His life

Origins

Claude Martin was born on 1 March 1927. [A] Date provided by the family; civil record and place to be specified

He is the son of Roger Pierre Martin, a shopkeeper in Clairac, born in that town in 1899, and of Isabelle Odette Blanche de Robert, born in Bordeaux, who married in Bordeaux on 8 May 1922, according to the marriage record kept by the family. His father died in Clairac in 1970; his mother, in Agen, in the early 1980s.

On his father’s side, he comes from a family settled in Clairac for generations (Martin, Clouzié, Jatz, Noguès); on his mother’s side, he descends from the glassmaking gentlemen of the Ariège (Robert, Grenier, Verbizier). [A] 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]

He “officially joined the name of Robert to [his] Clairac name”: Claude Martin de Robert. [W19]

His origins: the de Roberts, glassmaking gentlemen

Early work

As a teenager, he copied notarial deeds in attics; people entrusted him with “old papers”. [A] 1940s — to be specified

A career in Clairac

After his military service, he worked in the family fabric shop, then became chairman and managing director of the Société d’Électricité de Guyenne et Gasconne, housed in the old mill of Clairac. [A] A 2017 article in Sud Ouest also mentions “his father’s fabric shop”. [D]

A point of reference for the descendants

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. [A]

In 2017, speaking of the Dutilh descendants, he told Sud Ouest that his “written or spoken exchanges with them are in a literary French”. [D]

In 1978, he organised in Clairac a gathering of several dozen descendants of emigrants. [A] According to a Sud Ouest cutting kept by the family, he welcomed in the Salle Tivoli participants from Mauritius, Europe, North America and North Africa, who studied the family trees of the Boué, Denis, Caubet or Duvigneau families; the archivist Lucile Bourrachot gave a lecture. View the record.

The families From Clairac to the world

The researcher

According to the exhibition panel, he could give the date of a baptism in 1621 or the witnesses of a marriage in 1674. He noted his information on small scraps of paper or on the backs of envelopes. [A]

In 2017, Sud Ouest describes him as “passionate about history and genealogy” and recounts his way of working: after his day at his father’s fabric shop, he spent his nights reconstructing the genealogy of the great families of Clairac, searching the departmental and municipal archives and questioning local inhabitants. The article does not date these years of work. [D]

Researchers visited him, among them Jean-Pierre Poussou, Gabriel Debien, Gregory Hanlon and Jean Haechler. He had a relationship of trust with the Société académique d’Agen and the departmental archives (Jean Burias, Father Mateu, Lucile Bourrachot). [A]

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. But he “wrote little”: “Writing is a matter for historians”, reports the exhibition panel. [A]

He also compiled a typewritten list of the “Emigrés de CLAIRAC en Agenois Province de Guyenne”: in alphabetical order, each person’s surname and first name, followed by their destination as he wrote it — “Hollande”, “Allemagne”, “Frankfurt”, “Londres”, “Irlande”, “Suisse”… — or by a dash for those who were not traced. His summary announces 261 people. The date on which he compiled this list is not known. [L]

The emigrants of Clairac

Research networks and historical societies

The documents link him to several institutions and associations. These links are reported as the sources describe them: none says that he was a member of any of them.

• Société académique d’Agen and departmental archives: he built a relationship of trust with them; Jean Burias, Father Mateu and Lucile Bourrachot recognised the quality of this self-taught man’s work. The panel does not say which departmental archives are meant. [A]
• Société des amis de Clairac: launched in early 2018, it recalls in its first newsletter “the perseverance of a local scholar, Claude Martin – who died last February”, who “kept alive the attention of some” to the history of Clairac. [B] Its president, Clair Morizet, is mentioned alongside him by Sud Ouest in 2017. [D] [E]
• Huguenot Library (University College London): in 2019 it received a copy of his unpublished work on the refugees from Clairac (see “Since 2018”). [C]
• La Réveillée: the three glassmaking gentry families of his maternal ancestry, Robert, Grenier and Verbizier [A], are those whose descendants, some 400 of them, gathered in 1975 at Le Mas-d’Azil, before founding the association La Réveillée. [F] The association describes him as one of its “pillars”: present on the platform at that 1975 meeting, he sat on its board as historian of the glassmaking families. [W19] [W21]

The Musée historique du Clairacais

He created the Musée historique du Clairacais in the Maison de Japhet. The exhibition panel states: “In 1966, establishment of the Musée historique du Clairacais”. [A] 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”. [B]

The Clairac museum

2017: the Dutilh reunion

In July 2017, descendants of the Dutilh family, which left Clairac after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, gathered in Clairac. [B] [D] [E]

A few days before the gathering, Sud Ouest found Claude Martin, aged 90, sitting under his porch, telling the family’s story. According to this article, he had worked at the request of the family, anxious to preserve its history, together with another Clairac man, Clair Morizet; his accounts were to appear in a book published for the reunion. Chris Dutilh had come to Clairac in search of information after the family archives were destroyed by bombing during the war, and had met him. With Clair Morizet and the help of the mayor, Claude Martin is accompanying the visit of some sixty descendants. [D]

Two days later, the same newspaper attributes the initiative for the gathering and the research to Chris Dutilh, helped by the departmental archives and by “two local historians, Claude Martin and Clair Morizet”. [E]

The Dutilh reunion of 2017

Since 2018

Claude Martin died on 7 February 2018 (date provided by the family). [B] After a service at the Protestant church in Clairac, he was buried on the family property of Cambes, in Clairac, near his mother; his nephews and nieces placed a glassblower’s cane of blown glass beside him. [W19]

On 12 November 2019, 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]

A Claude Martin collection is reported at the Archives départementales de Lot-et-Garonne (departmental archives). To be confirmed

On 1 March 2027, he would have turned 100: a commemoration is being prepared in Clairac (date to be confirmed).

Centenary 2027 Timeline