Timeline

1. 1922 8 May

   His parents, Roger Pierre Martin, a shopkeeper in Clairac, born in 1899, and Isabelle Odette Blanche de Robert, born in Bordeaux, marry in Bordeaux on 8 May 1922, according to the marriage record kept by the family.

   His origins

2. 1927 1 March

   Claude Martin is born on 1 March 1927 (date provided by the family). On his father’s side, he comes from a family settled in Clairac for generations (Martin, Clouzié, Jatz, Noguès); on his mother’s side, from gentlemen glassmakers of the Ariège (Robert, Grenier, Verbizier).

   [A] Date provided by the family (civil record to be obtained); place to be specified

3. Adolescence 1940s — to be specified

   As a teenager, he copied notarial deeds in attics; people entrusted him with “old papers”. The exhibition panel gives no date: “1940s” is deduced from his year of birth.

   [A] 1940s — to be specified

4. Around 1945 At eighteen

   At eighteen, he sets off by bicycle to the Ariège in search of the history and the cousins of his mother’s family, descended from the glassmaking gentlemen, as his niece Florence Lung recalled in a text published by the association La Réveillée in 2018.

   Year deduced from his age His origins

5. 1960s

   From the 1960s onwards, the descendants of the emigrant families Saffin, Dutilh, Darné and Cobet came to meet him, from Vienna, London, Frankfurt, Mauritius, Rotterdam or Philadelphia. He received them in his houses at La Pause, then at Cambes, and kept up a regular correspondence with them. In the 1960s and 1970s, he published in the Revue de l’Agenais, the Revue historique de Bordeaux and the Bulletin de la Société d’histoire du protestantisme français.

   [A] The families

6. 1966

   “In 1966, establishment of the Musée historique du Clairacais”, in the Maison de Japhet, according to the exhibition panel. The Société des amis de Clairac, for its part, writes that the house was “taken over in the 1970s by Claude Martin, who created a fascinating museum of the Reformation in Clairac there”.

   [A] [B] 1966 according to the exhibition panel; 1970s according to the Société des amis de Clairac — to be verified The Clairac museum

7. 1975

   Some 400 descendants of the glassmaking families Robert, Grenier and Verbizier gather at Le Mas-d’Azil, before founding the association La Réveillée. Claude Martin, descended from these families through his mother, speaks there about the region’s former glassworks; he will sit on the association’s board as historian of the glassmaking families.

   [F] His origins

8. 1978

   He organises in Clairac a gathering of several dozen descendants of emigrants. A Sud Ouest cutting kept by the family describes the meeting: participants from Mauritius, Belgium, West Germany, the United States, Canada, Algeria and Martinique, the family trees of the Boué, Denis, Caubet and Duvigneau families, a lecture by the archivist Lucile Bourrachot (see the record).

   

   [A] Gatherings in Clairac

9. 2017 July

   Gathering of the Dutilh descendants in Clairac: 70 members of the family, from Holland, England, Switzerland, Spain and Turkey, according to the Société des amis de Clairac, which does not specify Claude Martin’s role. [B] A few days before the gathering, Sud Ouest presents him, aged 90, as the man who, with Clair Morizet, traced the family’s history at its request; the two of them, helped by the mayor, are accompanying the visit of some sixty descendants. [D] Two days later, the same newspaper attributes the initiative and the research to Chris Dutilh, helped by “two local historians, Claude Martin and Clair Morizet”. [E] None of these sources credits him with organising the gathering. On Saturday 22 July, a commemorative plaque is placed in rue Gambetta; the programme in the reunion booklet provides for it to be unveiled by the mayor and by Claude Martin.

   Numbers: 70 [B], some sixty [D] or 66 [E] depending on the source The Dutilh reunion of 2017

10. 2018 7 February

    Claude Martin dies on 7 February 2018 (date provided by the family): “who died last February”, writes the Société des amis de Clairac in its newsletter of May 2018. After a service at the Protestant church in Clairac, he is buried on the family property of Cambes, near his mother, according to La Réveillée’s tribute.

    [B] His origins

11. 2019 12 November

    The Huguenot Library (University College London) acknowledged receipt of a copy of his unpublished work, French Protestants (Huguenots) in Clairac, 1600s-1700s: Lists of refugees from Clairac and the surrounding Lot-et-Garonne area of France, donated by his niece Florence Lung, through Glenys Bolland.

    [C]

12. 2027 1 March — centenary

    Claude Martin would have turned 100 on 1 March 2027. A commemoration is being prepared in Clairac. The story continues.

    The 2027 centenary

Do you know a date, a place or a document that clarifies these milestones — his birth, his early work, the creation of the museum? Contributions are reviewed before any publication.

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