The Happy Huguenots
Hardcopy out of print...3rd edition now available (includes Parts 1 & 2 and Corrigenda) on CDROM for AUD$49.95 posted throughout Australia or AUD$59.95 posted airmail overseas.
100 illustrations, 698 pages; over 11,000 index entries
This is a unique 500 year case study on Huguenot research, citing research techniques and detailed sources, including books, newspapers, microform, CD's and the Internet.
Once upon a time, about 300 years ago, three French brothers named ROUBEL lived in the remote village of Ruffec in the Charente region of central western France. They fell in love with three beautiful sisters and went forth and multiplied. This is their story told over 16 generations.
The earliest known ROUBELs lived in the Provinces of Bourgogne, Languedoc and Angoumois during the 16th century. The first person found in historical records with the exact surname is Claude ROUBEL, Attorney General of Bourgogne in 1537. The ROUBELs were an educated, landed, bourgeois Huguenot family, and were a colourful lot from all accounts. They had courage, style, talent and a high degree of visible character and distinctive individuality. During the 18th and 19th centuries, some of them emigrated to the British Isles, India, Canada and Australia. Their story has an all-star cast of "goodies and baddies", bold heroes, rapscallions and damsels fair. It is a rollicking tale of mystery, tragedy, drama and intrigue. And, it's a compelling one. Or, as my seventh cousin once removed Peter CATTRELL of London put it recently: "It is compulsive!" And, what a ripping yarn it has proved to be.
The ancient and prominent Protestant family of MARCHEGAY into which the ROUBELs married in 1732, was one of rich tradition and high distinction. They have lived for centuries in a fairytale French castle, which is still standing today. The MARCHEGAYs included no less than eight Members of Parliament. Five members of this family, including three of my ancestors, were condemned as galley slaves for their Protestant beliefs. Four of my Huguenot forebears fled from France to England between 1699 and 1722. These were Jean ROUBEL, Sylvie THIBAUD, Ozee MARCHEGAY and Francoise MOUSCHARD. All were closely related through intermarriage in France. Another ROUBEL, fleeing from persecution in the same village, together with his wife and five children, appears to have perished in a tragic shipwreck en route to Louisiana in 1720.
This book tells it all in 698 pages (i.e. 360,000 words)! There are scandals galore! I've found multiple bastard lines, corrupt politicians, lawyers, gamblers, gaolbirds, bar room floosies, drunkards, grocers, tea merchants, tax collectors, a Superintendent of Police and an English spy in who was "detained" in Paris around the time of the Revolution. Shades of the Scarlet Pimpernel!!
I've traced the ROUBEL name back 3,254 years to 1250BC when it appears in the Old Testament. The Roubel Papers, lately discovered in a dusty old trunk in London, include a mysterious letter of 1688 to the English King JAMES II requesting the supply of guns and ammunition in the War against WILIAM OF ORANGE and urging rebellion in Ireland. Subsequent insurrections culminated in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. There's even a statue of a ROUBEL singing the Marseillaise to be seen today along the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Sadly, my bold Huguenot immigrant, Jean ROUBEL (1703-1759), who supposedly married the daughter of a noble house, turns out to have been an 18th century garbage collector - the "parish scavenger" no less! But, business must have been good. By the time he died, his assets included a warehouse full of tea on the London Docks and an estate worth a million pounds.
Over many generations, inbreeding through first cousin marriages in this family was rife! Ramification of the male line eventually failed and it faded away like a burnt out candle. The ROUBEL surname is now almost extinct worldwide.
Meanwhile, I learn to my astonishment, that Mademoiselle Jeanne ROUBEL (1746-1788) of Nimes was the central figure in a scandalous affair of the heart in 1773 involving a rich French silk merchant who received a dowry of five million dollars to marry her. But, alas and alack, Jeanne ran away soon afterwards with a young man of the town. But, she was promptly apprehended and dispatched to a nunnery in disgrace. She sought to divorce her husband on the grounds she had married her husband "au desert" in typical Huguenot style. The resulting court case echoed across France. Oh dear! What will my friends think when they learn of all this? The shame is almost unbearable!
