Histoire familiale : origines (6) la famille Boal

The familial history

 

The building of our today families

(IV)

 

The american branch and the Boal family

The american branch of the family finds its origin in the marriage between Mathilde Dolores Denis de Lagarde, grand-daughter of Louis Marie Auguste Denis de Lagarde, with an american citizen Theodore Davis Boal.

During the year 1865, Ludovic Denis de Lagarde, a mine engineer, was posted as an attaché near the France Embassy in Madrid. He met here a young spanish woman, Mathilde Ignacia de la Caridad de Montalvo y Rodrigues , and fell in love with her.

The Montalvo were the decendants of an old spanish family of soldiers and explorers. One of the ancestors of Mathilde had taken part in the conquest of Perou and Ecuador, after the Pizarro expedition during the 16th century. His descendants settled in Cuba and Mathilde is born in Cienfuegos, a town on the southern coast of Cuba, where her father owned important sugarcane plantations. She lived with parents in Madrid when she meets and marries, the 12th of August 1868, Ludovic Denis de Lagarde. Her elder sister, Maria Victoria, had married, near the year 1852, don Diego Santiago NarcisoColon de Toledo y Ruiz de Villafranca, a descendant of Cristobal Colon, who had inherited an important part of the relics, treasures and furnitures of the Colon family.

 

Mathilde Ignacia Montalvo, wife of Ludovic Denis de Lagarde

Mathilde Denis de Lagarde, born Montalvo, has had eight children. The eldest was a girl named Mathilde Dolores ( born in 1871, dead in 1952). The Denis de Lagarde lived in Paris when Mathilde Dolores, the wife of Ludovic, dies in 1889. Her eight children were still very young, so it is the elder, Mathilde Ignacia, who took soon care of the family. She was permanently with her father and went with him in a journey in the US to meet one of their cousins, Adolphe Denis de Keredern de Trobriand who, at that time, was General Consul of France in San Francisco. Of course, when they go back to Paris, the Denis de Lagarde open their home to their american friends.

Among them, there was a young architect studying in the Beaux Arts in Paris. His name was Theodore Davis Boal and he came from Pennsylvania where his family, from irish origin, lived in the little town of Boalsburg. He was very clever, full of life and lively and he quickly fell in love with the young lady. They married soon and Mathilde left her family to follow her husband and live in his familial home of Boalsburg. She brought with her in the States a lot of objects and furnitures coming from the Denis de Trobriand and the Denis de Lagarde families. Later, some of her brothers and sisters travelled to America to visit her and traces of their journey may be find on the Ellis Island lists of immigrants or passengers.

The history of the Boal family

According to the familial traditions, the Boal family took his origin in a gentleman from the town of Boal in the Asturias Province of Spain who, at the time of the Queen Elizabeth the 1st and after some difficulties with the local authorities, established on the coast, hiding his name by taking that of his birth town. Near the year 1580, he or one of his sons took part in the expedition of the Invincible Armada for the conquest of England. This man saved from the wreck of his ship on the coasts of Scotland and established here keeping his name of Boal. The family emigrated later to Ballymena in northern Ireland (County of Antrim).

During the second part of the 18th century, David Boal emigrated from Ireland to the north America settlements, with his three brothers. The first, John, established himself in Pennsylvania (in the Union County), the second, William, settled in Virginia, the third in the County of Bedford in Pennsylvania. David Boal choosed to settle in the center of the state of Pennsylvania, a country which, later, became the Centre County. He fighted, during the Independance War, as a captain of the Cumberland Militia, and in 1789 he built, on the land which was given to him for his services during the war, a little stone cabin, initial nucleus of the present Boal Mansion. But he never lived in this house who became, in 1798, the home of his son David.

 

Boalsburg in 1910 (Copyright Penn State College of the Liberal Arts)

 

This son, David Boal (born in Ballymena in 1764, dead in Boalsburg in 1837), went back to Ireland to fight against England during the rebellion. But, defeated, he had to run away with his wife Nancy Young and his two children, Georges and Elizabeth. Actively researched, they embarked on a ship back to America but David, to escape pursuit and probably death, had to be carried hidden in a wood chest which exists always in the family. He went out of the chest only when the ship is at sea.

After his return, in 1798, David built an important extension of his father's cabin and became a local notable, assuming till his death in March 1937, the responsabilities of Dean of the Presbyterian Community of Slab Cabin (now named Spring Creek). He got here two other children, Mary and John. In 1804, he built a tavern at a crossing of frontier roads, just east of his house and on the path leading to Lewisburg in the west. Here, from 1809, has grown the town of Springfield which, in 1820, was important enough to justify the opening of a Post Office. Then, in honour of David Boal, the town took the name of Boalsburg which is still its own.

