PLM employee - ABBE PHOTO

Genealogy holds surprises. Claude Boyer discovered a relationship with Marcel Pagno's childhood friend Lili des Belons.

But Claude's family history starts on the train or rather at the crossing. Let's head east to Var, to the Puget on Argens.

Early 20th: Puget crossing on Argens

The gentleman on the right with the cap and the black pants is my great grandfather, Claude Pelletier ..... who bequeathed his name.

He was born in Peypin (13) in 1874 and died in Puget in 1936. His son Alexander, my grandfather, was born in Gulf Juan (06) in 1905 and my mother Yvette, the first Varoise on the side of my maternal family was born in Puget in 1932.

Claude Pelletier was employed at the PLM which explains its various mutations.

My maternal family is native to Chevinay in the Rhone where Benoît, Claude's father was born in 1843, I found my oldest elder of this branch, also named Claude, born in Courzieu (69) in 1666.

Genealogy sometimes holds surprises.

After leaving Chevinay, my great grandfather Benoît settled in Auriol (13) where in 1873 he married a local daughter, Nathalie Caillol. By my great grandmother I am a little nephew of Baptistin Magnan better known as Lili des Belons, the childhood friend of Marcel Pagnol to whom he made known the hills of the Star "under the Garlaban crowned with goats in the days of the last chevriers".

Death in the field of honour

Lili of the Belons fell in 1918 and never knew the glory of Marcel who wrote: "He died in a black forest of the North, a bullet in the face had cut off his young life, and he had fallen in the rain, on tufts of cold plants whose names he did not know"

Thanks to Jean Pierre Violino who made me discover this illustrious genealogy.