Johann Joseph Friedrich Facompré

URL (1) says about him: http://gw.geneanet.org/ffacompre?lang=nl&pz=johann+joseph+friedrich...

<< He was expelled from France during the French Revolution, due to the persecution of the Huguenots. He settled in Nienburg, Germany around 1790 and in 1801 established the Facompré Bakery. Using his French secret family recipe, he created the Nienburger Bärentatzen. Nearly a century later, his great-grandson Andreas August Gustav Friedrich Facompré, immigrated to the United States with the still secret family recipe, and with the Nienburg Bärentatzen, established his own Bakery in New York City.>>

see ev.-luth. Church St. Martin Nienburg/Weser, Niedersachsen

Numerous documents claim he was expelled from "southern France" as a Huguenot (possibly Alsace) although the Alsace region is in eastern France, not southern France.

However, the mainstream Facompré familiy originated from Auby near Orchies in the Département du Nord in France. Orchies is very close to the Belgian border near the city of Tournai, which was a protestant Center in the beginning of the 80 years war (1568-1648).

The name Joachim Joseph Facompré is also mentioned on URL (1), but that could have been his father (app. born 1744). It is not improbable that the Facompré family was initially Huguenot (Calvinist, not Lutheran) and converted (more or less formally) to Catholicism after the repeal of the Nantes edict in 1685. Not to have done so while staying in France had meant captivity for life.

By 1790, faith persecution in France was almost more against Catholics than against Protestants. But in that period, there were very severe conscription laws for the revolutionary armies, and with them came a lot of cases of desertion.

If Johann would have been such a deserter, taking a German name and a Lutheran wife could have meant safety in his refuge town of Nienburg-Weser. When his family had been protestant before, one can assume that he had no bad conscience about this.

For now, this theory is hypothetical, but its probability could increase with further investigation.