Joseph Claude de Favrot

  Noted events in his life were:

• note. Sieur Joseph Claude de Favrot (b. March 18, 1668 near Besancon, Franche-Compte, d. October 28, 1707, Huninque, France) and Francoise de Bouvier (b. abt. 1667, d. February 22, 1739, Paris, France) married on March 4, 1693 or 1694 at St. Sulpice Church, Paris. After the death of Francois, Sieur Joseph Claude married Ms. DeDontelle (b. 1722 or 1733), a native of Versailles. According to The Favrot Family Papers (Tulane University), Vol. I, pp. xv-xvi, Joseph Claude had a distinguished military career as a cartographical engineer in the French army. He traveled with the armies of Louis XIV in the Low Countries and in the Rhineland-Palatinate during the Wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish succession. He prepared large-scale maps for the military commanders to show towns, rivers, bridges, fortifications and troop movements. He devised special techniques for making maps, and was said to have a secret method for calculating heights. His fluency in German, as well as French, facilitated his infiltration of enemy areas when he was mapping the Rhineland. His skill at mapmaking won the approval of his superiors, including the Marechal de Villars. His skills were such that when he was a prisoner of war in 1691, Prince Louis of Baden attempted to persuade him, with money and honors, to do the same work for the armies of the Confederation. His refusal to betray his loyalty to France resulted in his captors' putting him on bread and water rations. The rigors of his marches and the privations he endured undermined his health, and he died at age 38. His widow was left with four small children to raise, and she remarried in 1710. An article in The Louisiana Historical Quarterly^[1] provides the following information. Joseph Claude was a brigadier-general and was appointed First Draftsman in the armies of Louis XIV. He made maps of Flanders, Lorraine and Luxembourg, "ten leagues on each side of the course of the Rhine from Huningue to Coblenz." It says that, according to family tradition he designed, under Vauban, the foremost military engineer of his age, the fortress at Verdun. A portrait of him brought to America by Don Pedro shows him wearing a steel breastplate and indicating with his forefinger "his master-work in the background, the fortress at Verdun." Two treasures of the Favrot collection are a snuff box and a seal ring given to Joseph Claude by Louis XIV. See The Family Papers, supra at xvi-xix.
^[1] Vol. 28, No. 3 (July, 1945), copy in a known individual's files

Joseph married Francoise Bouvier on 4 Mar 1692/93 in St. Sulpice Church, Paris, France. (Francoise Bouvier was born about 1667 and died on 22 Feb 1738/39.)