Slow Friday at work. Just had a random thought. I know we have Chinese in our family.... Ma's long straight hair. Half of us with chinky eyes. Some of us with fair skin. All of us can never pass up a good fry wanton or pow filled with Char Siu pork. (Dude, I had to dig on the internet to find out how to spell that one. LOL)
But where does "Duchaussée" come from? Where is the french connection? I mean this is DNN, it would make sense to explain where our name comes from, right? Does anybody know officially? Where's Uncle Raoul when you need him? (Probably playing Scrabble and giving some poor soul some serious licks.) Inquiring minds want to know.
Back to that Char Siu pork we had at the reunion........Mmmmmmmmmmm! Was that Auntie Chan's or Uncle Raoul's doing? Big round of applause for whomever made it! (And everybody else who cooked too!).
***clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap...***
BTW Horacio, if you haven't used up that gravy from Auntie Chan's Pepper Pot, keep it frozen and send that bad boy up this way please! That stuff was good enough to drink like juice!
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I remember having a conversation with those of you with the last name DuChaussee and all the funny ways your high school teachers used to pronounce it
doo-CHOW-zee
DUH-chuss-ay
DUH-chuss-ee
Sorry to jack this thread but I thought it would be related...
OMG, I don't know how many times I've heard the first one. And that's from just being in the presence of somebody with the last name. I can only imagine how many different ways you all hear it pronounced on a daily basis.
I also remember: doo-CHAW-see
Our grandfather Gustave DuChaussee came from St Lucia to Trinidad as a young man and that's the extent of my knowledge. I do know that the name is misspelt as it should be de la Chaussee. I found that out when I took french lessons. Perhaps Kevin, if you could spare the time, ask Raoul to elaborate as he is the historian of the family. Don't let the chance slip by because we saw it happening with Ma. It was too late when we started questioning her as to our heritage and the poor soul could not remember. Let us try to harness this one.
"chaussee" means ground floor or "roadway" so the translation is "of the roadway or ground floor" "du" would be masculine and "de la" is feminine so is ""chaussee masculine or feminine?
I actually saw the word "chaussee" in the lobby of a building in Paris
chaussee is feminine
I remember having a conversation with Uncle Raoul about our heritage. If memory serves me correctly, Uncle told me that when a African was sold into slavery he or she would take the last name of their owner or "massa". So our ancestors were taken from Africa and sent to St. Lucia, which at the time was a FRENCH colony, as slaves. Duchaussee would be the last name of the person our ancestors were sold to.
To get in my two cents worth, I have only two memories of Gustave pronounced "Gistav". One is of him saying that an old friend or acquaintance was a souccouyant and I in all innocence, thinking that I had this great piece of information, called out "souccouyant" to her as she was leaving the house in Erin. She threatened to tell Pa. My other memory is having been passed over his coffin when he died. There was some kind of suspicion attached to death and children. It's probably something worth checking into. Auntie Dot, being older, has some very vivid memories of him. Perhaps someone can undertake to chronicle these memories.
I believe they are being chronicled as we speak so keep posting ma!
I googled the name duchaussee and only people from Belgium came up. None from France. Maybe we should go to St.Lucia and do some research. Janine are you up to that?
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