Ancestors

Jean Pierre Melin

Jean Pierre Melin was born at Levier, in the Doubs department of eastern France, on 9 January 1802. Levier is a small market town and the seat of a canton, high in the Jura mountains between Besançon and the Swiss border. Jean Pierre was a cultivateur, a farmer, and in 1833 he lived on the rue du Carouge in the town.

His father, Jean Alexandre Melin, owned and farmed land at Levier and died there on 7 April 1816, when Jean Pierre was fourteen. His mother, Jeanne Françoise, died on 13 October 1818. On 13 November 1832, at thirty, he married Jeanne Cesarine Senevey, the daughter of a Levier farmer, Jean Antoine Senevey. His uncle Jean Pierre Miget was one of the witnesses. Their eldest son was born in their house on the rue du Carouge at three o'clock in the afternoon of 5 October 1833. At six the next evening Jean Pierre went before the mayor, Alexis Lhomme, to register the birth. He gave his own age as thirty one and his wife's as twenty six, and he named the boy Joseph Victor. His two witnesses were Louis Aimé Bouverelle, a physician of thirty two, and Claude Ambroise Jeannin, a farmer of thirty. Jean Pierre signed the act himself, J. P. Melin.

A list of the couple's children drawn from the Levier registers is given on his memorial. After Joseph Victor came Françoise Esther in 1835, Casimir Fernand in 1837, Marie Julie in 1839 and Louis Felix in 1844. Constant Casimir was born in 1847 and died in 1848. Charles Emile was born in 1849, and he and his sister Françoise Esther both died in 1852. The last child, Victor Edmond, was born in 1852.

Soon after that the family left France for the United States. They settled in Linn Township, Osage County, in central Missouri. Jean Pierre died there in September 1853, at fifty one, within a year or two of leaving Levier. He was buried in the Old Immaculate Conception Catholic Cemetery at Loose Creek in Osage County.

His widow outlived him by forty two years. In 1870 she was living in Linn with their son Victor, his wife Clementine and their first child, and with their son Felix. Victor later moved to Jasper County, in the southwest corner of the state, and died there in 1916. Felix stayed in Osage County and died at Linn in 1911. Their daughter Julie married a Dubrouillet and lived until 1927.

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Cite: Heirology, "Jean Pierre Melin (1802-1853)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jean-pierre-melin-1802-1853-ec2df4.