeated dozens of times that week and still puzzles me.
The towns that we visited were Genouille, St. Leger de la Martiniere, Civray, Brux, Couhe', Vaux, Rom, Messe, Vanzay, Melle, la Couarde, Beaussais, Maisonnais, St. Sauvant, Vivonne and Lusignan.
On Tuesday morning in la Mairie (the town hall) in Vanzay the clerk suggested that we go to la Couarde explaining that there were Huguenot records there, and Oh yes...Marie BAUBEAU lives in the last house along the road as you leave the town! Marie BAUBEAU BLANCHE' was a widow of 84 who lived alone and, much to our disappointment, appeared to know nothing of her BAUBEAU background. I did think it unusual that the clerk knew her by her maiden name.
We had asked about the town of Couarde during some of our other stops but were unable to find anyone familiar with it until now. Her directions put us in la Couarde in about 30 minutes. The "Temple" was clearly marked and looked like the only public building in a village of thousand year old homes. The sign in front called it a "Maison du Prostestanisme" or House of Protestantism.
I had always thought that the siesta belonged to the Spanish but the French have the same practice, refusing any physical exertion between noon and 2:30 PM. As a result we had to wait for the magic hour to get in.
It was worth the wait. In a small room in the back of this church are all the Huguenot records (that are name specific) that are known to exist in 15 or so handwritten volumes. These records are photocopies and the originals, according the curator, are said to be in Paris although we were unable to find out where. These volumes (Dictionnaire Des Familles Protestantes du Poitou, 1680 - 1780, Volume I, Aage - Brillaud) represent the work of Pasteur Jean RIVIERRE and were copied from his notes in 1957-59.
We easily found BAUBEAU followed by "see BEAUBEAU." We found BOBEAU next also noted "see BEAUBEAU." The notation was the same for BOBAU and BABAU. We asked why these names were referenced this way and were told that these variations were all the same family whose members used different spellings. While this really doesn't make sense to me, it may explain why these variations appear on tombstones side by side. And may even be what appear to be parent and child as in Brux, Lezay and Vanzay. These notes will be sent to FamilyBOBO as soon as we can get them translated.
One notation that needed no translation was "BEAUBEAU, _________ emigrer Argentina" This was the only pertinent migration that we could find but are under the impression that using an alias or giving the impression that you might be headed in the opposite direction from that which you intend was common. Additionally, Argentina belonged to Spain and would probably be accessible only from Spain which was not sympathetic to, nor inclined to harboring, the Huguenot fugitives fleeing France. It would require traveling overland through hostile territory a considerably longer distance than that required to reach the French coast and England. We could find no other notes either proving or implying that anyone left Europe.
We spent the next day in La Rochelle visiting the historical sites and the Protestant Temple, now a museum. There is no mention of La Rochelle in any of the the family histories that I have seen, but this city being one of the last strongholds of the Huguenot movement was worth investigating. Unfortunately we found, just as Jim BOBO had earlier, that there was no evidence of any BOBOs there.
Some interesting things that we did find were, a small village named la Roche Elie about a mile south of Rom. Could this have been mistaken for La Rochelle? Either spoken or written, it could have fooled me. And a farm or plantation named la Richardiere about one mile south of Pouzeau on Route D-57 (the road from Couhe to St. Survaunt) and about two miles north of Rom. There were two very large mansions and a few outbuildings surrounded by a very large farm.
I will pass along the Rivierre translations as soon as they are done. I doubt that they will tell us any more than we already know...but I am keeping my fingers crossed.
The Translations:
Not until Scott Johnson’s manuscript, “Huguenots in the Backcountry: The Bobo Family of France, Virginia and South Carolina” in 1994, had anyone been able to find any documented evidence of a possible connection to our Bobos in France. Family folklore has led most of us to believe that our ancestors were French Protestants, or Huguenots, who fled their home country after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The edict guaranteed some religious autonomy to the Protestants, but its provisions were never fully recognized by Louis XIV and by 1681 Louis, supported by the Catholic Church, began a campaign of persecution to reverse the expansion of the “Reformed Church” in France.
Hundreds of thousands of Protestants fled after 1681, taking refuge in the Protestant countries surrounding France. Records of their births, baptisms, marriages and deaths were lost or destroyed since the Catholics did not consider them legitimate.
My wife and I spent a week in the areas described in Johnson’s manuscript and found a copy of the Rivierre Journals in the Protestant Museum in Couarde. We copied all the material that was of interest to our Bobos and had it translated for us when we arrived home.
The surnames that Scott had gotten from “Dictionnaire Etymologique Des Noms De Famille et Prenoms De France”, Beaubeau, Baubeau and Bobeau were the most prominent of the possible surname variations. Rivierre had grouped the three together and for good reason, as the museum curator explained, “They were all of the same family, they just used different spellings.”
“Dictionaire Des Familles du Poitou, 1680 – 1780”, a compilation of Huguenot records representing the life work of Pasteur Jean Rivierre, were copied from his notes in 1957. The three spellings were found intermixed in “Volume 1, Aage – Brillaud” and included the following:
“SWORN BY THE PEOPLE IN 1681:
IN THE TOWN OF POITIERS
Jean Bobeau and Francoise Bachelier
Gabriel Bobeau - Jean Eprichard - his wife, Pierre and Jaques, their children ages 6 and 3.
