twilight33 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
twilight33) wrote2005-05-01 07:49 pm
twilight33) wrote2005-05-01 07:49 pm
You're French, aren't you?
And out of everyone from my great-grandmother's line, I'm the only one who has spoken it since she died a few years before I was born.
In a stack of stuff my mom brought down last weekend was a paragraph my grandmother wrote down about our bizarre family migration as told by her uncle. He said his parents left France via the Suez Canal to Madagascar (too hot) then north of Sydney (still too hot) then settled near Kaukapakapa (New Zealand) before finally coming to San Francisco 100 years ago this month. Family legend says something about them going to Italy (the last name they used is Italian) then New Zealand because NZ wasn't accepting any more French, and the reason was because at least one was from a wealthy family who forbid them to marry so they ran away and eloped. We may never know the truth, but we might have the real names of both of my 2x great grandparents, and the cryptic note of "Grandma's family was from south of Bordeaux 'Santsopietze'" Clearly 'Sant' = Saint, but it took me a good half hour to figure out 'sopietze' = Sulpice. I haven't read The DaVinci Code nor am I Catholic, or that might have taken less time.
One slight problem is that in the Bordeaux region (Gironde, also known as the 33rd département of France.. that number is everywhere in my life) there isn't a village just known as Saint Sulpice. There is Saint-Sulpice-et-Cameyrac (slightly north), Saint-Sulpice-de-Faleyrens (due east), Saint-Sulpice-de-Guilleragues (sort of southeast) and Saint-Sulpice-de-Pommiers (also sort of southeast). Adding to the sort-of-southeasts is Chateau de Saint Sulpice, but I can't find anything online about the family who lived there. She used to have a rather snooty first & last name (he only changed his last name) so I could see it being possible, plus how did the average French villagers have enough money to travel that much?
Maybe someday we'll just have to go to all the St. Sulpices in Bordeaux in person and see what we can find out now that my French is a bit more polished than it was in the 1990s. We were in Bordeaux during our whirlwind European vacation in 2001, although not near any of them & it was also the location of the only fight (so far) with my husband where I was so angry I had to just leave the room and go walk for a while.
In a stack of stuff my mom brought down last weekend was a paragraph my grandmother wrote down about our bizarre family migration as told by her uncle. He said his parents left France via the Suez Canal to Madagascar (too hot) then north of Sydney (still too hot) then settled near Kaukapakapa (New Zealand) before finally coming to San Francisco 100 years ago this month. Family legend says something about them going to Italy (the last name they used is Italian) then New Zealand because NZ wasn't accepting any more French, and the reason was because at least one was from a wealthy family who forbid them to marry so they ran away and eloped. We may never know the truth, but we might have the real names of both of my 2x great grandparents, and the cryptic note of "Grandma's family was from south of Bordeaux 'Santsopietze'" Clearly 'Sant' = Saint, but it took me a good half hour to figure out 'sopietze' = Sulpice. I haven't read The DaVinci Code nor am I Catholic, or that might have taken less time.
One slight problem is that in the Bordeaux region (Gironde, also known as the 33rd département of France.. that number is everywhere in my life) there isn't a village just known as Saint Sulpice. There is Saint-Sulpice-et-Cameyrac (slightly north), Saint-Sulpice-de-Faleyrens (due east), Saint-Sulpice-de-Guilleragues (sort of southeast) and Saint-Sulpice-de-Pommiers (also sort of southeast). Adding to the sort-of-southeasts is Chateau de Saint Sulpice, but I can't find anything online about the family who lived there. She used to have a rather snooty first & last name (he only changed his last name) so I could see it being possible, plus how did the average French villagers have enough money to travel that much?
Maybe someday we'll just have to go to all the St. Sulpices in Bordeaux in person and see what we can find out now that my French is a bit more polished than it was in the 1990s. We were in Bordeaux during our whirlwind European vacation in 2001, although not near any of them & it was also the location of the only fight (so far) with my husband where I was so angry I had to just leave the room and go walk for a while.