French translation help needed please

+6 votes
240 views
Can a French speaker help me with this marriage record. I am trying to determine this man's origins. Thank you.

Marriage of Jean Baptiste Desmaret and Louise Adam: IREL, Archives Nationales d’Outré-Mer: [http://anom.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/caomec2/osd.php?territoire=MARTINIQUE&commune=GRANDE-ANSE&annee=1743 Grande-Anse, 1743, frame 9.]
WikiTree profile: Jean Baptiste Desmaré
in Genealogy Help by Duane Poncy G2G6 (8.7k points)

1 Answer

+7 votes
Life keeps interrupting the serious business of genealogy, so here is a first effort at transcribing and translating.

Mar(riage) Jean Baptiste Desmarets and Miss Marie Louise Adam step(?) Leonard

Today (the) ninth day of the month of September, (one) thousand seven hundred forty three, after a publishing of banns done during the Sunday parish mass, the parties having obtained dispensation from other publishings, given the authorisation of His Honour the Intendant for the celebration of the marriage, I have joined in lawful matrimony Mr Jean Baptiste Desmarets, born in the town of Salenou(?), parish (of) Our Lady Saint Mary, in …. , son of Mr Desrives(?) Desmarets, former Captain of the Brittany Dragoons, Knight of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis, and …. of the King, and of Lady Marguerite de Landas(?) …. and .... Paimpol(?), and Miss Marie Louise Adam, stepdaughter(?) of the late Noël Leonard the younger, daughter of the late Louis Adam and Mrs Luce Fabulet, all residents of this parish, without any opposition having been notified to us and having no knowledge of any civil or canonical impediment in good faith of which I have signed with the named(?) witnesses to this effect

Gisard, Lalung, monk, Desmarets, groom, Albay, Jean Fabulet, Puget(?)

No doubt about the bride, I think. Marie Louise Adam was the daughter of Louis Adam and his wife Luce Fabulet, who after his death had married Noël Leonard. In the text neither husband is given the honorific Mr, but that may not be significant.

What puzzles me, and you too or you would not have asked the question, is the groom. His birthplace eludes me. His father was important - a captain of dragoons and a knight of St Louis – but I cannot be sure of his first name. Nor can I trace his regiment, which must have been disbanded or renamed since then. Nor have I found him among knights of St Louis (whose sons, if the holder was a commoner, became hereditary nobles). His mother was important, being called Lady rather than Mrs, but I'm stuck on her last name and her connection to what may be the Breton town of Paimpol.

So I think I must bow out, and open the challenge to other WikiTreers.

PS By the way, his last name is written many ways and on Martinique seems to have become phonetic, but to preserve the link with metropolitan France the most authentic form is probably Desmarets.
by Living Flower G2G6 Mach 1 (13.2k points)
edited by Living Flower
Thank you. That gives me a few possible leads to investigate.

If that is any help, the record appears to say the place of origin of the groom was Sa ... parish of Our Lady St Mary "in Aure" (that's one of the possible readings). Wikipedia has an article on Comté d'Aure, also known as Quatre-Vallées, with a list of communes in it. It is in the current department of Hautes-Pyrénées, an area that would be consistent with the name of the groom's mother being Lardas (a family name found locally). Unfortunately I have not been able to find a place with a Notre-Dame or Sainte-Marie church in it that could match. (Here is a list of churches in Hautes-Pyrénées).

Edit: spelling/grammar

Thank you, Isabelle!

Isabelle, do you think this could possibly be the place? Notre-Dame-des-Vignes de Sainte-Marie-de-Barousse. There is a nearby ville called Saléchan, which could be mispelled in the record. It is within what would have been the Comte d'Aure.

Yes, it does match. I would definitely start looking for records of the family there.
On the groom's birthplace, I agree that the county of Aure looks right, so it's a question of finding a municipality, the current spelling of which may differ from what the Martiniquais curé wrote, that has or in the past had a parish named for Notre Dame Sainte Marie. Though Jean Baptiste was born there, it may of course have no connection with the birthplaces of his father and mother.

On his father, I left a gap in error. He was “pensionné du Roi”, meaning that he had an income for life from the King to go with his knighthood. Thinking about his so far mysterious first name, I wonder if it was not in fact his first name but a double last name?
Merci, Stanley. Yes, DesRives Desmaret is a double last name which appears again in descendant records.
Merci, Isabelle.
Following these suggestions, I have discovered a Dame Marie Anne de Lardes in Castelnaudary, Aude. The name is associated with a donation to the cathedral of Saint-Papoul. I'm fairly certain this must be the mother's family.  Also I believe that his father may be Jean Marets de la Rive, Captain of the Dragons, who fled France in about 1720 and settled in Kilkenny, Ireland. They were Protestants. I have not discovered a marriage yet between these two or any other records, but I believe I'm on the right track.

Thank you again for your assistance!
Somebody has already put a [[Maret de la Rive-2|Jean Maret de la Rive]] up on WikiTree, who was allegedly born in 1672, married at age 49, and died in Ireland at age 91. The source on which we can rely for all this being "first-hand information as remembered by John Gibb, Saturday, January 10, 2015"

After 1685 in France it would have been effectively impossible for an Army officer to be an overt Protestant, and one always had to be a Catholic to be appointed a Knight of St Louis.
Thank you, Stanley. I see your point.

Marie Louise Adam step(?) Leonard

It is "Marie Louise Adam Vv. Leonard", where "Vv." is the abbreviation for "veuve", widow. And in the texte, it says "Vv. de feu Noël Leonard fils". So Noël Leonard was not her step father but her late previous husband, and his father was named Noël Leonard too, hence the "fils" suffix (Junior). This tree has sourced information about him.

Thank you, Julien.

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