I am nearing completion of the final draft of “Gathering More Leaves, Volume I.” All that remains is to incorporate an anecdote about an ancestor, Jean Germain Voisard. He served as mayor of Montécheroux, France, from the Bourbon Restoration in 1815 until his death in 1826. Jean Germain Voisard, my father’s 4th great-grandfather, had planned to emigrate thousands of miles from his home in eastern France to the American frontier in eastern Ohio, but unfortunately, he passed away before embarking on the journey. To fully appreciate the significance of his story within my family history, I must first go back 80 years to the era of the Ancien Régime, and describe an unusual arrangement known as the simultaneum.

For most of the 1740s, France and Austria were at war. The War of Austrian Succession was fought over the succession to the Austrian throne after the death of Charles VI. France did not want Charles’ daughter, Maria Teresa, to be Empress. The outcome of the war was that Austria was forced to cede some of its territory to its neighbors. In 1748, in a treaty separate from the one that ended the war, the French king, Louis XV annexed four seigneuries owned by Montbéliard. One of the so-called “Quartre Terres” or “four lands” was the seigneury of Clémont, the land in which resided the town of Montechéroux.

In 1740, Louis XV issued an order “for the entire restoration of the Catholic religion, the extinction of Lutheranism & the suppression of ministers in all the parishes of the four lands.”

Yet, when the war ended, the King did a majestic flip-flop. After the War of the Austrian Succession, the County of Montbéliard, a German possession, and the Bishopric of Basel were surrounded by the Kingdom of France and the Confederation of Switzerland.

While the treaty concluded between the king and the Duke of Württemberg in 1748, granted “no new tolerance to the Lutheran worship in the four lands,” in the following year, the king did attempt to “re-establish” Lutheran worship in Catholic churches of “the four lands.” This arrangement was not some new experiment in religious tolerance. This arrangement had been set up a half-century earlier by the king’s great-grandfather, Louis XIV.

During the Nine Years’ War, when Louis XIV of France invaded the Electorate of the Palatinate, a Protestant region in western Germany, he introduced the simultaneum, which allowed both Catholic and Protestant services to be held in the same church. At the end of the war, the region returned to Protestant control, but a last-minute addition to the Treaty of Ryswick allowed the simultaneum to continue. It was intended to apply only to the Palatinate, but it was also applied in portions of Protestant Alsace, including the so-called “four lands.” This did not sit well with the authorities at the Parliament of Besançon, the appellate court of Franche-Comte which held the right to check the king on certain matters. Franche Comté de Bourgogne, the Free County of Burgundy did not become part of the Kingdom of France until 1668.

According to the French language Wikipedia: An “église simultanée” or a simultaneous or mixed church is a church where simultaneum is practiced. When the County of Nassau was annexed by Louis XIV in 1688, 22 Protestant villages had to accept the simultaneum and, when the County of Nassau was returned in 1697, these 22 churches remained simultaneous. At the death of King Louis XIV, there were 123 simultaneous churches in Alsace.

The simultaneum was always located in Protestant churches, a Lutheran “temple” in the case of Montécheroux; Catholic churches were never involved. The juxtaposition of the two communities was very difficult throughout the centuries and gave rise to countless tensions as Catholics were keen to extend their rights and Protestants resisted. 

In Alsace, Louis XIV introduced the simultaneum, forcing Protestant communities to share their churches with Catholics if at least seven Catholic families resided in the area. The first instance occurred in 1683 in Neuwiller-lès-Saverne. A royal edict in 1684, initially for the Electorate Palatine, extended to all of Alsace, forming legal basis until the Revolution. While Catholics were granted the choir and Protestants the nave, maintenance issues and the lack of separation led to frequent tensions and disputes over service times.

Between 1683 and 1688, 78 Protestant churches became simultaneous, with the movement slowing until Louis XIV’s death in 1715. Even after the County of Nassau was restored in 1697, the 22 churches annexed in 1688 remained simultaneous. By Louis XIV’s death, Alsace had 123 simultaneous churches. The number peaked at 159 in the 18th century before decreasing to 150 by the Concordat in 1801.

Later in 1786, Louis XV’s grand-son, Louis XVI, facing bankruptcy, also flipped-flopped, and sold the “four lands” back to Montbéliard. An article of the Convention of 1786, stipulated “the perpetual conservation of Lutheranism in nine villages, where the duke of Württemberg yields to His Majesty.”

This further enraged the Parliament of Besancon, and in 1789, a substitute lawyer at the parliament published a 500-page tome dedicated to the Estates-Générale that presented a lengthy argument for why the king of France had no right to restore the “four lands” to the Duke of Württemberg.

The book found at Google Books is titled “The County of Montbéliard Enlarged and Enriched to the Detriment of Franche-Comté by the Exchange Concluded On May 21, 1786 Between the King and the Duke of Württemberg, Relating to the Limits of the Count of Montbéliard and the Seigneuries of Balmont, Clémont, Hericourt , and Chatelot,” and it is “Dedicated To The Estates General Of Franche-Comte“

As fate would have it, the arguments advocated in the book were rendered moot on the night of August 4, 1789, when the French National Constituent Assembly adopted the August Decrees, abolishing feudalism, privileges of the nobility, and seigneurial rights. This occurred in the context of the “Grand Peur,” the peasant uprisings that gripped most of France following the storming of the Bastille. Remarkably, the “four lands” did not experience the same level of violence that wrecked areas of nearby Franche-Comte in the summer of ’89.

Yet, it seems that something did change in Montécheroux in the autumn of 1790, according to an anecdote provided to me by a fellow researcher with whom I first corresponded over a quarter of a century ago, Pierre Schuft, whose wife is also a descendant of Voisard/LaChat. In his notes, Msr. Schuft writes in regard to Jean Germain Voisard, my father’s 4th great-grandfather:

Maire de Montécheroux de 1815 à 1826. Avec la révolution le régime particulier de “simultaneum” religieux qui avait été imposé par Louis XIV est supprimé et le temple rendu aux protestants le 9 septembre 1790. En 1825 le nombre de catholiques augmentant une pétition demande le rétablissement du “simultaneum”. Devant le refus des autorités Jean Germain VOISARD fervent catholique vend tous ses biens pour partir aux Etats-Unis mais il décède avant.

Translation:

Mayor of Montécheroux from 1815 to 1826: With the Revolution, the special religious regime of “simultaneum” imposed by Louis XIV was abolished, and the church was returned to the Protestants on September 9, 1790. In 1825, as the number of Catholics increased, a petition was issued calling for the reinstatement of the “simultaneum.” Faced with the authorities’ refusal, Jean Germain Voisard, a devout Catholic, sold all his possessions to leave for the United States, but he died beforehand in 1826.

In other words, the simultaneum and other vestiges of the Ancien régime were abolished with the advent of the Revolution. I know that, based on my review of the Montécheroux BMD Records, in 1789, on the eve of the revolution, the Lutherans appear to outnumber the Catholics 5-to-1. Additionally, the temple originally belonged to the Protestant sect. With the monarchy restored after the fall of Napoleon, Jean Germain and others anticipated the re-establishment of the old ways. When this did not occur, Monsieur Voisard shifted his allegiance to the USA. He sold all his possessions with the intent to emigrate to America, but tragically, he died before realizing his dream.

His daughter, Jeanne Angelique Voisard, married Joseph Faivre in 1809, and the family emigrated to Ohio in 1834. Joseph became a merchant in the tiny town of Belfort, Stark Co., Ohio. No doubt, Jeanne Angelique inherited their seed money from her father.