Jaques Bobeau (Laborer) and Marie Mineau – his wife, Isaac and Louis, their children ages 17 and 16 and Jeanne of the aforesaid Mineau and the late Jean Touchard, age 20.
IN THE TOWN OF COUVRE
Pierre Bobeau (Shoemaker/Bootmaker) – age 45 and Marie Guillon – his wife age 42, Magdelaine and Rene, their daughters ages 16 and 14.
Pierre Bobeau (Journalist) – age 40 and Judith Millet – his wife of the same age, Isaac, their son age 10.
Louis Bobeau age 70.
IN THE TOWN OF CEAU
Abraham Bobeau with Jean Nicholas and 3 children
IN THE TOWN OF BRUX
Jean Bobeau, 20 years old – sons Jacques and Jean Bobeau, 19 year old son of Jean.
IN THE TOWN OF ST. SAUVANT
Gabriel Baubeau with his wife Catherine Rivault and their children Gabriel, Laurence and Jean, ages 30, 25 and 24.
Abraham Baubeau (Laborer)”
“Louis Bobeau was 30 years old and Jean Bobeau was 22 years old when they went with 400 others to the Easter Assembly convened secretly in the St. Sauvant Forest on April 9, 1697 where a boy from the countryside preached to them. Then, caught red-handed in the act with 7 others , the Guennots, Chenebault, Durand, Lesecq, Gallard and Pierron, they were imprisoned at Poitiers and, with their companions, condemned to death.
Sentencing to be carried out on May 7, 1697. According to the Declaration of July 12, 1686 they were condemned to death because the new converts had been convinced to assemble and hear the preaching of the RPR.”
“Jean was to be hanged until death at La Place St. Nicholas in Poitiers and was to be buried on the Couvre Highway. Louis was to be hanged on the public square in St. Sauvant and was to be buried on the Poitiers Highway.” (Robert G. Bobo, August, 1997)
Additional Translations:
This translation is material that was overlooked because it was thought to be repetitious. Although it does recount some of the same events, after closer examination, it appears to be from a different source.
“Recanted in 1681 at the inquiry (questioning) in Couhe:
At Couhe:
Louis Bobeau, 70 years old.
Pierre Bobeau with Judith Millet and Isaac, age 10, Magdelaine and Renee ages 16 and 14.
At Ceaux:
Abraham Baubeau with Jean Nicholas and 3 children.
At Brux:
Jean Bobeau, age 19, son of Jean.
At Saint Sauvant:
Gabriel Baubeau with his wife Catherine Rivault and their children Gabriel, Laurence and Jean, 30, 25 and 24 years old.
At Messe:
Abraham Baubeau with Catherine Lireuil and Abraham, age 9, Jaques Baubeau and Catherine, newborn.
At Rom:
Jean Bobeau with Frances Bachelier.
Jaques Bobeau with Marie Mineau and Isaac, age 7.
Louis Bobeau, age 26.”
“Louis and Jean Bobeau, 1697, ages 30 and 22 years old, condemned to be hung for the Easter assembly of 1697 by the Presidial (court?) of Poitiers, to be hung in Poitiers and Saint Sauvant.”
“Louis Bobeau, age 30 and Jean, age 22 when they turned themselves in with 400 others on April 9, 1697 at the Easter assembly. Secretly convocated in the Saint Sauvant Forest (King’s Woods) where a country boy preached to them. Taken in flagrant misdemeanor with 7 others the Guennot, Chenebault, Durand, Lesecq, Gaillard and Pierron and 33 others along the roads by the sentencing of (the court) on May 7, 1697 as new converts duly reached and convinced of having allowed themselves to assemble and to have heard the RPR preach and conforming the Declaration of July 12, 1686. Jean should be hung and strangled at Saint Nicholas Square in Poitiers and his dead body placed (displayed) on the main road in Couvre. Louis should be hung and strangled on the public square of Saint Sauvant and his dead body placed on the main road of Poitiers.”
“Sentencing was broken (overturned) in an appeal in Paris.”
“Local tradition based on a kind of Kingdom of this Baubeau (family) of which the descendants would be in Argentina.” (Based on a conversation with an unnamed source, March 15, 1980)
“The plan of escape, filled with precautions, Girault from Bagnault, son-in-law of the fugitive (?) took these objects to be his, not at his mother-in-law’s house but at the home of Mirabeau, responsible for the transport at another address in Charbouneau to arrive at the Baubeau’s home, the wife not forwarned or not yet (aware?)” (Robert G. Bobo, July, 2000)
All quotations from “Dictionaire Des Familles du Poitou, 1680 – 1780, Vol. 1”, by Pasteur Jean Rivierre, copied from his notes in 1957.
COPYWRITE NOTICE: The above account and translations are the property of the Bobo Family Association and are intended for the exclusive use of family members in their genealogical research. The data in these files may be extracted by Bobo family members in preparing material for personal research, or for the publication of a Bobo history authored by them, so long as sources are properly cited or the extraction of material from the files is acknowledged. Data from this file may not be sold, copied, reproduced, uploaded or distributed in whole or in part for any reason without the express written permission of the Bobo Family Association and Robert G. Bobo (twobos@qwestonline.com)
Bob Bobo, 2002
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