Happy Birthday, Pierre

Photo by Anonymous: Felix Nadar’s second ascension of Le’ Geant in Paris on October 18, 1863, shown next to a regular size balloon to contrast its gigantic size, on the ground on which the Eiffel Tower now stands. Champ de Mars. Le’ Geant floated all night, but in the morning, it infamously landed (by crashing across the countryside in a high wind for 30 minutes, no one escaped injury) in Hanover, Germany (where King George V took them in). Nadar’s efforts to advance aviation were praised by Jules Verne, who in his next novel, modeled the main character Ardan after Nadar in Journey From The Earth To The Moon, where he was sent to the Moon in a cannon!

January 26, 1842 is the birthday of Pierre Gentieu, my immigrant ancestor from France. He owned a complete set of Jules Verne’s science fiction novels.

Consider this 1863 Parisian balloon scene and how different it is from the photo of the firing of the cannon, happening concurrently across the ocean. Imagine Pierre in 1863, age 21, as a carefree bohemian in Paris drawing satirical cartoons for underground papers, writing poetry, hanging out in salons, exploring his creativity, and perhaps he went ballooning.  But instead he sailed to America, fought in the war to abolish slavery, married Binie Weed from New Canaan Connecticut, and voila!

So Happy Birthday to my great great grandfather Pierre, who stood up for his principles, fought in nine Civil War battles, and knew quite well that there was a more progressive use for the cannon than as exemplified in the photo above.  At 180, he may or may not have gone to the Moon (who can really say), but he is one wise elder.

Pierre in 1863

Photo credits and my lucky find

My great great grandfather, Pierre Gentieu, was a photographer. He created sharp-focused, sensitive images of the workers and families who worked at the DuPont Powder Company. His photos express the hard life of the workers, many of whom were new immigrants, at the first big industrial company in the United States, which happened to be situated in the most photogenic location there ever could be for a gunpowder corporation, along the banks of the Brandywine River in the rolling hills of northern Delaware.

Barney’s Joy Beach, Padanaram, Mass., 1977

During my last year of college, I took a photography class, and suddenly everything seemed to fall into place, and I got instant recognition for my photographs.

I became a professional photographer in New York. In 1988, I had a show called “Confabulations” at a gallery in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and that show was written up in American Photographer magazine.

A few years after that, I received a letter from a distant cousin, Norman Gentieu, Pierre’s 77-year old grandson, saying that he found me from that review in American Photographer, and guessed that I was related to Pierre Gentieu. Did I know that he was a photographer, and that the Hagley Museum in Delaware has a complete set of his photographs?

I had NO idea!

It was an extraordinary letter from my cousin, and it explained why I was so drawn to photography and was kind of good at it, Could it be genetic?

The Hagley Museum told me that the Historical Society of Delaware had Pierre’s entire set of 354 glass plate negatives. The Historical Society let me borrow them to make prints, 10 glass negatives at a time, which was amazing.

I made archival prints from them — not the albumin prints of Pierre’s day, but the equally distinctive, and now-vintage gelatin silver prints of the twentieth century. I made a hand-bound album with the prints. And then I set out to find out more about my photographer ancestor.

Pierre was only 18 years old when he immigrated, alone, to America from Orthez, Lower Pyrenees, France. It was 1860, and he stayed with his aunt and uncle in a room above their Darrigrand French bakery in Brooklyn. When it got cold, Pierre moved to New Orleans, where it was warmer and they spoke French. He joined the Orleans Artillery state militia, then the Civil War broke out, and the militia was absorbed into the Confederacy. Pierre was the first in his company to step out of line. 

He joined the 13th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry because he liked their uniforms. They were dubbed the “Dandy Regiment.”  He fought in nine Civil War battles, and after the war, married Sarah Albina Weed, the sister of his tent mate and friend who taught him English. Pierre and Binie had six childrenfour boys and two girls.

Pierre came from a family of breveted chocolatiers. The family legend was that they made chocolate for the king!  So after the Civil War, Pierre and Binie settled down in New York, where Pierre opened two French bakeries and then a restaurant. But he ran into terrible debt, so he had to sell the restaurant.

It was 1877 and Pierre was 35, with a five-year old boy, a crawling baby, and a pregnant wife. Pierre was in deep trouble! But alas, he found employment at the DuPont Powder Company in Delaware. The company, being French, making gunpowder, and wanting to help out Civil War veterans, gave Pierre his second chance.

O
Four Powdermen. Pierre Gentieu

He started as a powder worker, a very dangerous job. But the du Ponts soon recognized his talent when they saw a goauche painting he made of the Lower Yard, and he was promoted to work in the office. You could say that art saved Pierre’s life from the many explosions that were occurring in the powder yards.

