Jeanne Mesnard, b1

Meinard Family in Boucher

The largest party to register for a passage on the Berg China was that of the Meinard (Mesnard) family: Jean Meinard, his wife Louise Courbonne, her mother-in-law Marie Anthouarde, a widow of sixty-four, and six small children,

• Jeanne, ten
• Georges, nine
• Jacques, eight
• Jean, seven
• Philippe, six,
• and a baby Andre, aged five months. The sailing list of 1687 gives Jean’s age as twenty-eight and that of his wife as thirty. If the husband’s age is correctly stated he married at an unusually young age. Of this considerable family group all but Jean Meinard the father and two of his children, one of them Philippe, had died by 1690.

• M. Boucher.M (1981). French speakers at the Cape: The European Background. Pretoria, UNISA: Ch 7: Cape Settlers III: from South-Eastern France and Adjoining Territories p191