The de Barrau family is a French noble family from the province of Rouergue, now the department of Aveyron, in France.
Descended from a notary who lived in the 16th century, it began its noble alliances in that same century. In the following century, Guion de Barrau established himself as a nobleman and succeeded in having this status maintained after being convicted of usurpation of nobility. In the 18th century, Madame de Barrau was abducted and arrested by a lettre de cachet in 1767; in 1789, Pierre Firmin de Barrau de Caplongue was one of the drafters of the cahier de doléances of the nobility of the Rodez and Millau bailiwicks; the family château was looted and burnt down in 1793; Barrau father and son were summoned to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1794. After the French Revolution, some of its members became notables in the Aveyron department. Three of the latter were historians, including Hippolyte de Barrau, who in 1836 proposed the creation of a learned society, the [Society of letters, sciences and arts of Aveyron]; he was its first president, and the de Barrau family is still represented on it. Another family member was a botanist on the [Commission for the Scientific Exploration of Algeria]. Moreover, many of them defended Catholic and royalist ideals from the French Revolution to the First World War. It is relevant to mention de Barrau in 1792, who had revolutionaries shot, Eugène de Barrau in 1852, who carried out a confidential mission for the “Count of Chambord”, or Jean de Barrau, member of the steering committee of the National Federation of the King's Camelots and private secretary to the Duke of Orléans in 1914. In the 20th century, following the fighting in the First World War, four of the six young Barrau men died.
This family has left several traces of its history in the Aveyron department.
History
Patronymic According to the Filae website, between 1891 and 1990, the Occitan surname Barrau ranked 1,544th among the most frequently borne names in France, making it not very popular nationally. During this period, it was mainly found in southwestern and southern France, and the departments where it is most represented are, in descending order, Tarn, Haute-Garonne, Aveyron, Hérault, Aude, etc.
There are no works on the study of this surname; however, French writer and lexicographer Frédéric Mistral writes that the Barrau surname is said to come from the Romance barrau, barral, meaning “barrel”, a small barrel with a neck. This surname is thought to be a nickname for a manufacturer or merchant of barrels, casks, or barrels. Barrel comes from the Gallo-Roman barriculus, “barrel”, then from the Medieval Latin barriclus “small barrel ”. Claude Cougoulat, who has studied surnames of Gallic origin, writes that the root Barr- would designate a place difficult to access or closed or an obstacle.
The Barrau surname preceded by a particle has been borne by various families. Today, the de Barrau family (from Carcenac, Aveyron) is not to be confused with the and families, the latter two being commonly known as de Barrau.
Origins in central Rouergue
, in Documents généalogiques sur des familles du Rouergue [], writes: “This family can only be traced back to 1557. However, traces of the family can be found before this period, notably in several ancient deeds in the departmental archives. These acts contain gaps and obscurities that make it impossible to establish its ancestry clearly and precisely beyond the 16th century. Firmin de Barrau, who tested his will on April 7, 1557, is the first author of proven filiation". writes that this family has been mentioned in deeds since the end of the 15th century. writes: “The fire of 1793, by destroying most of our titles, deprived us of the means to further our research”. In the Cartulaire de l' [Cartulary of Bonnecombe Abbey], edited by Pierre-Aloïs Verlaguet, the village of Carcenac-Salmiech mentions a person named Barraus da Carcennac, who witnessed a tithe agreement in 1233 and ceded rights to a farmhouse in 1242. However, in the absence of proof of filiation, this person cannot yet be linked to the de Barrau family.
Carcenac is an ancient village about five kilometers northeast of Salmiech. The toponym “Carcenac” has a Celtic ending in “ac” (from -acum). The first construction of its church dates from at least the 13th century. In the Middle Ages, there was no castle in the parish of Carcenac, which came under the jurisdiction of the castellania of Salmiech, a domain of the Counts of Rodez and then the Lords of Landorre from the early 13th century. In the second half of the 18th century, the wife of a member of the de Barrau family described the village as being located “on a deserted mountain”.
In their works, Hippolyte de Barrau and mention that the de Barrau family has been noble since 1557, but this information has been shown to be erroneous.In his genealogy of his family, Hippolyte de Barrau writes that he is described as a noble in the will he made on April 7, 1557 before notary Mr. Dufieu. Today, there is no trace of this will, nor of a Dufieu notary at this date. In 1533, however, we find mention of Antoine Barrau, son of Pierre, notary of Salmiech (Henri Affre, Inventaire-sommaire des Archives départementales de l'Aveyron antérieures à 1790, archives civiles, série E, Paris: Imprimerie et librairie administratives de Paul Dupont, 1877, page 415, E1899), but the link with Firmin Barrau, notary, who died according to Hippolyte de Barrau in 1557, is not established by secondary sources. Concerning the notary Dufieu who is said to have received the will, Hippolyte de Barrau points out that it was the same notary who drew up the marriage contract of his son Firmin II Barrau on June 10, 1572 with Françoise de Méjanès, daughter of Arnaud, seigneur de Larguiez. However, there is only one notary of this name in Rouergue, Joachim Dufieu, father and son, at Le Truel, practicing from 1576 to 1662, dates which do not coincide for deeds passed in 1557 and 1572. Their minutes and tables are deposited in the Departmental Archives of Aveyron, cotes 2E 14.236 to 250. The will of 1557 appears to be erroneous, but the marriage of Firmin II Barrau to Françoise de Méjanès is confirmed by the Aveyron archives (see Henri Affre's work). The family's proven and followed lineage can be traced back to Firmin Barrau, who was a notary in the 16th century in Salmiech. This village or small market town lies some twenty kilometers southeast of Rodez, Rouergue's main city, on the western edge of the Lévézou region, close to Ségala.
