Shortly before the end of the year 2025, Vincent de Vaucresson, my next-door neighbor in The Jambottries of Saint Martin Lars (South Vendée), asked me if by any chance Isabelle van der Dussen, wife of Foullon, one of his ancestors, was among mine. Upon checking, yes, Isabelle VDD NXIII is indeed my ancestor. My neighbor is my cousin!
More specifically: Isabelle VDD was the eldest daughter of Eugène François VDD NXIII, 1683-1745.
Eugène-François, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, castellan of Ath under Spanish rule, was first married to Clara Eugenia Albertina de Louwar, with whom he had a daughter, the famous Isabelle Eugénie Joséphine VDD. He later married Constance Thérèse Rubens, the great-granddaughter of the painter. Her agnatic[i][1] line ends there, and the VDD genealogy has not preserved any record of Isabelle VDD’s children. This therefore offers an opportunity to examine this branch more closely.
Her husband, François Joseph Foullon, as noted in the VDD genealogy, was a knight, Count of Morengies, Baron of Doué, and War Commissioner in France. Wikipedia tells us more: born in Saumur in 1715, he died in 1789.
François Joseph Foullon and Isabelle van der Dussen (1717-1786) had four children: 1. Joseph Foullon de Doué, 2. Eugène Joseph Stanislas Foullon d’Escotier, 3. Honoré Charles Ignace Foullon (priest of the diocese of Cambrai), and 4. Marie Joséphine Foullon, wife of Louis Bertier de Sauvigny. Appointed Superintendent of Finances in place of Jacques Necker in 1789, François-Joseph fled revolutionary Paris. He was arrested by his men in Viry-Chatillon, and despite his advanced age (75), he was taken to Paris barefoot, his mouth stuffed with hay, hanged on a lamppost, and beheaded. His head was paraded triumphantly through the streets of the capital. By chance: Isabelle VDD died three years before that.
For more details on Eugène Joseph, see the Wikipedia entry: François Joseph Foullon..
Their children were prominent figures in France and the French West Indies. They continued their careers during the Restoration period. All their lives were marked by political events. And worth noting: another alliance in Belgium (the Depestre and Cogels families).
We will return to this family and their descendants later. We will also need to find out how Isabelle and Eugène-Joseph met: a family connection? In those days, people from good families didn’t meet by chance! If anyone has any idea…
Our Eugène-François Foullon’s sister, Anne Foullon de Doué, married Paul Le Noir de Pasdeloup; their daughter, Anne-Marie Pasdeloup, married Jean-Baptiste Trutié de Vaucresson in 1769. Their descendants made their fortunes in the West Indies (sugar cane?). Their coat of arms, incidentally, depicts two natives of the islands in loincloths. (Let’s hope they treated their slaves well! Unfortunately, today, the West Indians, those discovered by Christopher Columbus, are extinct.) Among the distant direct descendants of Anne Foullon de Doué is Vincent de Vaucresson, my neighbor. A reunion, almost 300 years after the marriage of Isabelle and François-Joseph.
[1] Patrilineal descent refers to the line that bears the name; genealogists were not interested in other descendants.
