Origins of surname
Not many names defeat us, but we have been unable to find any reference to the origins of Puirvaux. Vaux is French for valley, but puir has us beaten. It is possible that it is a corruption of Pirevaux, itself a corruption of Pierrevaux, and that the name refers to Pierre of the Valley.
This is unlikely to be an indigenous Jersey name, because it does not appear in records until the early 18th century, and had died out in just over 100 years.
But it is not a name apparently known in France. There is only one family listed in the Geneanet database and that is the Jersey family.
Early records
Joseph Puirvaux, who married Marie Anne Morel, daughter of Louis and Susanne Liege, started the short-lived Jersey family. His sons Louis Joseph and Guillaume Simeon both had families, but there is no record of a further generation.
There is a suggestions that Joseph, or Pierre Joseph as he is shown in his 1717 St Saviour marriage record was the brother of Anne Pirevaux, whose abjuration was recorded in St Helier in 1733, when she was aged 33. It is just possible that they both came to Jersey with their parents as Huguenot refugees some time after 1685. They may also have been siblings of Pierre Andre Puirvaux, who married Marthe Charlotte Lambert in St Helier in 1718. They are both said to have been refugees from Parthenay in south-west France, from where other Huguenots are known to have come to Jersey.
Variants
- Puirvaux
Family records
Family trees
Church records
- Puirvaux baptisms in Jersey
- Puirvaux marriages in Jersey (groom)
- Puirvaux marriages in Jersey (bride)
- Puirvaux burials in Jersey
Family wills
This will created by a member of the Puirvaux family is now held by Jersey Archive. By visiting the archive site and using the names, date and reference number shown here, it is possible to view a copy of each will. You will have to subscribe to the Archive's online service to do this. To find out more about this collection, which covers the period from 1663 to 1980, and how to search for your family's wills there, visit our Jersey wills page
- Louis Puirvaux of St Helier 19 March 1763 - D/Y/A/11
Tips
The church record links above will open in a new tab in your browser and generate the most up-to-date list of each set of records from our database. These lists replace earlier Family page baptism lists, which were not regularly updated. They have the added advantage that they produce a chronological listing for the family name in all parishes, so you do not have to search through A-Z indexes, parish by parish.
We have included some important spelling variants on some family pages, but it may be worth searching for records for a different spelling variant. Think of searching for variants with or without a prefix, such as Le or De. To search for further variants, or for any other family name, just click on the appropriate link below for the first letter of the family name, and a new tab will open, giving you the option to choose baptism, marriage or burial records. You will then see a list of available names for that type of record and you can select any name from that list. That will display all records of the chosen type for that family name, and you can narrow the search by adding a given name, selecting a parish or setting start and end dates in the form you will see above. You can also change the family name, or search for a partial name if you are not certain of the spelling
The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.
New records
Since August 2020 we have added several thousand new records from the registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These will appear in date order within a general search of the records and are also individually searchable within the database search form
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