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Caro McDowell collection on Christophe Poulain DuBignon
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Caro duBignon Henry Howell McDowell was the collector of the materials in this collection. She was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1909, where her father, W. C. A. Henry, worked as an executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Her mother, Mary duBignon Henry, grew up in Savannah and Atlanta. As a child, Caro Henry often visited her grandmother, Mrs. Fleming duBignon, and her aunt, Caro duBignon Alston, in Atlanta. After attending school in Philadelphia and Warrenton, Virginia, Caro Henry had an opportunity to spend a year in Paris with her aunt, Miss Anne Grantland duBignon. During that year, she resumed her acquaintance with Albert Howell of Atlanta, then a graduate architecture student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. They married in Atlanta in 1930. Caro Howell's abiding interest in her French ancestry stemmed from her experience in Paris in 1928-1929 and from her close relationship with her duBignon relatives. When she was diagnosed with acute tuberculosis in 1938, she spent five years recuperating in Colorado and Arizona. Her aunt Anne duBignon accompanied her and engaged her curiosity about the duBignon ancestors, especially Christophe Poulain DuBignon, the patriarch of the American line. The same determination she showed in overcoming tuberculosis was evident in her research into the life of Christophe Poulain DuBignon. She found a willing collaborator in Miss Carroll Hart, then serving as Assistant Director of the Georgia Department Archives and History. With professional guidance from Miss Hart, she began corresponding with various archives in Paris, Brittany, and Mauritius, as well as DuBignon descendants in the United States and abroad. Mlle Madeleine Groleau, a French native who taught at Westminster School in Atlanta, translated her letters and proved indispensable in deciphering and translating copies of eighteenth century documents sent from France. The bulk of the collection was assembled during the 1960s. The six hundred page Fonds Revel from the Archives Départementales des Côtes d'Armor was a significant part of the collection, accessible thanks to Mlle Groleau's dedicated and meticulous translation. Caro Howell put research aside when her husband Albert was stricken with cancer and died in 1974. Five years later, she married Michael A. McDowell, a noted Atlanta music authority. In the late 1980s, she shared her collection with another DuBignon researcher, Dr. Martha Keber of Georgia College & State University. Dr. Keber built on Mrs. McDowell's research and followed leads in France, India, and Mauritius that revealed DuBignon's activity as a privateer in the Indian Ocean and his standing as an aristocratic capitalist in Brittany. In 2002, the University of Georgia Press published her biography of Christophe Poulain DuBignon under the title of
. Caro McDowell died in 2004. Her son, Henry L. Howell, arranged for the gift of the collection to the Georgia Historical Society in 2006.
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The primary focus of this collection is the life of Christophe Poulain DuBignon (1739-1825). Born into the ranks of the minor French nobility, DuBignon went to sea at age ten to escape the poverty so common to provincial aristocrats in his native Brittany. In his thirty-five years in the French India Company and the French merchant marine, he advanced to the rank of captain, commanding merchantmen in the Indian Ocean. With his fortune secured, he retired to his Breton estate but the upheavals of the French Revolution caused him to immigrate to Georgia in 1790. At that time, he was one of five shareholders in the Sapelo Company that owned Sapelo and Jekyll Islands. When the company collapsed, DuBignon bought out his partners' interests in Jekyll and recreated himself as a cotton planter. His early successes as a planter faded when hurricanes, pests, and economic downturns undermined the viability of the plantation. He died at Jekyll at the age of eighty-six.
The collection contains significant information concerning DuBignon's seafaring career, his business affairs in France, the Sapelo Company, and the plantation at Jekyll. It also includes material relating to the first marriage of his wife, Marguerite Lossieux DuBignon (1748-1825), and her children and grandchildren from that marriage. There is also correspondence of his younger son, Henry Charles Dubignon (1783-1867), concerning DuBignon's French property and assets.
Collateral papers in the collection include documents concerning DuBignon's ancestors dating from the fifteenth through the early eighteenth centuries, sketches of manor houses owned by family in Brittany, the inventory of property left by his brother Ange Dubignon on the island of Mauritius, and letters of emigrant Grand Dutreuilh family from Haiti that DuBignon befriended.
This collection consists exclusively of photocopies of documents from various repositories and microfilm collected by Caro McDowell.
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2 boxes, 4 oversize boxes
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Microfilm reader is required to view microfilm.
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Copyright has not been assigned to the Georgia Historical Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Division of Library and Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Georgia Historical Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.
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GHS 1716, Caro McDowell collection on Christophe Poulain DuBignon, 1442-1845, 1976. Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia.
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Location & Availability of Originals
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Series 1: Archives Départementales des Côtes d'Armor (ADCA)
7, rue François Merlet
22000 Saint-Brieuc
France
Series 2: ACDA (see Series 1)
Archives Départementales de Loire-Atlantique (ADLA)
6, rue de Bouillé
44000 Nantes
France
Catholic Diocese of Savannah Archives (CDSA)
600 E. Liberty Street
Savannah, GA 31401
Glynn County Court House (GCC)
701 H Street
Brunswick, GA 31520
Mairie de Lamballe (ML)
B. P. 109
22402 Lamballe Cedex
France
Mairie de Vannes (MV)
B. P. 509
56019 Vannes Cedex
France
Mauritius Archives (MA)
Development Bank of Mauritius Complex
Petite Rivière
Mauritius
McDowell Collection (MC)
Please see GHS staff for contact information
Series 3: Archives Départementales de Morbihan (ADM)
B. P. 405
54010 Vannes Cedex
France
Centre d'Accueil et de Recherches des Archives Nationales (AN)
11, rue des Quatre Fils
75003 Paris
France
Marine Nationale Service Historique (MNSH)
Centre de Documentation et de Recherche de l'Arrondissement Maritime de Lorient
B. P. 4
56998 Lorient Naval
France
Service Historique de la Marine à Brest (SHMB
B. P. 46
29240 Brest Naval
France
Series 4: Georgia Department of History and Archives (GDAH)
5800 Jonesboro Road
Morrow, GA 30260
National Archives, Southeast Region (NASER)
5780 Jonesboro Road
Morrow, GA 30260
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