The life of Pasteur / tr. from the French by Mrs. R.L. Devonshire.

  • René Vallery-Radot
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The life of Pasteur / tr. from the French by Mrs. R.L. Devonshire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1822—1843 The origin of even the humblest families can be traced back by persevering searcb through the ancient parochial registers. Thus the name of Pasteur is to be found written at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the old registers of the Priory of Mouthe, in the province of Franche Comté. The Pasteurs were tillers of the soil, and originally formed a sort of tribe in the small village of Reculfoz, dépendent on the Priory, but they gradually dispersed over the country. The registers of Mièges, near Nozeroy, contain an entry of the marriage of Denis Pasteur and Jeanne David, dated February 9, 1682. This Denis, after whom the line of Pasteur’s ancestors follows in an unbroken record, lived in the village of Pléni’sette, where his eldest son Claude was born in 1683. Denis afterward sojourned for some time in the village of Douay, and ultimately forsaking the valley of Mièges came to Lemuy, where he worked as a miller for Claude François Count of Udressier, a noble descendant of a secretary of the Emperor Charles V. Lemuy is surrounded by wide plains affording pasture for herds of oxen. In the distance the pine trees of the forest of Joux stand close together, like the ranks of an immense army, their dark masses deepening the azuré of the horizon. It was in those widespreading open lands that Pasteur’s ancestors lived. Near the church, overshadowed by old beech and lime trees, a tombstone is to be found overgrown with grass. Some members of the family lie under that slab naïvely inscribed : “ Here lie, each by the side of the others ...” In 1716, in the mill at Lemuy, ruins of which still exist, the marriage contract of Claude Pasteur was drawn up and signed in the presence of Henry Girod, Royal notary of Salins. The father and mother declared themselves unable to write, B
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