Pierre sometimes brought his camera to work with him, and for a long time was the only person allowed in the yards with a camera.

Gentieu's pictures show a deep sense of comraderie.

To quote from a clipping from the book, Corporate Images: Photography and the Du Pont Company 1865 – 1972, which the Hagley Museum and Library sent me in 1992 as an introduction to Pierre’s photography:

“Gentieu’s photography was very straight forward, with simple camera angles and poses dictated not only by his equipment, but also by his clear minded approach. He was a gifted amateur photographer who desired to show things distinctly in his pictures. For this he was encouraged by the officers of the DuPont Company, and we can be thankful that he has left us the benefit of his vision. His photography was to leave a mark in the history of the company he worked for so faithfully for so long.” 

To have found this connection to my roots has been so profound. If it hadn’t been for a photo credit, if it hadn’t been for Norman looking me up, if it hadn’t been for the Hagley keeping Pierre’s collection with his name on it, I never would have known.

Jeep Administration Building Implosion, Toledo, Ohio  1979

CONNECTEDNESS

Pierre and the Lafayette Guard

First photo I ever saw of Pierre Gentieu. He was wearing the Lafayette Guard uniform, and I saw it right after I rented my Lafayette St. studio in January 1992, which was right after I found out that he was a photographer.
Soldiers representing five generations, Penny Gentieu Photography Studio on Lafayette St., New York City. A lot happened in the photo biz during the years I had this studio. I bought these toy soldiers in New Orleans in 1999 to put on display. Sometimes they fell down from the vibration of the Six train that went through the basement of the Lafayette Street building, but never Pierre, and never the bullet.
380 Lafayette St., New York, New York, Spring 2000.  My studio building was under renovation.
The Marquis de Lafayette monument. Prospect Park entrance at 9th Street, Brooklyn, New York, just five blocks down the street from our 78 Prospect Park West apartment, 2006.

Auguste Pondarre and Pierre

French photographer, Auguste Pondarre, and my great great grandfather, Pierre Gentieu, who emigrated from France in 1860, are two photographers whose work was not recognized until long after they died, but whose contributions to history, both worldly, and on a very personal level, are invaluable.

Auguste Pondarre (1871-1962) is Pierre’s nephew, the son of his sister, Marie. He lived in Orthez, Basses Pyrenees, France. He served in the French military from 1892 to 1895. He married Sarah Bessouat, a milliner, in 1905. They had a daughter, Simone, born in 1907. I met Simone in 1994.

After his service, Auguste worked with his father, Germain at his paint, art and frame shop on Rue de l’Horloge.

From 1901 to 1905, before he was married, Auguste made photographs of Orthez that were published as postcards under the name of his father’s shop, G. Pondarre & Fils.

Today, Auguste Pondarre is known for being the first photographer to create a photographic body of work that documents Orthez.

Could it be that his uncle, Pierre Gentieu, who had been creating photographs of the Brandywine Valley in America since 1880, inspired and influenced Auguste to make photographs? For that matter, who introduced Pierre to photography, was it someone in Orthez before he left for America?

I have some clues.

Pierre visited Orthez in August and September, 1898. He took his camera with him and made, at least, these three photos, that have survived.


The book, Duex Photographs Ortheziens du Debut di Siecle

I found a book that Simone sent to me in 1998, Duex Photographs Ortheziens du Debut di Siecle (Two Orthezien Photographers at the Start of the Century) by Jean Teitgen, about the first two photographers of Orthez that left a body of work, Auguste being the first, and their postcards.

In the book is this photo of the bridge by Auguste Pondarre:

Auguste’s photo of the bridge is nearly identical to Pierre’s photo, taken from the same spot, close to the same time, but perhaps years apart, because of the evidence of grown ivy on the rocks to the right. The lens was the same focal length and it was captured on the same size quarter plate, 4×5 glass negative.


Some Pondarre postcards received by Pierre, dated 1901 to 1905


Some Gentieu photographs of the Brandywine Valley, a body of work that Pierre began in 1880 and worked on for nearly 40 years:


Their cameras

Pierre’s camera is on the left. Auguste’s camera is on the right, which I photographed at Simone’s house. Pierre’s camera can expose a glass negative as large as 8×10. Auguste’s camera appears to be 6.5×8.5, but both cameras accommodate half and quarter glass plate negative sizes.


