--- About the Treuch family |
The Cordier must have emigrated to the USA sometimes before World War One. |
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Maman's sweet sister never forgot us and sent us a parcel every year. At home we often spoke of this nice aunt so faraway. |
Aunt Anna had a boy and a girl. Roger the boy staid in France and lived in Paris. The daughter ~Lucie Cordier-Menegauxworked in Holywood as a governess at the service of Marie Pickford. This cousin of ours was sending us some of this actress clothes whose extravagance made my school mates laugh at me when wearing them to go to school! |
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The poor Mado was lame from a birth accident and stumbled over at times. This cost her to take an unwanted bath in the Doubs river, a day when Grand-mère Treuch took her in the tiny craft with which my grand parents often went fishing. The little craft was also used sometimes just to cross the river, the shortest way to go to Valentigney where my dear Tante Pierrette lived. Mado's unfortune caused quite a few (hidden) laughs in the family. |
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According to ~Oncle Marcel the Treuch family was originally from Saverne in Alsace. |
We may presume that my grand-mother parents fled Alsace after this French province was annexed to Germany following the 1870-1871 war with Prussia. |
It might also be that the family had settled in Pays de Montbéliard well before the French-Prussian conflict since like the majority of the people there they were Lutherian protestants. Visiting the old Lutherian cemetery in Audincourt might tell. |
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Maman was a widow with five kids. The pretty widow without neither love nor money did not know what to do to feed her family. This is when the mother of her late husband decided to teach her an old trade that had been hers.
The idea was to order all the needed supplies to make umbrellas and teach the widow how to build them. This is what was done. Maman was working harder and harder but still with five kids in the middle of a war things were not easy. However since she owned a large house she decided to rent out a couple of rooms to bachelors. |
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Joséphine Verdier, Grand-mère Treuch's mother-in-law is the one who taught the family how to make umbrellas. |
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Cet oncle de Mamie Paulette est le seul Treuch que j'ai connu et il s'agit là de l'un de mes plus vieux souvenirs. Je devais avoir au plus quatre ans. Mamie habitait alors chez son oncle. Je me souviens d'un homme immense avec un chapeau ouvrant le portail de la maison. Étant tout petit j'ai peut-être un peu exagéré sa taille mais sachant que l'Oncle Émile avait été tambour-majeur dans la Garde Républicaine il devait être en-effet assez costaud comme tous les Treuch. |
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