Full Circle on Victoire Gaury

After revisiting old parish registers and notes, we have returned to believing the mother of our Anne Marie Joseph Gaury was indeed Victoire Susanne Monteise. The other possibilities we know about either do not fit or are too unlikely. For instance, we once thought a woman baptized in 1778, Marie Victoire Sanite, could have been the mother. Sanite was the illegitimate daughter of a Marie Magdelaine Beaubrun Dupuy and her godmother was none other than Marie Victoire Susanne Monteise. However, Baynet parish records indicate that a Marie Victoire died about 5 years later in 1783. The mother is only identified as a Marie Magdelaine, but this probably means that Marie Victoire Sanite died in 1783, about ten years before the birth of Anne Marie Joseph Gaury. 

Another candidate for the mother, Marie Victoire Pitiot, appears to have been married to a Diegue Prunieu (or Prunier?). Marie Victoire Pitiot, baptized in 1765, was incorrectly identified as a Pichot by the parish priest. However, it becomes rather clear that Pitiot was her surname since her mother was identified as a Marie Victoire Gory. We later learn when Marie Michelle Gabrielle Pitiot was baptized that her godmother was Marie Victoire Pitiot, the wife of Diegue Prunieu. If Marie Victoire Pitiot was married to a Prunieu by 1787, and descendants of the Gory/Pitiot would also marry them in 1800s Grand-Goave, it is probably unlikely for Marie Victoire Pitiot to have been the mother of Anne Marie Joseph in 1793.

The original Marie Victoire Gory is also worthy of attention. Baptized in 1749, Marie Victoire Gory was the daughter of Francois Gory and Francoise Saugrain. She married Michel Pitiot in 1765. They went on to have at least a few children, including Marie Victoire Pitiot, Jean Joseph Gabriel Pitiot (baptized in 1781), Marie Michelle Gabrielle Pitiot (baptized in 1787) and even another child, Marie Anne Francois Pitiot, in an unknown year. It seems highly unlikely that this Marie Victoire Gory was the mother of Anne Marie Joseph. She was more likely to have still been married to Michel Pitiot in 1793. 

The loss of Marie Victoire Gory (baptized 1749), Marie Victoire Pitiot (baptized 1765) and Marie Victoire Sanite (baptized 1778) as possibilities leaves us with Victoire Susanne Monteise. Baptized in 1764, she was the daughter of a white Frenchman and Marie Francoise Gory. Her godmother, Marie Victoire Gory, was the source of her name (which was written as Marie Victoire Susanne Monteise by the priest who recorded Sanite's baptism). We know that this Victoire Susanne's sister married Jean Baptiste Marillac, a frequent witness to events affecting members of the Beaubrun Dupuy, Pitiot, Gory, and other Baynet families in the late 1700s. We also known that all these women were related to or connected to each other in Baynet during the second half of the 18th century. 

Of course, one still needs to understand why Anne Marie Joseph's mother was recorded in 1793 as simply Victoire Gory. Was it due to to her illegitimate birth? Or was there yet another Victoire Gory living in the same area of Baynet and part of the same kinship networks? And who was the Joseph mentioned as Anne Marie Joseph's father in her 1859 death certificate? The only Joseph Gory was the son of Jean-Baptiste Gory, a cousin of Victoire Susanne. A Joseph Deslande was also present, but he married Agathe Gaury in 1775. With Agathe, he had a son named Joseph Guillaume Deslande, baptized in 1776. It seems improbable that Joseph Deslande was the father of Anne Marie Joseph, although we cannot rule it out. After all, Agathe Gaury died in 1788.

An alternative clue to the identity of Anne Marie Joseph's origins may also be found by looking at her godparents again. Both of her godparents were from the Marillac family, and siblings. Indeed, her godmother, Marie Marillac, was a widow who also had an illegitimate child after her husband's death. According to the Bainet parish books, Jean Baptiste Marillac's sister had her illegitimate daughter baptized in 1788. She used her own name, Marillac, and had her relatives, including the sister of Victoire Susanne Monteise, serve as a godparent. Whatever stigma of an illegitimate child in this era clearly did not stop men like Jean Baptiste Marillac from acting as a godparent to the children of his relatives. We are inclined to believe the same thing applied to Anne Marie Joseph Gaury, whose mother's name was inexplicably written as Victoire Gory. There may have been another Victoire Gory out there, perhaps in Grand-Goave, whose existence we cannot affirm. Based on the sources we currently possess, the simplest explanation is that Victoire Gory and Victoire Susanne Monteise were indeed the same people. Indeed, Jean Baptiste Marillac was her cousin through shared Saugrain ancestry.