Louise Courbonne, SM/PROG

Louise Courbonne

• x Jean Mesnard
• From: Cabrieres D'aigues/St Martin De La Brasque, Provence
• Arrived Cape: 04/08/1688 on Berg China
• Farmed: Drakenstein

http://Huguenots-France.Org/France/Refuge/Afrique_Sud/Embarques.Htm

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.

Although neither the marriage of Jean Meinard to Louise Courbonne, nor the baptism of any of their children has been discovered, there is a strong lead in the records of Provence for the years 1677 and 1683 to the place of origin of the father. He probably came from Saint-Martin-de- la-Brasque, where Georges Meinard and his wife Jeanne Asscotte had sons Jean, Andre and Philippe. Jean did not share in a division of property made between the father and the other two sons, both married, in April 1677.180 Was he perhaps the Cape settler? The family Christian names mentioned here strongly support this view. There were Meinards at Merindol who were clearly related to those at Saint-Martin. An Andre Meinard of Merindol, with wife and children, received assistance at Leyden in January 1688 and a Pierre Meinard from the same place settled in Magdeburg after the revocation, working there as a wool-comber. There is every indication that the Cape Meinards went to Merindol at or before the revocation. A Jean Meinard of that place, with five children, four of them boys, was described as a fugitive by the viguier, or magistrate, Joachim Jury, in 1687. Also mentioned by Jury were Pierre Rouman(ne) and his wife Marie Roux (Rousse), together with other members of the Roux family. It is known that Andre Meinard, Jean’s brother at Saint-Martin, was married to Honorade Roumanne of Peypin-d’Aigues.

The Meinards had abjured the Calvinist faith after the revocation, but like so many others who were forced to do so, made their escape from France. The route they took cannot be determined with certainty, but they may have followed the example of Pierre Rouman and his wife, who left from Marseilles. Did Louise Courbonne travel independently? Her name is not mentioned with her husband’s among the refugees of 1687 and the fact that she had a small child suggests that she may have delayed her departure until after his birth, or had perhaps left for the United Provinces at an earlier date. Where the family lived in the decade before the revocation remains an unsolved problem. It may have been in one of the more remote villages of Provence. Between 1675 and 1677 members of the Meinard, Roux and Malian families of Merindol were living in the hamlet of Vins, far to the south-east in the administrative region of Brignoles. Orange too, before the expulsion of strangers in 1685, is a not unlikely place of residence.

It is possible that Louis Courbon and Louise Courbonne were brother and sister. Jean Meinard’s wife would therefore be from the neighbourhood of Cabrieres-d’Aigues. A Louise Courbonne from nearby La Motte-d’Aigues was godmother at Manosque in June 1684 to Marie, daughter of Daniel Roux and Madeleine Jourdanne. Further family connections are indicated in the marriage at Manosque in 1671 of Frangois Ro(u)man of Saint-Martin-de-la-Brasque and Marie Courbonne of the same village.187 East of Manosque at Roumoules lived a mason Pierre Courbon.188 The name Marie Anthouarde is also to be found at Cabrieres. The widow of Jacques Pillat in 1674, her daughter Madeleine was married to a Pierre Jourdan and another daughter Susanne was the wife of a Jean Jourdan.189 It is also clear that the Anthouarde and Grange families of Cabrieres-d'Aigues were united.

• 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