 

Boalmansion à l'heure actuelle

The Boal Mansion in its present condition (Boalsburg PA USA)

le grand salon de Boal Mansion

The ball-room of Boal Mansion

The son of David Boal, Georges (1796-1867), lived his all life in America and his generation knew the accession of simple citizens to Public charges and offices. So he was Judge Assistant for the County during years, member of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Representatives and President of the Centre County Agricultural Association. In this quality, he initiated the establishment of the Upper School of Agriculture which became, years later, the Penn State University.

Georges Boal

Georges Boal (1796-1867)
(Collection Boal)

From his three sons, John Boal was Captain in the Union Army and died the 13th of March 1865 in North Carolina during the famous walk of the General Sherman army to the sea. A second son, David C.Boal, a lawman, was as his father member of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Representatives. The third son, George Jack Boal (1835-1895), went to the West in Iowa and Colorado. He married Malvina Amanda Buttles and their son, Théodore Davis Boal (1867-1938), born in Iowa, brought up at first in the West and, after his parents left to Denver (Colorado), was reared by his uncle Theodore M. Davis, a rich manufacturer, in Newport (Rhode Island). This one is well known in the archeological sphere as the sponsor of the first digging of Howard Carter in the egyptian King Valley. Moreover, it is on his concession that, after its cancelling in 1912, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, his new sponsor, have found out, in 1922, the grave of Toutankhamon.

 

Théodore Boal et son épouse Mathilde Denis de Lagarde

Théodore Boal et Mathilde Denis de Lagarde
(Collection Boal)

Théodore Davis (Terry) Boal, graduated in architecture from the Iowa State University in 1889, opened, from 1891 to 1894, an Architect Office in Denver (Colorado). Then he went to Paris to study architecture more thoroughly and in France, he met and married in 1894 Mathilde Dolorès Denis de Lagarde (1871-1952). After his father death, Terry settled in Boalsburg and changed the original farm in the present familial mansion, adding a ball-room, offices and out-houses in 1898. After the Great War, he built that is known now as the Cristobal Colon chapel, importing from Europe the artefacts and furnitures inherited by his wife from her aunt Victoria Colombus Montalvo, widow of Diego Colon. Terry was very active in the development of Boalsburg, having an interest in the creation of the water and electricity companies, the telephone and the public transports. During the Mexican war, and later in 1916, he raised his own cavalry squadron. He is dead in 1938, partly ruined by the Great Crisis.

Pierre Boal et les archives familiales

Pierre Boal in the archives room of Boal Mansion

 

Pierre Boal durant la Grande Guerre

Pierre Boal in uniform of the french 1st Cuirassier Regiment

The son of Terry, Pierre Boal (born the 29th of September 1895 in Thonon les Bains, dead in Boalsburg in 1966), was a volunteer during the 1st World War in the french 1st Regiment of Cuirassiers, then a pilot in the Lafayette Air Squadron. At the end of the war, he was Captain, Knight of the Legion d'Honneur, and liaison officer between the french army and the american pilots or observers detached in the french air squadrons. Then he began a career in the Foreign Affairs in Europe, Canada and Latin America. In 1941-1942 he was ambassador's deputy in Nicaragua and US Ambassador in Bolivia from 1942 to 1944. Pierre Boal retired in 1947 and in 1952, back to Boalsburg, he decided to create, on a non-profit basis, the present Boal Mansion Museum.

From his marriage, in 1919, with Jeanne Marie Bernard de Menthon (1898-1984), daughter of Marie Ghislain Auguste Bernard de Menthon and Marie Thérèse Anne Luglienne de La Bourdonnaye, are born two girls: Mathilde, called « Mimi », married with Blair Lee III (1916-1985), Governor of Maryland in 1970, and Mary Elizabeth (born the 25th of January 1939) who married the 13th of June 1964, Gaston Jacques Marie Ghislain d’Harcourt (born the 8th of April 1933), from whom she got three children: Emmanuel, Charles and Mathilde. The son of Blair Lee III and Mathilde "Mimi" Boal, Christopher Lee, lives presently in Boal Mansion and is officer in charge and curator of the Boal Mansion Museum, created by his grand-father in 1952.

 

Christopher Lee

Christopher Lee

 

 

 

The Columbus family chapel

(extract from the leaflet "History of an American heritage")

 

One of the jewels of Boalsburg, known everywhere across America, is the chapel erected in 1812 by Theodore Davis Boal to protect the memorabilia of Christopher Columbus inherited by his wife from her aunt doña Maria Columbus Montalvo.