Social ascent
Alliances with the old nobility of Rouergue In the second half of the 16th century, Firmin (II) Barrau, son of Firmin Barrau, married Françoise de Méjanès, whose family belonged to the ancient nobility of Rouergue. During the French Wars of Religion, his father-in-law defended a provincial town against Huguenot advances. Firmin II Barrau and his wife's children included Firmin III, who took over the family estate in Carcenac, and Laurens, who inherited the Coutal estate between Arvieu and Salles-Curan, forming a branch that would remain commoner.
Firmin (III) Barrau in turn married a noblewoman in 1611. Gustave Chaix d'Est-Ange writes: “Firmin Barrau became related to the best noble families of the country through his marriage on June 5, 1611, to Marie de Faramond, daughter of François de Faramond, from an old knight family still in existence, and Louise de Lapanouse ”. François de Faramond is the eldest of his lineage and his mother is Marguerite de Morlhon. Louise de Lapanouse-Fabrègues, lady of Grèzes, is the daughter of Guion de Lapanouse and Helips de Brezons.
Thus, for two generations under the last Valois kings and the first Bourbon kings, the Barrau heirs in Carcenac have been contracting alliances with the ancient nobility of their province. Both alliances were with local families who lived in the same part of Rouergue as they did. The de Méjanès family, in possession of Lévézou, traces its nobility back to the Middle Ages. The de Faramond family takes its name from a place belonging to the castellania of Salmiech, Faramondie, and traces its nobility back to the 13th century, with a presumed noble ancestry in the 12th century. It was a vassal of the castellans of Salmiech in the Middle Ages. Firmin (III) Barrau's mother-in-law was a Lapanouse, her family's nobility dating back to the 13th century. She bore the name of her village on the lands of the Barons of Sévérac, to whom they were vassals in the Middle Ages, and was admitted to the honors of the Court in the 18th century. As for the paternal grandmother of Firmin's wife (III), she was a Morlhon, a family whose nobility dates back to the 13th century, with presumed noble ancestry in the 11th century, and whose members included bailiffs.
These two marriages represent a desire for social advancement, but also the ability to support a wife from the nobility, giving them kinship within the Rouergue knight nobility. On the social significance of alliances under the Ancien Régime, historian Roland Mousnier writes: “In this patrilineal society, it is the marriages of the males that determine a family's social rank”; and Martin de Framond writes: “These movements up the social ladder, often masked in genealogies, can be judged by noting alliances”.
Reign of Louis XIV to Louis XVI
Third generation In the next generation, one of Firmin's sons (III), Guion, married Anne de Vedelly in 1656 and became partial owner of the seigneury of Trémouilles. His marriage was not to a noble, but thanks to his father's and grandfather's alliances, he had several close ancestors who were noble. Through his wife's inheritance, he could now call himself a “seigneur” ("The ownership of a seigneury is a social dignity”) and draw income from this land; however, since 1579, land no longer gave nobility. Guion lived in the countryside, like his ancestors; he was a rural man, his father and grandfather having married daughters from old noble families who lived on their lands and served the kings as knights. On the strength of his family connections, and probably his wife's inheritance, he had been a nobleman since the mid-seventeenth century. In 1666, King Louis XIV ordered a major survey of the nobility. Unable to prove nobility either since 1560 or by ennoblement, Guion Barrau de Carcenac was sentenced on October 9, 1666, for usurpation of nobility to a 600 livre fine by Claude Pellot, Intendant of Bordeaux and Montauban. Despite his conviction, he is described as a nobleman and squire in the 1680 marriage contract of his son, noble Firmin de Barrau (1663-1739), who married a lady from an ancient knight family. In 1689 and 1692, he is still mentioned as noble Guion de Barrau.
His son, noble Firmin de Barrau, served on the bans of 1689, 1692, and 1694, as evidenced by certificates from the Rouergue nobility commanders confirming his service and discharging him in 1696.
In 1695, father and son de Barrau (Guion and Firmin de Barrau) were subject to the noble capitation tax. Firmin de Barrau had to pay 120 livres in capitation tax, corresponding to class 10, which taxed gentiles who were seigneurs of parishes, the highest degree of rural nobility, and his father 6 livres, corresponding to class 19, which taxed gentiles with neither fief nor château.