I stumbled into an intriguing little problem in my family tree recently. My 5th great-grandparents, Pierre Prejean and Marie Louise Derouet, had a son named Jean Henri Prejean who was born on 23 June 1798 in La Bazoche-Gouet, Eure-et-Loir, France.¹

I was looking to see if he married and when he died when I came across a problem. There were two different death records for him!  

1. He died in 1822 at 24 years of age. His parents are named, as well as the correct birthdate and birthplace.²

2. He died in 1872 at 74 years of age. Same parents are named, as well as the correct birthdate and birthdate. A wife is named also.³

Both records were clearly written. How could this be? I went back to the birth record again (also clear), and examined the preceding and following pages to see if there had been a twin, or sibling close in age. No. 

I looked at the 1822 death record again. Maybe he didn’t really die after all, and there was a correction or addendum to the record. No.

I looked for the wife of #2, Jeanne Veronique Neveu, and found her 1831 marriage record to him.⁴ That cracked the case. Turns out it wasn’t the same man. This was Henri Prejean, his cousin. His parents (Noel Jean Prejean & Marie Jaulneau) and birthplace were named. The two fathers were brothers and Henri was born in 1800, also in Bazoche-Gouet.

So what happened? Why was the 1872 death record so incorrect? 

A couple of ideas:

Henri’s parents died when he was young. Possibly he was taken in by his aunt & uncle, Pierre and Marie Louise. If so, he would have been raised with his cousin Jean Henri, who was two years older. Sixty years later, when he dies, his children don’t realize that the people who raised him weren’t his parents, and give incorrect information to the authorities.

Or, Henri deliberately took on the identity of his cousin who died at age 24, in order to get a portion of his aunt and uncle’s inheritance. French inheritance laws are pretty strict. They’re so strict that most people don’t write wills because there is no point. Children inherit equally. You can’t leave something to your favorite nephew whom you raised as a son. If this scenario is correct, quite a few people were likely in on the deception, as there were siblings alive at the time of their parents’ deaths in 1832.