♂Thomas Potardeau

Thomas Potardeau was a marchand hôtelier, an innkeeper, in Paris around the year 1600, known as the father of Françoise Potardeau. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Françoise Potardeau.

In 1601 Françoise married Jean Canaple, a master glazier (maître vitrier) of Paris, and their marriage contract named her as the daughter of Thomas Potardeau, marchand hôtelier. The contract is known from a copy made in 1624, the first paper listed in the inventory of Jean Canaple’s estate after he died on 1 March 1625 in his house in the faubourgs Saint-Marcel, leaving Françoise a widow with children still under age. Thomas was most likely also the innkeeper of that name who took leases from the Confrérie de la Passion, the Paris religious brotherhood that owned the Hôtel de Bourgogne^W, the city’s chief playhouse; the records do not say what property he rented. Nothing is known of his wife, his birth or his death.

Notes

The leases

Two Paris notaries’ registers, one covering 1594–1630 and the other 1606–1638, hold leases granted by the dean and masters of the Confrérie de la Passion “à Thomas Potardeau, marchand hôtelier”. The archivists’ summaries name no family. The name, trade, city and period all match the father named in the 1601 contract, which is why the lessee is taken to be the same man.

The line through Élisabeth Canappa

The 1625 inventory calls Élisabeth Canappa, wife of the needle-maker Cosme Loupiat, a daughter and heir of Jean Canaple, and the younger children “their” children, his and Françoise’s. It does not name Élisabeth’s mother. A daughter married by April 1625 fits a marriage of 1601, so Françoise Potardeau was probably her mother, but a first wife of Jean Canaple is not ruled out. The line from Thomas Potardeau rests on that probable link.