History

This historic master's house stands by the edge of the little road joining Lézignan to Lourdes, part of the ancient pilgrim route from St Bertrand de Comminges through the little towns of the foothills of the French Pyrenees and ultimately to the great cathedral in Santaigo de Compostela in Spain.

The historical records show how important it was to keep property in the family.

The earliest record we have of de Passet is in a marriage contract of 1676 where the bride is Marie du Passet, daughter of Bernard de Passet, as witnessed and advised by her uncle who was at that time the priest in Lézignan, and his elder brother Pierre Dupas. At that time surnames were not really fixed so 'de', and 'du' do not denote nobility as they did later in French history, but rather the name of the house from which the family came. Also spellings were a bit irregular and occasionally du Passet was written as Dupas.

This Bernard Passet had an elder daughter Jeanne Dupas who was the wife of Antoine Abadie and called herself Jeanne Abadie Dupas, no doubt to maintain links with the family home. Antoine Abadie is noted as being in the service of his Majesty as a 'practicien' although precisely what service he performed is not known - probably either doctor, lawyer, or financial advisor.

By 1703 Antoine's health had deteriorated so much that a deed he signed in that year had the note at the foot that he had been unable to sign it personally due to his weakness. He died the following November during the marriage of his son Dominique who also called himself Dominique Abadie Dupas. Dominique had married Marie Menou and the marriage was witnessed by his brother-in-law Dominique Menou who was a doctor of medicine in Lourdes.

One year after the wedding we find Dominique being confirmed in a lawyer's office in Lourdes as a 'practicien' just like his father, and the deed states that he had inherited the house in Lézignan through his wife, the elder daughter of Bernard Passet. The continuity of the history of the house now passed to him. Between 1727 and 1735 Dominique is cited as being given the responsibility for all the judicial affairs of the whole barony of Angles, so it seems that he was indeed a lawyer.

Dominique and Marie had a daughter, Vincente, born around 1710 who married Jean Lapatie. Jean Lapatie had a brother Pierre, also a bourgeois and the lay priest of Lézignan.

The will of Vincente Abadie -Dupas (note the hyphen that has crept in!) left a thousand pounds to her husband but the inheritor of the house was her son Pierre, and it is his name that is added to the list of owners of this house. In 1757, Pierre Lapatie, bourgeois, married Jacqueline Dauve the daughter of one of the king's officials. They had 9 children and the house was inherited by their son Alexandre.

In his will of 1838 he named the natural sons that he had had with Christine Cazaux-Monrouy as his heirs. In order to fulfil France's succession laws, she was forced to sell the property to Dominque Sarthe who marries Judith Dupas in 1820 and so brought back the name Dupas to chez Passet.

Since then the Sarthe family history and the history of Chez Passet are one - first through Dominique, then Jean Marie then his son Julien-François (who built the 'grange') and so on through their sons until the house was finally sold to an 'outsider' on the death of the last son, François-Jean-Séverin in 1982.