His origins: the de Roberts, glassmaking gentlemen

A son of Clairac and of Bordeaux

On 8 May 1922, in Bordeaux, Roger Pierre Martin, a shopkeeper in Clairac, born on 13 November 1899, son of Gabriel Martin and Laure Thérèze [?] Clouzié, marries Isabelle Odette Blanche de Robert, born in Bordeaux, daughter of Paulin Maurice Élisée de Robert and Marie Cadise [?]. They are the parents of Claude Martin, born in Clairac on 1 March 1927. [A] The marriage record, a duplicate kept by the family, gives the details; some readings remain uncertain.

The couple’s family record book records the death of Roger Martin in Clairac on 28 November 1970, and that of Isabelle de Robert in Agen on 16 July 198[?] (uncertain reading of the year). View the page of the record book.

The tribute published by La Réveillée in 2018 confirms this parentage: Claude Martin rests on the family property of Cambes, in Clairac, near the grave of his mother, “Isabelle de Robert-Bousquet”. [W19]

A Robert trading house in Bordeaux-Bègles

The family also kept blank writing paper headed “M. de Robert & Cie”, in Bordeaux-Bègles, printed for the 1890s (“189_”), with the vignette of the “Domaine du Mercey, St-Émilionnais, par Gensac (Gironde)” and the telegraphic address “Derobert-Bègles”. View the document.

Glassmaking gentlemen

Through his mother, Claude Martin descends from the glassmaking gentlemen of the Ariège (Robert, Grenier, Verbizier). [A] These noble families held the hereditary privilege of blowing glass; in Languedoc, a charter granted at Sommières in 1445 reserved it for gentlemen who passed it on only to their noble descendants. To preserve this privilege, the families de Robert, de Grenier, de Verbizier, de Riols de Fonclare and de Suère married among themselves, generation after generation. [W16] [W18]

His archives hold a large printed tree of one of these families: the “Généalogie de la famille de Verbizier ou Verbigier”, drawn up in 1905 by Élisée de Robert-Garils, in which the Verbiziers marry, generation after generation, into the Greniers and the Roberts. The tree names neither Claude Martin nor his mother. See the tree and its transcription.

In the 16th century, according to La Réveillée, most glassmaking gentlemen joined the Reformation; a few remained Catholic or converted after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The forest glassworks disappeared in the 19th century, after 1883 at Pointis-Mercenac and in 1893 at Moussans. [W16]

Claude Martin and La Réveillée

At eighteen, his niece Florence Lung recalls, he set off by bicycle to the Ariège in search of the history and the cousins of his mother’s family. [W19]

In 1975, some 400 descendants of the glassmaking families gathered at Le Mas-d’Azil. [F] A letter of the time, published by the association in 2015, shows Claude Martin on the platform, “who had done a great deal of research on the glassmakers”, and reports his talk on the region’s vanished glassworks. [W21] According to Florence Lung, the descendants’ association, La Réveillée, was born “thanks to your work and that of Jane Sivadon”; its statutes are dated 4 September 1978. [W19] [W17] A Jane Sivadon is the daughter of Léila-Dora de Verbizier, who appears in the 1905 tree: that this is the same person is probable, but remains to be established (the Verbizier tree and its links).

The association describes him as one of its “pillars”: elected a permanent member of its board as historian of the glassmaking families, constantly consulted on genealogy, places and glassworks, he also donated pieces for the creation of the glass museum at Le Mas-d’Azil. [W19] He signed notes in its newsletter, in 1992 under the name “Claude MARTIN (de ROBERT BOUSQUET)” — the Robert-Bousquet branch, his mother’s — and in 1994. [W20] [W22]

This attachment explains his name: he “officially joined the name of Robert to [his] Clairac name: Claude Martin de Robert”. At his funeral, in February 2018, a glassblower’s cane of blown glass was placed beside him. [W19]

His writings on glassmakers — the bibliography of the 1975 gathering, the Couserans, the Baron de Sevin collection, the glassmakers of Cabanes — and what public sources say about them are brought together on a page of his work, with the glassworks and families he writes about. The glassmaking gentlemen

The family keeps under glass the label of a “Cuvée des Gentilshommes Verriers — de Grenier, de Robert, de Verbizier — La Réveillée 1997”. View the document.

The arms with the heart

Three family objects bear the same heart: the painted arms, presented as those of his family, with the motto “Si fortune me tourmente l’espérance me contente”; a signet ring engraved with a shield bearing a heart; and the central shield of the 1997 label, between those of the Greniers and the Verbiziers.

Gabriel Martin, his paternal grandfather

The family also keeps the portrait, with no name or date on the print, of an elderly man: according to the family, it is Claude Martin’s paternal grandfather. His first name is known from the 1922 marriage record, where Roger Pierre Martin, Claude’s father, is called “son of Gabriel Martin”. So this is Gabriel Martin, of the Martin family of Clairac. View the photograph. The date of the portrait remains unknown: do you know it? Write to us.