Christopher Columbus's son and heir Diego, Admiral and Vice-Roy of the Indies, was better situated at court than his father, enjoyed more continuously the royal protection of Ferdinand and Isabella, and married a granddaughter of the Duke of Alba, Maria de Toledo. To the Discoverer's son fell the wealth his father had earned. Some of the gold that began to flow from the Indies was transmuted into estates and castles--the trappings of nobility for the Columbus family. One of the castles was in northern Spain, in the bleak mountains of Asturias, high tide of the Moorish invasion. Amid these mountains the Moors had built a fortified round tower, which went by the name of "Llamas del Moro" (Flames of the Moor). When the Moors had been driven out, the Spaniards added to this rugged structure a large stone castle, two stories high, with higher square towers at each corner. Built around a courtyard, the lower story of the castle with its great doors and earthen floor served to shelter horsemen and coach travelers when they stepped from their mounts and carriages to the stone stairs rising to the reception and living quarters. In its recesses were smoky kitchens and deep cellars, while the Moorish tower served as a dungeon. This castle was, during a long time, the property of the de Sierra Sarria family and passed to the Colon family by the marriage of Joseph Joaquim Colon with Josefa de Sierra Sarria y Salcedo in 1780.

In the castle, as usual, was set aside a place of devotion. There family relics and heirlooms would be kept--furnishings and family swords among religious paintings and statuary--dedicated to the glory of God and to the patron saints who had protected the Columbuses from the perils of the sea and of the New World. Fine wood was carved and gilded, silver was wrought, and each generation added something to what might already have been preserved there from the days and voyages of Christopher and his son Diego: the little painted statues of saints, carved of wood and embellished with glass eyes, suitable to the narrow chapel- places of the ships of discovery; the small painted wooden crosses which could be used for processions or slipped onto pikestaffs to be planted on the beaches of islands taken in the name of the Sovereigns; the admiral's desk studded with gilt cockleshells, emblematic of St. James of Compostella--a saint particularly revered by Christopher Columbus. Such a desk could be securely locked with its great key to protect the logs of the voyages; carried ashore or from ship to ship by its strong gilded handles; or open, would provide a surface on which to write those letters the explorers and administrators sent to encourage and reassure their royal patrons.

When Doña Victoria Columbus died, widowed and childless, she left part of her estate to her niece Mathilde, notably Don Diego's family chapel. Colonel Boal constructed a stone chapel building on his estate, and brought from Spain to Boalsburg the entrance door and the interior of the Columbus Chapel with everything it contained--fine paneling and woodwork, the choir loft (with a great escutcheon of the Columbus family on the railing, its colored panels showing the castle of Castile, the lion of Leon, the Admiral's anchors, the islands of the Indies, and the colors of Spain with an eagle), reredos, the altar draped with fine Spanish linen and lace, the massive silver crucifix, silk and brocade vestments (one maniple is over five hundred years old), paintings attributed to Ribera and Ambrosius Benson among others, hand-carved Saints, family swords.

 

la chapelle dédiée à Christophe Colomb construite en 1912

The Chapel devoted to Christopher Columbus in the Boal Mansion Park

 

intérieur de la chapelle et mobilier hérité de la famille Colomb

Inside of the Christopher Columbus Chapel

Of all these heirlooms, the greatest treasure of the Chapel is contained in a silver reliquary: it consists of two pieces of the True Cross. In the 5th century, Toribius, a young Spanish nobleman, went to the Holy Land, where, under Juvenal, he became keeper of the Sacred Relics which St. Helena had brought together in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Confronted with the danger of a capture of Jerusalem, Juvenal instructed Toribius to take the Left Arm of the Cross of the Savior and other important Relics to a place of safety. Toribius carried them first to Rome, where he received orders from the Pope, Saint Leo, to take the Left Arm of the Cross to Spain. Toribius placed it in the cathedral of his own city of Astorga, of which he became Bishop. There the Sacred Relic remained until the 7th century, when the Moorish invasion threatened Astorga. Its keepers removed it, together with the body of Toribius, to San Martin in the northerly kingdom of Leon. Toribius was canonized as Saint Toribius of Astorga, and San Martin was renamed Santo Toribio de Liebana, in honor of the Saint and of the Left Arm of the True Cross revered there. Early in the 19th century the Bishop of Leon, Ignacio Ramon de Roda, went to Santo Toribio de Liebana (in his diocese) and asked permission of the Priory of the Benedictine Monks to remove a portion of the Left Arm of the Cross. This they granted, and on bended knees he detached a portion, part of which he sent to Don Joachim and Don Felix Columbus for their family chapel. It is the part of the True Cross, arranged in the form of a cross in the reliquary and presented to the Columbus brothers by the Bishop of Leon, as certified by his signed and sealed document dated 1817, which may now be seen in the Columbus Family Chapel at the Boal Estate.

 

le reliquaire de la Vraie Croix

The reliquary of the True Cross

You could find, in the annexes, a description of the archives collection concerning the families Colon and allied, part of the heritage of Mathilde Denis de Lagarde from her aunt Victoria Montalvo, widow of Diego Santiago Colon y Ruiz de Villafranca.