My great gandfather's house

Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear the sweet sound and the lilting lyrics of Judy Collins' Secret Gardens.

Graffigny-Chemin, 1909

Great grandfather's house is still there, but it isn't the same. I drive by and strangers live there. They are kind and invite me in. I go from room to room as we talk. I wish they could see what I see.

"A tangle of summer birds
Flying in sunlight
A forest of lilies
An orchard of apricot trees
Secret Gardens of the heart
Where the flowers bloom forever "

For me, the flowers are the iris and the tree is the sweet fig, the images I forever associate with my grandparents' house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In my mind's eye, I see playing on the hills overlooking Graffigny, two small girls, ages nine and seven, my grandmother Marguerite and her sister Paula, laughing and arms stretched out, jumping up and grabbing fistfuls of cherries from the low hanging branches, eating most but saving some, so that their mother Laure* will make them a pie for dinner.

The postcard above was taken on the occasion of the beatification of Jeane d'Arc in 1909.  Shown on the left behind the wall is the carriage house of my great grandfather Charles William Christian Meine and his wife Julia Laure Emma Chevallier.

great grandmother Julia Laure Emma Chevallier and her house in Graffigny

 (*I call her Laure and not Julia since the initials over the front door are C & L, for Charles and Laure)

Graffigny-Chemin 1909

La Belle Époque, French for " the Beautiful Era," -  in France the time between 1871 and 1914, the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the beginning of World War I, when life was beautiful, Europe stable, and the world at peace.

My grandmother Marguerite lived in the small village of Graffigny-Chemin with her mother and sister. Marguerite's father, Charles William Meine had passed away, but left the family in comfortable circumstances. He, as I was to learn later, German, though nothing is left of his family records other than an old photograph or two. In 1918. my grandmother married my grandfather, Madison Pearson, an officer with the American army in World War I.

In 1909 Graffigny-Chemin was, as it is now a small village of several hundred souls in the French department of Haute-Marne, formerly the province of Lorraine. Then, as now, it was a farming village with cattle in the pastures, and orchards in the hills behind the village. A stream fed the waterwell in the center of town next to one of two churches that Graffigny had, and across the main square from the house where my grandmother lived with her family. The house where they lived was unlike any other in Graffigny, for it was surrounded by a wall which enclosed the two-story house, a carriage house, and garden.

In April of 1909, Jeanne d'Arc was beatified by Pope Pius X. That event, most likely, inspired the photograph and postcard seen below. And there in the postcard, on the left side is the wall surrounding the home and the carriage house of my grandmother. My grandmother was a young lady at this time. She is perhaps lost in the crowd.

Visit the Orleans Fête de Jeanne d'Arc.