User:Duminy123

When Francois Renier Duminy was enlisted as a captain in the French Marine, he was described as the “son of Antoine and Anne le Goff (fils d’Antoine et Anne le Goff). From this it was concluded that Francois Renier Duminy’s father was Antoine Lunel, the father of the young officer Mathieu Lunel Duminy, who had joined the French East India Company’s service in 1746. The child’s parentage had been concealed at the time of his birth, he argued, because the baby was illegitimate. The belief that Antoine Lunel was the father of Francois Renier Duminy discounted the Duminy’s family legend that François Renier’s father was a military personage, if not a general, Antoine Lunel was not a soldier at all, but a merchant of Tarascon. Furthermore, in no official records, including the marriage of his son at Bayonne in 1764 and the baptism of his grandchildren at Lorient, did Antoine Lunel use the surname “Duminy”. With the cooperapion of the French Military research service, thi custodian of parish records in Tarascon and the archives in M{rseilles, it has not at last become possible to unravel come of the mysteries surrounding his family baciground. The adoptive father of Francois Renier Duminy was Antoine Lebre Duminy (sometimes spelt Dumesnil or Dumini) who was born at Tarascon on 2 July 1691 and was married in Tarascon to Marcelle Bard(e), the daughter of a master rope-maker. Their first child was a daughter, Marthe, who at the age of 16 married Antoine Lunel, merchant of Tarascon. (Mathieu Lunel Duminy was the first of three children of this marriage, the others being Claude, who is believed to have served with the French army in North America, and a daughter, Magdalene, whose details are not known). At the time of his marriage in 1709, Antoine Lebre Duminy was known as Antoine Lebre and his occupation was given as “winegrower”. He must have enlisted soon afterwards in the grenadiers of the Régiment de la Couronne (the Crown’s regiment). When his daughter Marthe married Antoine Lunel in 1726, he was a sergeant. After serving 20 years at this rank, he became a second lieutenant in 1734 and was promoted to the rank of officer by the command of the Marquis of Breteuil in 1735. He was then relieved of further combat duties on grounds of ill health in November 1742 and served in the garrisons of Angers, the fortress that guarded the valley of Loire (1744), Colmars of ~France’s south-eastern frontier (1745) and Lorient (1746) before being promoted to captain of the second class in the Invalids (the section of the French army which employed soldiers who were no longer fit for active service) in July 1746. He was promoted to captain of the first class in March 1748 and was commander of the garrisons of Lorient (1757), Port Louis 1759-63 and Bayonne 1763-1768. He died at Bayonne on 22 February 1768, aged 76, and was buried in the cloisters of the Bayonne cathedral of Nôtre Dame, an honour accorded only to persons of importance. In recognition of his long service in the French Army, he had become a chevalier of the Order of St. Louis. (The exact place of burial of Antoine Lebre Duminy in the cloisters of the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame in Bayonne can no longer be located. This is because the inscriptions marking most of the graves have become worn and illegible while those in the northern cloisters have vanished altogether following extensions to the cathedral. French military records describe him as having had “brown hair and eyes” with pox marks. This height was 6.37 in the measurement of the time (R.I. Couronne 1694-1748). While these facts concerning Antoine Lebre Duminy can be stated with certainty, a number of questions remain unanswered and may well remain so. The first of these concerns Antoine Lebre’s adoption of the surname Duminy at some stage during his military career (he was already known by this name in 1728). In the French military records he is listed as Antoine Lebre, sieur Dumesnil, and his death was recorded in Bayonne as that of Monsieur Antoine Dumini. The most likely explanation for his is that he adopted the name as a nom de guerre offer an important (unidentified) patron the French army. It was customary of the French army to allow its members to do this when they had distinguished themselves in some way or other. His brother Jean, who also enlisted in the Regiment de la Courronne, adopted the name du Fresne. It was extremely unusual that, without