Durand Heritage Foundation Newsletter

Durand Heritage Foundation Newsletter Summer, 2003
with a cover that incorporates a painting by—
you guessed it—Asher Brown Durand.
Then there are the English Durands we ain't.
You may recall that a couple of years ago a
Heather Smith of New Zealand wondered
whether her family was connected to ours. Her
grandmother had kept a newspaper clipping
announcing the marriage of an Alan Algernon
Durand. Predictably we found no connection
between Alan and our family. However, it was
interesting to learn of this line of English Durands.
I suppose these English Durands crossed
over from France either with or sometime after
William the Conqueror, whether as knights or
foot soldiers or wine merchants we don't
know. Chances are that if we have common
ancestors they were foot soldiers or wine merchants.
Nonetheless, these English Durands
have made their mark in the history of the
British Empire. Alan Algernon Durand, the
subject of the newspaper clipping, later became
Brigadier Sir Alan Algernon Durand, 3 rd
Baronet, but not before being wounded twice
in World War I and receiving the Military
Cross.
Alan's forebears had also distinguished
themselves with military service in the farflung
British Empire, including India and the
Middle East. In the recent war in Afghanistan,
reports sometimes referenced the Durand Line,
the political boundary between Pakistan and
Afghanistan established in 1893 by Alan's uncle,
Sir Henry Mortimer Durand. Too bad that in drawing
his line Henry split an area that had been inhabited
by the Pashtons for
centuries. The Pashtons
now find themselves
living in two
different counties --
Pakistan and Afghanistan—a
situation that
has caused all kinds of
problems since. According
to Burke's
Peerage (sniff-sniff)
these English Durands
pronounce their name
"du rand."
Of course the great
mother lode of Durands
we ain't is found
in France itself. Today
there are an estimated
90,000 people who
About 90,000 Durands live in France according to this population survey
taken from the internet. The numbers in the color-coded provinces indicate
how many Durands there are per 1,000 people. The concentration of Durands
is low in the province where Doeuil-sur-le-Mignon is located, birthplace
of our primogeniture Jean Durand dit La Fortune.
4
carry the name of Durand in the land of our ancestors.
Some of them go way back, like the two Guillaume Durands,
both high officials
in the Catholic Church.
The first Guillaume
(c.1230-1296) wrote a
book about a very obscure
subject (Rationale
divinorum officiorum)
that kept being reprinted
from 1459 to 1866,
which, if you stop to
think about it, is longer
than Shakespeare has
been in print. The other
Guillaume (d. 1334) was
also a learned man who
was called to Italy to be
the theological advisor
French on the left, English on the right, these Durands were probably
at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Left is French feminist Marguerite
Durand. Right is British imperialist Sir Henry Mortimer Durand.
and preacher to Pope
John XXII. Whether this
younger Guillaume was