First a quick tour of their
fatherland, a beautiful area of France.
......A quiet,
quaint and ancient town
Among the green Alsatian hills,
A place of valleys, streams and mills,
Where Barbarossa’s castle, brown
With rust of centuries still looks down
On the broad, drowsy land below......
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Even though Haguenau is on the
other side of the Vosges in Alsace, those few
lines from, “A Student’s Tale
of the Cobbler of Haguenau” seem to pretty well describe
what I have heard of the area
in France where the Druar’s homeland is to this day.
Situated in the northeast of
France among the gently rolling hills on the Plain of Lorraine,
is the tiny ancient village of
Breidenbach. It has been on the map since 1152 and is still
just a small village,
population in 1801 was 586 and in 1999 a population of only about
350 souls. The area is wet and
cool and mostly used for farming and wood products. The
inhabitants built the first
small church and named it St Hubert in 1777 (seen here with
scaffolding around the
steeple, this picture was taken Nov 23rd 2002) This saved
themselves the trip to
Louzviller another nearby village, for Sunday Mass, marriages and
baptisms and burials.
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This is the church where
Henry Drouard (Druar) and Elisabethe Putscher were
married. and where all their infants were
baptized, except the babies baptized immediately after
birth at home. While our ancestors lived
there it had always been French but after they left
for the New World in the 1830's it was taken by
Germany in 1871 and again in 1918 in the last
days of WW l. Sixty-six percent of Breidenbach was
destroyed in WWll. |
French, German and a local
dialect called Platt which sounds more like German is
the language used. Today Platt
is still used more than French by the old folks.
born in Moyeuvre,
Lorraine. This is
the land he tilled and toiled in his day. Antoine was
listed as an agriculteur - a
farmer, as were most all the area inhabitants. Farming has
remained a prime occupation of
our ancestors right to this very day.
“The
Curfew tolls the Knell of Day,
The
lowing Herd winds slowly oe’r the Lea
The
Plow-man homeward plods his weary Way
And
leaves the World to Darkness, and to me.”
~written
1751 by Thomas Gray
These words immediately
brought to mind those ancient generations of Drouards
who watched the same sun set
as we do today, on each one of their weary days of endless
toil. The same sun repeated
it’s daily journey over and over each generation who came
before us. Picture this, a
young man, Thomas Gray the poet (1716 - 1771) as he sits
peacefully in a country
churchyard at sunset pondering the meaning of the graves he sees
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around him. For him, those who
lie there, mostly simple farmers and labourers, may in
their own lowly and forgotten
sphere of life have been men of courage and sensitivity.
Poverty and lack of education
and opportunity kept their talents hidden from the
world. The Curfew Bell’s
tranquil sound quietly marked the passing of yet another day as
it called humanity to ponder
the meaning of this short earthly existence. Twilight always
seems to bring a quiet time of
reflection. I think it creates a proper setting for our
“Drouard” family. I feel it in
my bones. Do you? The Title of the poem is, “Elegy
Written in a Country
Churchyard” and is 29 stanza’s long!
I found the first few lines
written in childish script in the centre of my Grandmother
Hilda’s cookbook - a lined
scribbler- with the instructions to “copy neatly the following
stanza.” It was obviously
someone’s homework. Lucky little Huber had only the first
four lines to copy neatly!
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Well I wonder which of John & Hilda’s children this writing belongs to? Do you recognize it? It was quite a long time ago! < see the rusty staple! |
Not far to the north of
Lorraine is the Black Forest in Germany, where cuckoo
clocks have been made for
centuries. For some reason I have always been fascinated with
cuckoo clocks. Did one of our
ancestors ever fashion one for himself? To the south lies
the ancient town of Bitsche
which was founded in the 17th century.
It’s famous Citadel
guarded one of the main routes
through the Vosges Mountains to the German border. It
had successfully repelled
Prussian attacks in 1793 and again in 1870-71.
The Citadel’s impressive red
sandstone walls are still visible from afar, peeking
above the dense trees even to
this day. The population now is about 5,500. The area is
noted for high quality beef,
cheese and eggs, and growing large fields of brightly
flowered rapeseed, used for
making cooking and salad oil. On the old farms the animals
were housed in the same
building as the farmhouse, separated by the woodshed in
between them or just across
the hall from the kitchen! Not just in France but all of
Europe the people lived in
close proximity to their animals.
There are plenty of beech
trees, also maple and mountain ash. On the highest
ridges of the Vosges mountain
range, there are no trees at all, just low brush and bilberry
bushes. (Bilberry is used in
natural healing of eye problems) Over the mountains in
Alsace, the warmer weather in
the Rhine Valley is ideal for the flourishing vineyards
which produce the grapes for
the notably fine Alsatian wines.
