(Week 5 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks).
On to week 5 of side-swiping my writer’s block with a year-long family history challenge. Another phase of grief paying a surprise visit this past week so I’m relieved to have this distraction, albeit posting later than scheduled. Welcome to my fifth post of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks where I move on to a new monthly theme and travel back, way back, to my father’s 18th Century Soho roots.
February Theme: Branching Out / Week 5: Branching Out
John (or Jean) Fessier Savigny, born in 1730 in the heart of London in modern-day Soho to the previous John Fessier Savigny and his third wife, Francoise Coleman, was third in a line of well-respected Huguenot silversmiths, beginning with his grandfather Olivier Savigny Fessier, cutler to the King (George I). Their protestant French family had escaped from Normandy when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes made it impossible to practice Protestantism in France. There is no concrete evidence (or oral history) for the reason Olivier swapped his middle name “Savigny” with his surname before it was dropped altogether a few generations later, but with Fessier roughly translating to “buttocks” it is easy to see how a name-change might have been considered wise. At the time of John Savigny Jr.’s birth, contemporary descriptions of the Huguenots around St. James and St. Martin’s in the Fields suggest strong maintenance of their French culture, including the language.
John Savigny’s father, also a razor-maker for the King (George II), was a man who had married five times and in his will left a single shilling each to his son John and to his fifth wife Ann. Instead, he left his entire fortune to his unmarried daughter Frances Fessier Savigny (John’s sister by their shared mother Frances—wife number three). Perhaps not coincidentally, John Savigny got married to his wife, also named Ann, in January of that year, and they had their first child four months later in April.
Despite this indication of family tensions, John Fessier Savigny the younger carried on the family business of making razors for the king (George II and George III).
But making royal razors was not the only footprint that John Savigny left behind in the public sphere. I chose John Savigny for this week’s theme of “Branching Out” because in his forties, he got on stage and tried his hand at professional acting.
The National Galleries of Scotland online contains a handful of etchings illustrating John Savigny’s Covent Garden performances. While he is credited and referenced in reviews as “John Savigny,” he is labelled in at least one of the etchings as “John Horatio Savigny,” the name he gave his first son. The acting bug has been typically associated therefore with his son—but looking at the dates, it is unlikely a 13 yr-old John Horatio was up on stage. Digging through some of the contemporary reviews that can be found online, one refers to a forty-year old man going back to his surgical instrument business. Is it possible that John Savigny the father gave himself a stage name after his first-born son?
According to accounts, John Savigny ended up on stage after accepting a dare from colleagues. The novelty of this clever amateur brought him attention, and he followed it up with more roles until alas, the critics wrote what they really thought and poor John was unable to land himself an agent. His acting career fizzled out. This dabbling in the arts did not last long, but it did immortalize him in the memoirs of Queen Charlotte (the wife of mad George III, currently immortalized by Golda Rosheuvel in the Bridgeton series).
John Savigny’s grandson, also named John Horatio Savigny, branched out from razor-making as well, trying his hand at sheep farming in Scotland for a stretch where he met and married his wife Agnes Blair. It likely didn’t pan out in the long run, as he left Scotland for Canada some time around 1832, joined or followed by several of his brothers a and their families. John and Agnes are listed in the Toronto Atlas in 1837.
The widow of another brother, Reverend William Henry Savigny, emigrated to Australia with her son of the same name, and it’s one of his descendants who made the effort to travel to London to dig through all the Huguenot library records and set straight the family history and origins, which he has very kindly shared with all his distant cousins.
Monkey See, Monkey Say 