The equipment Pierre used and would bring with him to Orthez in the summer of 1898:

According to the biographical details in the French book about Auguste’s life, Germain and Marie were living in Bayonne, where Auguste was born. Toward the end of the nineteeth century, the family moved to Orthez to live at the old Gentieu homestead with Marie’s sister, Rachel. Perhaps it was around 1891, when the mother, Anne Celeste Gentieu-Baillan died, who had been living there with Rachel.  The Pondarres remained at the old Gentieu home until 1911, when they bought a building and moved up the street. Auguste served in the military from 1892 to 1895, returning to Orthez at age 24, and going to work as a house painter in his father’s business.

Pierre visited Orthez in 1898, presumably staying with his two sisters, Marie and Rachel, along with Germain and Auguste. Pierre brought along his camera and processing equipment. Could it be that Pierre’s photography interested Auguste? Perhaps Auguste was with him when he photographed the bridge and other scenes.

This postcard shows the backyard of 54 rue Moncade, the address of the ancient Gentieu homestead, and surrounding houses, with the castle ruins Tour Moncade across the street from these buildings. It is Auguste’s card number 2, printed in 1901.


If Pierre influenced Auguste, who influenced Pierre?

It is ironic that a hint comes from a detail about the second photographer subject of the book, Duex Photographs Ortheziens du Debut di Siecle. Joseph Barbe was five years younger than Auguste. At age 20, he opened a portrait studio in Orthez in 1896. In 1903, perhaps at the suggestion of Auguste, Joseph Barbe moved his studio next to the Pondarre art shop on Rue de l’Horloge, and started producing images for postcards, as a complement to his portrait business. Auguste stopped publishing postcards in 1905.  The author of the French book asks the question, where did Joseph Barbe get his inspiration to be a photographer? The suggestion is that it was through Andre Laffitte-Forsans, one of the first persons to own a camera in Orthez.

Laffitte was Pierre Gentieu’s great grandmother’s maiden name

Perhaps the same Laffitte who owned one of the first cameras in Orthez was Pierre’s cousin, who could have inspired Pierre with an interest in photography.

The pre-1860 photograph of the bridge

Which could explain this postcard, published by Barbe nearly 50 years later of the ancient bridge photographed before 1860, the year that Pierre went to New York.  Simone had a mural of the exact photograph in an alcove of a room in her house.  She told me it was taken by my ancestor.   Pierre, I understood her to mean.

This is why I believe that Pierre’s photo experience began in Orthez, and that he brought his love for photography with him to America from France, and back again.

Pierre Gentieu, Orthez, Basses-Pyrénées, France

Story of a young French immigrant who came to America in 1860, what war meant to him, and the importance of his French heritage as he fathered a new American family.


Pierre writes:

I was at the time working at the bookbinder trade in the City of Pau, and my home was in Orthez, about 40 Kilometers from there…

Napoleon 3rd. at that time issued a proclamation that all young men under age who were willing to fight for the liberty of Italy could enlist; and whatever time they would serve in that war would be deducted from their own term which they would have to serve at conscription time when of age; but all such must have the consent of father and mother, as minors, before being accepted. The excitement among the young fellows was great, and all wanted to go and fight for the liberty of Italy.

I had to write home to get the consent in due form, and telling them that all my shopmates were enlisting — would they please sign the papers at once so that we could all be in the same company. What was my surprise and disappointment when the next day I received the news that father’s and mother’s conscience did not allow them to give their consent to such enlisting. That if it had been to defend France, well and good; every Frenchman’s duty was to do so; but to go to a foreign country and maybe lose a leg or an arm in the undertaking, they would always feel sorry that they had allowed it, and consequently, I would have to wait till the regular time before going in the army. (Incidentally I would mention that two cousins were killed in that war; one at Magenta and the other at Solferino.)

Young and foolish I took offense, and told them I would then travel on my trade, what was called the tour of the country from shop to shop to perfect yourself in the trade, which was allowed by law; and as they could not keep me out of that and being afraid that I would not learn anything good on such a trip they wrote to my uncle in Brooklyn about if for advice, as I wanted to travel away from home; so Uncle answered at once saying that the best thing for them to do was to send me over while I was under age and not subject to conscription yet and could then escape the regular service when I would come of age; and being well pleased with the prospect of going to America, I was willing to accept the challenge.

Pierre’s father, Bernard Auguste Gentieu-Baillan

On the Fourth of March, 1860 I left home, father was coming to Bordeaux to see me off on a sailing vessel. He was sad all the way, I remember, and the last words he said to me on leaving I have never forgotten. Pierre, said he, you are going very far and we may never see each other again in this world, but surely live a Christian life, so that at last we may all meet together in heaven.