family connections, Antoine Lebre Duminy should have advanced as far as he did in the French army. In eighteenth-century France the /officer ranks were the virtual monopoly of the nobility and in 1781 a royal decree specified that all candidates for the officer corps in the infantry, cavalry and dragoons had to prove no less than four generations of nobility on the father’s side. A second question remains unanswered is why Antoine Lebre Duminy and Anne le Goff, if they were Francois Renier’s biological parents, concealed their identity at the time of his baptism. Was she Antoine Lebre’s mistress of was she also an adoptive parent? The latter would appear to be more likely in view of the fact that she was later officially recognized in the naval records. Research in Lorient has thus far uncovered no detail. She was almost certainly a member of a local family, for the le Goff surname is of Celtic origin. An explanation that can be advanced in that Mathieu Lunel Duminy, and not Antoine Lebre Duminy, was Francois Renier’s biological parent. The birth took place within nine months of Mathieu Lunel’s departure from Lorient on 28 March 1747 on board the Invincible (the elder of Antoine Lebre Duminy’s grandsons, he was then 14 years old was headed for prominence and honours in the service of the French East India Companie and the French Navy). In that case, Antoine Lebre Duminy would have been Francois Renier’s great-grandfather. There is certainly evidence that Francois Renier Duminy regarded Mathieu Lunel Duminy as kin. During the 18th and early 19th century, surnames were frequently misspelt in official documents copied by individuals who spoke other languages or dialects. In the Cape records, the stamvader’s name is often spelt “Du Miny”, “Dumenij”, “Dumini or“Dumeni”. As far as Duminy himself concerned, however, he seems to have used the spelling “Duminy” consistently from a very early stage. (It is, for example found in his ship’s journal dated 1772). The spelling of his second name is, however, inconsistent. Although christened René he appears to have adopted the spelling “Reinier – see coat of arms). Members of his family changed this to “Renier” The surname originated as a description of a place of origin, Le Mesnil, meaning a house or a mansion or, in some cases, the area surrounding a house. (The English words “demesne and domain have the same origin). Because there were numerous hamlets in various parts of France of that name. Variants of the surname “Duminy” are Daumesnil, Dumaisnil, Dumeignil, Dumeniel, Dumenil, Dumesnil, Douxmesnil, and Duminil. The spelling Duminy is least common. In northern France the name Duminy appears in birth and marriage registers as early as the 16th century and, during the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a fairly large community of Duminy’s living at the village of Ferrié. Mathieu Lunel Duminy, André Lebre Duminy and Francois Renier Duminy must have all gained admission through influence of Antoine Lebre who served as a captain in the garrison at Lorient in 1746 before becoming commander of the garrison in 1757. Mathieu Lunel entered at the age of 14, and Francois Renier at the age of 9. André’s age at entry and what became of him after 1761 are not known. Francois René aka Francois Renier Duminy, was born in Lorient, Bretagne on 4 October 1747. It is thought likely that the surname Duminy is a nom de guerre after a patron in the French army. Francois Renier Duminy first visited the Cape of Good Hope in 1771. Later he married Johanna Margaretha Nötlingh in Dutch Reformed Church, Cape Town on 2 February 1777. She was born 29 June 1757, baptized 7 July 1757 and died 25 February 1807, the daughter of Benjamin Nötling and Johanna Lombard. He served as an officer in the French East Indian Company (De Compagnie des Indies) before entering private service and later “die Dutch East India Company” as a sea captain. He was Equipage Master for the entire DEIC administration (March 1786 – July 1787) and Capetain du Port for Simonstown (1803 – 1806) He was a slaver, entrepreneur, cartographer of note, farmer, public commissioner and an eminent, decorated freemason both in Lorient, France and the Cape of Good Hope Lodge. His later years were marred by ill-health and financial distress as his privileged rank and highly remunerative employment was withdrawn. Duminy died at 19 Graave Street, Cape Town aged 64 years on 26 May 1811. KAB CJ 2632, 41 MOOC 7/1/53.32