Albion saves the honour of the Dubourgs

When in the year 418 the Visigoths invaded the South-west of Roman Gaul, they found it an ideal land of refuge so much so that many of them stopped wandering and settled there for good. Such was the case of the Dubourgs and the Bertins. The former chose the banks of the river Lot while the latter settled alongside the Dordogne. Three centuries later a horde of Saracens came hurtling down and devastated the country in the name of Allah until 732 when they were finally crushed by the Franks at Poitiers. After this brief reminder, let us turn to the Dubourgs, founders of the maternal line. Here is their story...

Clairac is a small town near Agen where we supposedly find them in the Middle Ages They did not join the Catharian heresy in 1200, but converted to the Calvinist Reformation which se t fire to France in the XVI century. If we are to believe the oral tradition, one of them was killed on the city walls on August 1621 when the rebellious town was attacked by order of King Louis XIII as a stronghold for the protestants he was ferociously fighting. We have to go back nine generations to find this glorious ancestor whose last words might have been : “a city without a king, a soldier without fear“. This is still the motto of Clairac !

Let’s go further back as I have missed a very important period, the war between France and England ! Beautiful Alienor, the duchess of Aquitaine, became Queen of England in 1154 when she married Henry II Plantagenet, the Count of Anjou. She poisoned the relationship between the two countries which eventually led to the Hundred Year War. The French King only recovered the Province of Aquitaine in 1453 following the famous battle of Castillon. As you can see our brave Dubourgs from Clairac lived for some time on English territory as loyal subjects of English feudal Lords. Did they realize it ?

When I was young my mother vaguely mentioned that we had relatives on the other side of the Channel, more precisely in Edinburgh where a certain Augustin Jules, a younger brother of my great-grandfather, had been a French teacher after studying at the Sorbonne Might this bright member of the teaching profession have chosen to go into exile because of the apartheid that still raged against the Huguenots ? Quite possibly ! It's only over a century later that my wife Odette urged me to follow his track. Cut to the quick, I took my best pen to lay down a challenge to the British press, knowing how efficient they were. After all, any self-respecting Englishman is a potential Sherlock Holmes, isn’t he ? Quick as lightning the first newspaper to reply– after publishing an ad stating : "Wanted : english cousins" - triumphantly sending me a letter by a certain William Dubourg from Chester with lots of details that convinced me. We agreed to meet halfway in the middle of the Aveyron countryside where he and his wife Jean were staying on their way to a concert in Lyons or perhaps Orange, I can’t remember ! They were delightful people, loved music and good food, and furthermore I found he looked like my periwinkle-eyed grandfather, Charles, a very distinguished schoolmaster who had been my mentor.

Twenty years have gone by and Bill and I have become best friends… Although on this side of the Channel there are no Dubourgs left, on the other side, thanks to the English, the honour of the lineage has been saved and the surname inherited from the Visigoths is more dynamic than ever.

Augustin Jules who married Mary Ann Osborne had six children who were followed by an abundant progeny, as shown by their family tree which I suggest you visit.

Alas, misfortune befell us during the autumn of 2014, with the death of both Jean and Odette, who were extremely fond of each other. But at the same time our family, drawing from its moral strength, celebrated the birth of the youngest of the Dubourgs, William, Roy, Jean, the son of Richard and Rachel. Strange coincidence !

Such is life !

Jean Bertin, Mazamet, 2015

To follow the Dubourgs’ saga please visit www.myheritage.com

Richard DUBOURG est en charge du webmastering de la Famille Dubourg sur le site Myheritage : wr_dubourg@yahoo.com.uk