The traditional emblem of
Lorraine is the Croix de Lorraine, a cross with two
horizontal arms, the shorter
one above the longer. Since the Battle of Nancy it has been
known as the Lorraine Cross.
It appeared on coins minted by the dukes of Lorraine and
was made famous by General de
Gaulle who took it for his personal standard. I wish I
had one. I am named Lorraine
in honour of our Drouard family’s homeland. My mom
told me this when I was
little.
Storks are very common to the
area. They winter in Africa and return in spring to
build huge messy nests, over
three feet wide! Some are built right over the chimneys of
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the houses! They are supposed
to bring good luck, but I heard long ago they bring babies!
I think the good luck story is
just to keep them from extinction!
St Nicholas has also had a
special place in the hearts of the people of Lorraine
since the days of the Holy
Roman Empire. On the night of December 5/6th with his mitre
and back pack of toys, he
travelled all of Europe I suppose. There are festivals of lights
and parades and great
merriment. I wonder how excited the Drouard children were at this
time of the year? I have
always felt in my heart that the magical season of Christmas
begins with the feast of St.
Nicholas on December 6th. It is time to turn on cheery lights,
bake cookies and listen to
seasonal music. I wonder how they celebrated?
Jacob was a very common name
in European Catholic Villages, 2/3 of the sons
were named Jacob or Johann and
2/3 of the daughters were named Maria or Anna. No
wonder it was so much “fun”
sorting them all out in this family! But then it is still true of
our ancestors of more recent
times. My own mother was named Anna Mary, so this had
continued for one hundred
years and likely more. I had not thought of it or even knew
about all those common names
in our family, when I chose the name Marita Ann for our
third daughter. It means
little Mary Ann and so it seems for about 10 generations that
combination was the most
popular choice as you will soon see when I tell you about our
ancestors and their families
as far back as the 17th century.
The name Druar has many
different interpretations. Although I have not come
across Drouillard as, Sister
Jeannette says in her family history book was the original
name. Drouard is how it was
spelled in the records from France. Here in Waterloo
County Upper Canada it was
mostly Truar, Truer, Truart, Trouart, Trouaruagh (even
Frear in Ezra Eby’s book, “A
Biographical History of Waterloo Township”) and
eventually Druar. The “T”
resulted from the dialect of the early settlers (probably the
“Platt” as mentioned earlier)
and the English speaking person taking the information for
the records. “D” was
pronounced “Ta” so it was written as it sounded. They also spoke
softly and gutturally making
it even harder to understand. Would you please even James
Stuart showed up in Father
Spetz’ book.
The earliest recorded Druar as
I said was Antoine Drouard who was born around
1654 in Moyeuvre,
Moselle, Lorraine, France and married Anne Marie Petit about 1674.
Their first child; Jean
Baptiste was born about 1675. He was my six times great
grandfather. His brother
Francois was born in 1681 (he married Marguerite Huber on the
27th of January 1714, now don’t you
wonder about her family being related to our
Hubers?) Then Jean Baptiste’s
sisters Catherine and Marguerite were born and then his
baby brother Sebastien. A
family of three sons and two daughters and so the “Family
Tree” has begun to grow, the
branches begin to stretch out, soon they will be adding their
leaves and buds from season to
season as the new generations are added and the old fall
into eternity. Their first -
Jean Baptiste (b. 1675) grew
up and married Louise Hennequin (could this later be
Hennepin?) about 1696 and
their first child;
#1 Marguerite was born about
1697.
#2 Mathieu I think was next
and then
#3 Antoine on 17 November
1701,
#4 Pierre and Charles - twins
were born on August 14 1707,
#5 Michel on 13 May 1709,
#6 Anne Marie, February 7th 1712,
#7 Francois on the 12 October
1713.
Jean Baptiste died on 10
January 1714 in Hottviller, Moselle. Louise was left with
the children, the oldest would
have been 17 by then. There was ‘la grande famine’ raging
at this time would that have
been a factor in their father’s death? It must have been very
hard for the family to carry
on. Louise lived until 1733.
Mathieu our next generation
ancestor married Anne Barbe Andres on 7
November 1729. She was born
the 30th September 1703 in Hanviller,
Moselle Lorraine
France. and died in 1766. The only
child we know of is;
John born 1743 in Breidenbach,
Moselle Lorraine France.
John Drouard (b.1743) married
on 10th of February 1767 Anne Marie
Leichtnam (this
could very well be Lehmann as
I saw it spelled on one record in Maryhill, and is the first
of many of Drouard/Leichnam
connections) Their son;
#1 Henry was born on the 26th of September 1779 [my
great-great-grandpa to-be]
#2 Christine their daughter is
listed but they are the only two children shown. They
likely had children earlier
than Henry. Death was so common in those days, often babies
and mothers did not survive.
more research is needed on this.