It’s been a while since I’ve shared some genealogy discoveries here, and I’ve actually been sitting on a piece of interesting information that I meant to share two years ago, but life grabbed me and forced my attention elsewhere. So now I will share what I found.
I made a shocking discovery: Simon Joseph Turbé, also known as Joseph Simon Turbé, my 5th great-grandfather and the man who brought the Turbé last name to St. Barths, was married when he moved to the island. Not only was he married, but he had children.
I actually came across this information on January 6, 2024, after paying a subscription to Geneanet for 8€. I wanted to see what extra stuff would become available to me after subscribing, and one of those things was an option to search for family members via trees. I saw a hint pop up for Simon Joseph Turbé and was a little intrigued. I fully believed it would be a tree from one of my St. Barths cousins, who are pretty active on there, but it was someone from France, and their connection to me was through a child I had never even heard of before. The child’s mother was also one I had never heard of. I thought for sure there must have been some mistake because how could a whole wife and child slip my research, even after tracking down the baptism and parents of Simon Joseph Turbé?
I set off to look up the records that were indicated on the profile. Thankfully, Geneanet’s paid subscription has an option that helps you look for the record. There were about five links they showed that pointed to different parts of the Loire-Atlantique archives, and I think it was the third or fourth link that I finally found the record I was looking for.
AD 44, page 8 – Archives départementales Loire-Atlantique
There in the records was Joseph Turbé of minor age, son of Simon Turbé and Françoise Maurice. In the record, it states that Joseph was born in Couëron, and the marriage took place in Paimbœuf, which is not that far from Couëron. From my own research on Simon Joseph Turbé, I know that his father, Simon, was born in Île d’Yeu and later on moved to Couëron after the death of his first wife and daughter. This matches up, so I can’t deny that my great-grandfather did, in fact, marry this woman.
Who was this mystery wife? Her name was Jeanne Perrine Simon. Jeanne was born in Paimbœuf on September 25, 1770, to François Simon and Jeanne Moreau.
Simon Joseph and Jeanne Perrine were married on December 3, 1792. Their daughter Jeanne Françoise Joséphine Turbé was born on April 5, 1792. I’m thinking they got married because they had a child. A year later, they had another daughter, Victoire Turbé, born on August 25, 1793. Unfortunately, Victoire died on August 12, 1794, not even a year old. I guess that sometime between 1794 and 1799, Simon Joseph Turbé decided to leave his family for the Caribbean. Did his wife know he had left her, or did she assume he was going on a trip and never returned?
Jeanne Françoise Joséphine’s young life was chaotic. She lost her little sister, her father left, she lost her paternal grandfather in 1797, and on July 15, 1799, she lost her mother. Jeanne Perrine Simon died just 3 months after Simon Joseph Turbé married Anne Rose Jeanne Greaux in Saint-Barthélemy, while he was enjoying married life in the Caribbean; the family he left behind was disintegrating.
There was little Jeanne Françoise Joséphine, 7 years old and an orphan, even though her father wasn’t actually dead. We can find her later living with her father’s mother, Françoise Maurice, in Couëron. Between 1802 and 1806, her father had five new children in Saint-Barthélemy, half-siblings Jeanne Françoise Joséphine would never meet, much less know.
On February 7, 1814, before her 22nd birthday, Jeanne Françoise Joséphine married Julien François Chartier in Couëron.
France, Loire-Atlantique, Etat-Civil, 1792-1960
In the record, it says that Jeanne Françoise Joséphine is fille majeure de feu Joseph Turbé et de défunte Jeanne Perrine Simon, which tells us that they thought he had died many years ago when he travelled to the Caribbean. Her grandmother was her legal guardian, mentioned as present and consenting to her marriage to Julien François Chartier.
Let’s back track a bit. Simon Joseph Turbé was 23 years old when his daughter Jeanne Françoise Joséphine was born. He was 24 when he married her mother, a whole eight months later. Why did they wait so long to get married? It’s 1792 in Paimboeuf, France. Paimboeuf is an outport of Nantes. The Loire River is too shallow for large ships to reach Nantes, so they had to dock in Paimboeuf. It had a tavern culture, lots of inns and drinking dens for the many sailors, merchants, and soldiers who came from all over. 1792 was also Year 1 of the French Republic; the country was at war with most of Europe, and the government was also starting to draft young men into the navy and army. Which might explain how Simon Joseph Turbé ended up on a ship to St. Barts. In 1792, marriage was still very much a social and economic arrangement. Simon Joseph was probably pressured into marrying Jeanne Perrine Simon, who was 21 at the time of Jeanne Françoise Joséphine’s birth. An unwed mother in those times was very shameful, and her family probably demanded that he fix this situation. So we have Simon Joseph possibly going into this marriage reluctantly, while also being in a town with a port, a very tempting situation for someone who might have been forced to marry a woman he’s not even sure the child is his.
Despite her poor luck in early life, Jeanne Françoise Joséphine had 10 children with her husband, and she died on June 23, 1849, at 57 years of age. Her children were born in Couëron from 1814 to 1822, when the family moved to Nantes. The last five children were born in Nantes, and the descendants of Jeanne Françoise Joséphine include Chartier, Bedin, Balcou, Gillot, Bretonnière, Merlet, and Jean.
I often marveled at how my 5th great-grandfather left France for the unknown, landed in Saint-Barthélemy and established the Turbé name on the island and to know his history, his life before the Caribbean it just provides a more fuller picture of who this man was, even if I personally find it a little off putting, it’s hard for me to not feel for that little girl who was abandoned by her father.
But did he completely forget his daughter? Am I just romanticising the past? He named a daughter, born in St. Barts, Françoise Joséphine Turbé in 1806. She was his last daughter and last child, ironic how his first and last are named so similarly.
