Died on Thursday, the famous designer was born on the 17th August 1932 in Pessac, near Bordeaux.
Sempé’s childhood, known through a few confidences and detailed on Wikipedia « was not wildly cheerful. She was even gloomy and a bit tragic “. An illegitimate child, born three years before the marriage of his mother, Juliette Charlotte MARSAN, he had been legitimized by her husband, Ulysse Edmond Sempé, a sales representative, who squandered his meager income in bistros and constantly faced criticism. bitterness of his wife, during terrible domestic scenes.
That’s maybe why the genealogy presented on Geneastar is quite poor on the paternal side…
On the maternal side, the roots remain in the southwestern quarter. Born in Bordeaux, the designer’s mother was the daughter of a carpenter from Saint-Sever, in the Landes, with roots in this department (Aurice, Montgaillard…) and very typical surnames (MARSAN, LABADIE, LAMAIGNÈRE, BRETTES, DUCASSOU …). However, his mother, named LASMAYOUX and born in Donzenac in Corrèze, was the daughter of a navvy (Victor LAMAYOUX, native of Aveyron, with roots in Rivière-sur-Tarn, Compeyre, Mostuejouls… and even some neighborhoods driving in neighboring Lozère: RASCALOU/RASCALON, in Esclanèdes and Vareilles) and a housewife, Marie VERGNE, a native of Cressenssac, in the Lot, a family that no genealogist has been able to trace back very far to date.
Finally, we will focus on the surname SEMPÉ which, even if it was not his biological heritage, was his legal name, which the designer illustrated. A family name from Béarn. Born in Bizanos, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Ulysse Sempé was the son of Pierre, a mechanic, a native of Bénéjacq and himself the son of a laborer from this town, Pierre Sempé, who owed this name to his paternal grandmother, Anne SAINT-PÉE, wife of Bernard MACIACQ, with here the classic and inevitable crossover of Bearn surnames, due to land transmissions. As with the MARCIACQs themselves, who were in fact BADIEs, whose ancestor had married a MARCIACQ… The genealogy of Sempé is full of cases of this kind, with in particular a CONDESSE line which became SALETTE…, configurations to which any genealogist working on this region is constantly confronted.
The SAINT-PÉ lineage, moreover, will assert itself as fairly classic. The grandmother by whom the name came, named Anne MIRAMONT called SEMPÉ was daughter of a Jean SAINT-PÉ, married in Bénéjacq in 1748 with Jeanne POEY, and granddaughter of another Jean SAINT-PÉ, husband of Marie ARRABY, a couple that Pascal Doassans-Carrière specifies in his online tree on Geneanet. She, named Marie CARLON called ARRABIE, was the daughter of a CARLON, of Coarraze, and of an ARRABIE. He, a plowman in Bénéjacq, named “ Jean Pierre MIRAMON alias SEMPÉ, younger », son of an André MIRAMON, married around 1705 with a Catherine SAINT-PÉ, daughter, according to the online tree of Monique Bordenave-Lafargue, of a Jean SEMPÉ husband of a LABARRÈRE, couple who would lead us to the whole beginning of the 1600s… And originally, a surname of course derived from a place name (Saint-Pé, regional form of Saint-Pierre), with several municipalities of this name, including Saint-Pé-de-Bigorre , not far from Bénéjacq, and in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Saint-Pé-de-Léren and Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, without forgetting the hamlets and localities thus named…
SEMPÉ/SAINT-PÉ, MIRAMON, MARCIACQ: a frantic waltz of surnames, which would certainly have amused the illustrator of Petit Nicolas…