Marriages, Parish of Lausanne, 1707

Lausanne is the largest city in Vaud. Unfortunately, this sample is the ENTIRE list of marriages recorded in 1707. Evidently, the bureaucracy decreed that a "billet" or certificate of some sort had to be purchased before the marriage would be recorded in the official church register, and very few couples were willing to pay the additional fee. A much richer source for marriages in Lausanne is the notarial records, which, however, appear to be completely unindexed. By 1707, many marriages in Lausanne involved Huguenot refugees, such as these.

Transcription:

     Tallens           Avril
14   Louys Tallens, demeurant a Begnens, fils du S[ieu]r Anthoine Tallens de la Voute en Vivarets,  
     avec honorée Marie Mallessy fille de feu S[ieu]r Matthieu Mallessy de Baumont en Dauphiné.

     Duciel           8bre
20   Jaques DuCiel de Nismes en Languedoc, avec Marthe France fille du S[ieu]r Nicolas France.

Translation:

  
     Tallens           April
14   Louys Tallens, living at Begnens, son of Sieur Anthoine Tallens of La Voûte in Vivarais,  
     with the honorable Marie Mallessy daughter of the late Sieur Matthieu Mallessy of Baumont in Dauphiné.

     Duciel           October
20   Jaques DuCiel of Nîmes in Languedoc, with Marthe France daughter of Sieur Nicolas France.

Notes

Even at this fairly late date, it is still possible to find a hand where "u" and "v" are written alike. Particularly with French place names, some sleuthing may be required to determine, for example, whether the town in Dauphiné is "Baumont" as indicated, or "Beaumont", and possibly which of the several towns with similar names it actually is. The old boundaries of Languedoc and Dauphiné can be found in most atlases. Vivarais is a little harder to find; it turns out to be approximately the same as the modern Département of Ardèche, and a hotbed of Protestantism in the 17th Century.

At this period, honorifics are applied to almost everyone, and are therefore of dubious significance. More significant, probably, is that no one in this example is said to have bourgeois status (citizenship) in any Swiss town. In all probability, all of these people were regarded as refugees from the religious persecution in France.

The marginal numbers apparently indicate the day of the month of the marriage. Thus, the first one was celebrated on the 14th of April, 1707.

While many couples came to Lausanne to be married, it appears a large number of couples from Lausanne preferred to be married at the smaller churches of the surrounding parishes. It may be useful to search the records of these before turning to the notarial records of Lausanne, which are so voluminous it could take years to search all of them.

Coordinator for this site is John W. McCoy French translation by Anne Bohy This page last updated