This book is a work of original research into a family of prosperous landowners, merchants, surgeons, goldsmiths, apothecaries, judges, attorneys, monks, nuns and professors. One early ROUBEL was executed in Rome in 1611 for distributing Protestant pamphlets. Another was appointed First Physician to the King of France [LOUIS XIV] in 1688. Through studies such as this we can peer back across time and make our vision clearer of that collective group we call the Huguenots. They rose and fought for their religious freedom for over 277 years from 1512-1789 across the reigns of seven French Monarchs; FRANCIS I, FRANCIS II, HENRY I, LOUIS XIII, LOUIS XIV, LOUIS XV and LOUIS XVI.
I believe Martin LUTHER (1483-1546) was right to protest when he nailed his list of 95 indulgences on the door of the Catholic Church at Wittenberg in Germany on 31 October 1517. He was the first Protestant. The Swiss reformer John CALVIN (1509-1564) and the Huguenots of France followed his example. They rose up and "protested" at about the same time as HENRY VIII established the Protestant Church of England in 1529. They won through, but the cost was high. I believe the Huguenots were a political/religious movement that helped bring about the French Revolution of 1789.
The ROUBELs certainly played their part. Jean-Francois REUBELL (1747-1807), MP, a dashing hero of the day, wore a feather in his hat and was deputy to the rebel ROBESPIERRE, guillotined by Royalist forces in 1794. Notwithstanding, Jean somehow managed to live out his old age happily in retirement, together with his beautiful wife Marianne, whose face reportedly inspired the present day National Emblem of France and the US Statue of Liberty.
The ROUBEL family motto is: "We are burned but not consumed!" This is a story of their ups, their downs - and what became of them. It's about successful genealogical research against impossible odds, past many a serious blockage along the way. In spite of it all, I've succeeded in locating three ancient ROUBEL Family Bibles and a bundle of old love letters, as well a nest of 7th cousins living in London and a 10th cousin, once removed, now living in Paris.
This tale is also the biography of a well-educated young Huguenot lawyer and Member of Parliament William ROUBEL (c1781-1846) of London and Prince Edward Island (Canada). Although born into a family of wealth and privilege with a silver spoon in his mouth, Will's life was a litany of disasters - one after another. He failed at every turn and died a lonely pauper. Notwithstanding, this is a tale of true love, pistol duels, attempted murder, false trails, sex, lies and videotapes. It also solves the baffling mystery of the lady in the whalebone corset depicted in the remarkable Roubel Silhouettes made in 1785. These charming images of "The Happy Huguenots" leading the high life in Regency London, are reproduced on the cover of this book.
Characters in this story also include a duel-fighting French Marquis sent to New Caledonia as a convict, a Professor of Rhetoric at the Lycee Charlemagne and Professor of Latin Oratory at the College de France, a Hollywood movie actress, a racing car driver in Vermont, and an impecunious Polish Princess in distress. And, believe it or not, on top of all this, I've discovered that my seven times great uncle Moses ROUBEL (1709-1776) of Bath, Somerset was the proud owner of a "tortoiseshell snuffbox."
There are an estimated 1,000 past and present ROUBEL descendants in Australia. One of these, my great aunt, Eva Roubel d'ARENBERG (1872-1932), known in the family as "Aunty Bob", kept the Piccadilly Tearooms in the fashionable quarter of 1920s Adelaide. She suddenly dropped in full flight one day at the age of 60 in Tsingtao, China whilst doing the Highland Fling with her illicit lover at a Christmas Party.
This publication updates my 1976 book on the LAURIE/SMALL family. A whole new branch of wealthy Quaker tea planters in Ceylon has since been discovered. Details are revealed between these pages. I'm pleased to report that two members of this lost branch went forth and ramified the LAURIE family name. Today, they have over a dozen descendants living in various parts of darkest Africa.
With such an interesting bunch of ancestors, it's no wonder that I'm proud to be a "Hugie"!
Read Nominal and Subject Index to 'The Happy Huguenots - Part 1'
How much does THE HAPPY HUGUENOTS cost?
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