map

The quest to find written proof of Jean Serisier’s birth has consumed me this week. It’s a mountainous task I knew I had coming, already being familiar with the archives in France which are online in Everest-sized proportions.
If it were as easy as type in a name and find it, well my job would already be done. As it is, while many documents are digitised, it’s pages or books at a time, so leafing through these old gems is a little like wading through treacle for the speed it takes (and hats off to genealogists who do this for a living, because I think you’re crazy).
I do however get, that it is probably no different to prospecting for gold. Specs at a time. You know it’s out there somewhere, and in general where to go look for it, but if you’re two feet to the left of the seam well, no lucky strike for you.
I’ve had mixed results. No definitive proof. However, some nuggets are now on file, so time to share.
With the help of two French archival websites http://www.genealogie.com and http://gael.gironde.fr/ I have managed to list all the communes where people going by the name of Serisier resided in the right time frame. Thanks to Google Maps I was then able to create the picture attached, which shows a pretty good concentration (numbered green icons) of where they were born, married or died.
Also thanks to Google Maps I was able to take a virtual drive through some of these neighbourhoods (which went straight to the bucket list because it appears that they lived in the Napa Valley of Bordeaux equivalent and I feel a wine tasting tour coming on).
Vineyards as far as the eye could see. No wonder the protagonist of my book decided later in life to revisit his roots (if this is indeed where he grew up) and establish a sizeable piece of a Bordeaux vineyard of his own, outside Dubbo in New South Wales, Australia in the late 1860s.
What I love about this map is all roads lead to Bordeaux, and rivers (aka trading routes). I took a virtual tour of Libourne, to the north of the Serisier “country” on the map, and I could well have been standing on the banks of the Macquarie River which runs through Dubbo (the town Jean is credited to have founded). Very surprising.
Painfully, because there is still so much more digging to do, the fact that Jean is always referred to as coming from Bordeaux, Gironde, France, really says very little. Gironde is similar to a state, small enough but then each town has it’s own municipality and archive. With around 156 towns or communes it’s a matter of whittling down to the most likely to be his home town to then trawl relevant record books.
I’m determined to find it and believe you me, you will hear my Eureka when I strike gold!