Jeanne PARENTON (1745-1807)
Jeanne PARENTON was born in Pionnat March 7, 1745 and died at age 62, September 19, 1807. I make a little focus on this niece of Pierre PARENTON, one of my ancestors, because she was the center of a small event September 29, 1788 just a year before the French Revolution of 1789.
She was born during the reign of Louis XV, was charged with theft under that of Louis XVI, knew the revolutionary period and died while Napoleon was emperor.
Jeanne is the third child of Sylvain and Marie JOUANNEAU. She is 20 years old when she married Jean THEVENOT in Pionnat, with which she will have at least a daughter named Marie born in 1783.
It was chance that made me discover this anecdote recounted in a book devoted to "the masons of the Creuse".
Creuse lacked of natural resources and fertile land for agriculture. Many families lived on small farms that do not allow them to survive. And some Creuse had to leave their homeland to serve as labor on large construction sites. This exodus (known from 10000 to 20000 men leaving regularly Creuse in the eighteenth century) is sometimes made worse by "economic" crisis.
Cereals were the staple diet and Creuse had continually to import because she could not meet his needs. Crisis "wheat production" (lack of wheat) in 1788/1789 which affected France provoked violent episodes in Creuse.
They erupted after the harvest when grain merchants came looking among the holders of surplus, often royalrepresentatives, and route for sale with great profit out of the production area.
On 29 September 1788, women of Pionnat attacked two wagons loaded with grain. For attacking, it was to oppose the departure of some locally produced cereals and thus prevent excessive price rise. Prohibitive prices denying them enough to survive.
Here's expressed PARENTON Jeanne, 47 years during his interrogation. She is accused of having stolen rye :
« For her she took a bag she carries her home because she could not find the Jarnage market where she had been twice. It was observed that it was useless to go farther than Jarnage a league in search of wheat while she had instead of Ternes to her door. Responded that this is true, but the Sr Perdrix - Royal Notary and farmer in the village of Pionnat- do not want to sell septier by septier but twenty or thirty septier at a time and she was not in a state of make such a big purchase. »
A septier (also called setier) was a unit of measure changed by product and region. For wheat or rye, a septier was about 156 liters.The book does not say what happened to Jeanne, but many similarincidents occured this same year 1788 ... just before the Revolution.
