Marie Brunel

[montagnarde1793]

Nearly a year ago, I posted on Couthon's wife, Marie Brunel, wondering at how some sources could claim she was twelve years old when she married him. At the time, novelist Catherine Delors suggested that I check the Archives départementales of Puy-de-Dôme. For whatever reason, I failed to follow up on this at the time, but now, having checked said archives, my theory is vindicated, for I have found Marie Brunel's baptismal record. (It's a bit hard to read, but if you zoom in at the third "B", you should be able to make out most of it, or at least the important parts.)

Yes, Marie Brunel was born 11 January 1765. Couthon, as I suspected, did not marry a girl of twelve, but a woman of twenty-two. (Thank the Supreme Being.)

Case closed. :D

Comments

[nirejseki.livejournal.com]

Oooh, nice! : ) Any other interesting dates or facts you've managed to confirm? (if there's any way to find out height, I'd be ecstatic, but I'm not pushing my luck XD)

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Unfortunately, no this is the only one for now, since in terms of the births, marriages, and deaths, the only ones that remain mysterious are the exact dates of birth of (most of) the Duplays. The trouble is, most of the archives were destroyed with the burning of the Hôtel de Ville in 1871, and those that remain, while searchable for those with the proper permits, remain out of reach for me for the moment (unless I managed to convince one of my profs to write me a permit to search for some random piece of information that may or may not even be in the archives and which has nothing to do with my research, which seems at the very least unlikely).

As for details like height, the only documents that would list that would be passports (issued for internal travel as well as external) and possibly, although I wouldn't swear to it, certificates of civisme.

The trouble is, I wouldn't begin to know where to look for them. I know where Le Bas's passport is, but since it's reproduced in TOBALB, I don't need to find it in person (though it would still be fascinating, I have no doubt, to look through the whole file).

For the others, I haven't a clue, because unlike with, say, baptismal registers, there's no reason why this kind of document would be all in the same place. I mean, there must have been some kind of record of who was issued passports, but a) if it was in Paris it was probably destroyed and b) even if it wasn't, it probably doesn't copy the information from the passports themselves.

Which essentially leaves us with random discoveries while people are looking for something else and, in the meantime, the dodgy evidence of témoignages and memoirs.

/long-winded explanation

[josiana.livejournal.com]

Aw, yay. I knew Couthon wasn't horribly creepy. :D

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Me too, but it's nice to know for certain!

[josiana.livejournal.com]

Yes. :D

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Thanks the Supreme Being, indeed. Looks like someone had "mistaken" a 2 for a 1. -_-

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I think it was more than that even; they had a different birth date for her and everything - in April instead of January. Either way, I'm glad I've been able to prove them wrong. Because otherwise... *shudders*

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

Thank you for getting to the bottom of this! :D I'm glad we now have the official proof that Couthon wasn't a creeper. XD

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

You're quite welcome. Believe me, I'm glad too. -__-;