He stayed with the Darrigrands in Brooklyn, N.Y. until the severity of the winter drove him South to New Orleans, La. in search of a warmer climate. He was in La. when the Civil War started, a member of the New Orleans Artillery and the Louisiana State Militia. When these State troops were called into the Confederate service, the soldiers were given an opportunity by their colonel, just before leaving the State, to leave the regiment if they did not wish to go. Being a native of liberty-loving France, he could not become reconciled to the cause of slavery, end consequently was first of about thirty-five men to step out of line. Jessie Gentieu family history, 1939

“I would state that the reading of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in the old country influenced me first against slavery. The story was published as a serial in the daily papers; and I remember how intent we were in the evening to hear our father read each installment, and all the remarks we were making about it, how it was possible that the country boasting of being ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ could legalize such an institution, when in France, which was not then a republic, would not tolerate such a thing; for to us children, all the people before God were equal, and the color of the skin had nothing to do with it; but it was only the degree of instruction and civilization that made the difference in people.”


Pierre’s letter from the battlefield to his uncle Darrigrand


Regarding the Gentieu-Baillan name

Full name of the family in France, is Gentieu-Baillan, the last having been added through marriage. The home place is Orthez, Lower or Basses Pyrenees, France - have kept only the name of Gentieu, as being the real family one, both not necessary and shorter in use. My full name otherwise is Pierre Auguste Gentieu-Baillan, shortened to Pierre Gentieu. Born at Tarbes, Hautes or Higher Pyrenees, France on January 26, 1842 during a temporary absence from Orthez by father and mother on a call to his brother who was sick. Taken from record in the family Holy Bible written in Pierre Gentieu’s own hand-writing
The addition of the name of Baillan to the family name of Gentieu was explained verbally by Pierre Gentieu thus: "A girl by the name of Baillan was the last of her family, and rather than have her family name die out, she requested when she married a Gentieu, that her name be added to his, and continued thru the years." This was done in France, and was continued in the U.S.A. by Pierre Gentieu until he enlisted in the Civil War. When the man who signed him up during the war asked him his name, he said, "Pierre Auguste Gentieu-Baillan." Then the man in charge repeated that he wanted his name, and not his pedigree, he replied, "Pierre Gentieu". Jessie Gentieu family history 1939

Pierre’s carte de visite album


Pierre prized his father’s French Holy Bible


Pierre’s professions


From a chapter on Pierre Gentieu’s photographic contribution to the history of DuPont in the book, Corporate Images: Photography and the DuPont Company 1865-1972

DuPont Powder Company, old Hagley office, Pierre Gentieu on the road

Excerpt of the chronological history of Pierre Gentieu at DuPont Powder Company, Hagley Research Library

Pierre’s 1898 trip to Orthez

During the summer of 1898, Pierre Gentieu made a return trip to France, and looked over old family records in the Town Hall. Among his papers are listed these names - Bergerie Marie Gentieu, Nov.9,1750, V. Saudenerx Gentieu, Nov.1,1756 - Marguerite Gentieu, May 5,1759, Maryana Bernard Gentieu, son of Alexis Gentieu and Marie Crohare, July 22, 1764. There is also written, “In 15 July l782, I find one Pierre Gentieu as witness to the christening of Pierre Pierrette.” The balance of the records were destroyed during the French Revolution, so the family tree is incomplete. Jessie Gentieu family history 1939

Pierre’s letter to his son Frederic, 1926, while Frederic was in France. Pierre writes about what he knows of other Gentieu family members in France.

World War 1: Pierre’s son George in France. “I am in your place over here so that America returns to France your services.”


George Gentieu with Simone Pondarre, who is Auguste Pondarre’s daughter, Sarah Pondarre, Simone’s mother next to him, at the apartment house, La Prairie, owned by Auguste Pondarre.

From a French English Walnut seed, an American family tree grew

Pierre Gentieu 1927 letter to granddaughters Harriet and Esther telling the story of growing a tree at his old home at Rising Sun from the seed of a walnut tree brought home from Orthez in 1898.

Gentieu family motto taken from the motto of the old Capital of Bearn, Orthez, Lower Pyrénées, France

The basis of the Gentieu motto "Touquoy si Gaoses," meaning "Touch It If You Dare" as shown on the family Coat of Arms was taken from an old bridge bearing that inscription at the entrance of Orthez. "Touquoy si Gaoses" is not strictly French, but a Bearnaise language spoken only by a small group of people inhabiting one of the Southern Provinces of France. In the Gentieu home in Orthez there wan a maid who spoke that language. She could understand the Gentieu French, but they could not understand her Bearnaise, so in making the Coat of Arms, Pierre decided to use the Bearnaise, rather than the French, thinking it would be more distinctive, and something no one else could read. He succeeded. Jessie Gentieu history 1939