The Search Turns to France

This was getting exciting.  I learned that my grandpa was a successful business owner and civic leader who had been accidentally killed in a fall in San Francisco.  I knew he was buried in San Francisco at Holy Cross Cemetery and learned that his date of birth was October 11, 1859 and that he died on June 30, 1917.  My next job was discover evidence of his birth and from where he came.  Was he a city dweller from Paris, or a country bumpkin?

Now I needed to find where he came from and are there any relatives living currently in France?  My old friend, GOOGLE, served me well.  I did exhaustive research on births, marriages and deaths in France without success.  Then, I found it:

This was a genealogical website that included births, deaths and marriages in these communes in Southern France over several centuries. I started clicking on the links and when I reached Maslacq, I struck gold:

There he was.  I had found him.  He was born on October 11, 1859 in Maslacq, Aquitaine, France.  His parents were Jean Mialocq and Marie Cambran.  And, he had a younger brother, Jacques, born in 1862, who died in Sauvelade in 1944, two years after I was born.  Now there was so much more I needed to learn.  Grandpa had left France for the United States, but what about Jacques.  Was he married and did he have children?  If so, are they still around and where are they.  I may have cousins.

But first I needed to learn about his father, Jean, my great grandfather, and his wife Marie Cambran.  I continue my research of the records.  I learned that old great grandpa Jean was an interesting character.  It seems he was married twice and had two families.  He was first married to a lady named Marie Cassou on Feb. 23, 1826, and later to Marie Cambran in 1863.  

Further research revealed that he married Marie Cassou when he was 27 (he was born in 1798), and they had three children:  Catherine, a son Pierre, and a son Jean.  Nobody seems to know what happened to Jean who was born in 1833 and seems to have disappeared after that.  Pierre, however, was busy.  He fathered NINE (9) children including a son named Andre, born on 30 Nov 1963.  That rang a bell.

I reviewed the Census records from 1910 and sure enough, my grandfather had come to America with his "cousin" Andre, who in actuality was the son of his father's oldest son by his first marriage.  Andre was actually my grandpa's nephew.  

Apparently, Marie Ann Cassou had passed away in 1837 at the age of 38, leaving Jean with three young children to raise.  After his children had grown and I'm sure he was kept busy with his son's nine children, he apparently met a young Marie Cambran who was 35 years his junior and the mother of a 4-year old son, Jean Cambran.  They had two children together, my grandpa Jean, and his brother, Jacques.  He married Marie on Dec. 10, 1863, just ten (10) days after Jacques was born.  I guess Marie must have put her foot down.

To date, I have been unable to determine what happened to Jean Mialocq and Marie Cambran.  I have been unable to locate any death notices on either one.  

My next assignment:  Find out about Jacques and his descendants and see if I have living relatives in France.  Then look up my great grandfather's parents, Jean Mialocq and Catherine Lagarde.  It occurs to me that there must have been  more names available than just "Jean".  So the search continues...