Florissant, Missouri

Florissant, Missouri, becomes a hinge between a violent account of the American frontier and the hidden beginnings of the D’Anjou family. In the winter of 1842, sisters there follow a dog’s persistent barking to a young woman lying in the snow, dead or near death, with a living infant in her arms. The woman is buried without a name; the child survives, carrying a cameo that may hold the key to his identity.

Setting and the 1842 Discovery

A few weeks after a newspaper report described the attack on Mr. Castlemount’s ranch near Carthage, Missouri, the narrative turns to Florissant, north of St. Louis, Missouri. On November 28, during the first week of Advent, the barking of a dog alerts the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Following it, they find a young woman in the deep snow, still holding a baby who gives a faint cry.

The infant is bundled in the woman’s own garments, which she appears to have given up to protect him from the cold. A small wooden cross at her neck marks her Christian faith, while the baby carries a finely made cameo, hidden in a torn silk purse and fastened to his swaddling clothes with a large pin. The juxtaposition of the cross and the precious stone makes the discovery both an act of rescue and a mystery: the sisters cannot establish the woman’s identity or prove that she is the child’s mother, and the cameo suggests a history the infant cannot yet tell.

Burial, Baptism, and Adoption

The community arranges for the unnamed woman to be buried in the cemetery of the parish of Saint-Ferdinand. Remembered by the sisters as an unknown saint, she is honored for having preserved the baby’s life through hardships whose marks remain on her body. Her burial gives the discovery a local sacred memory, even as her identity remains unresolved.

A baptismal record dated December 1 indicates how quickly the infant’s future is secured. The religious community finds a childless French-Canadian couple in St. Louis, Missouri, willing to adopt him. The child is named for the saint of the day, Éloi, but the unclear handwriting and ink-stained ending of the name permit it to be read as Élie. The child who becomes Élie D’Anjou thus leaves Florissant for an adoptive family, while the uncertain reading in the register becomes part of the family’s concealed history.

Florissant as a Clue to the Family’s Origins

Much later, Loïc repeatedly studies the account of the discovery, probing its details for an explanation. He wonders whether the nameless woman could have been his great-great-grandmother and whether the Founder was found with the cameo at his cradle, just as it was later associated with his tomb. These remain hypotheses, not established facts, but Florissant supplies the crucial conjunction of infant, stone, and adoption on which they depend.

The old baptismal register, photographed by Régis, preserves the uncertain name in material form. After Régis’s death, Loïc takes up the search, using online newspapers and court and archival records from the Midwestern states; unlike his cousin, he can also consult the Library of Congress’s resources from home. Florissant therefore matters not simply as the place where a baby was found, but as the starting point for an investigation into the Founder’s origins and the D’Anjou family’s relationship to the cameo.