from 1308: France/Guernsey/Leith/Glasgow/London
Mentioned in the Duc d’Anjou’s battle dispatches in 1368 – 60 years after Richard Ossane (now Ozanne) featured in litigation in Guernsey’s Catel parish – militarist Gerault de la Condamine was successful in conflict in Rocamadour, Quercy.
The electoral ward known in the 21st century as La Condamine forms the frontage of Monaco harbour – largely a fairground/swimming pool now, through which F1’s grand-prix take place: at its north, La Condamine accommodates the church celebrating Ste Devote.
Andre de la Condamine was born in 1560, in Sevres, he commanded loyalist troops in 1621 in Nimes. Andre’s son Jean de la Condamine was born in 1582; his grandson **Gabriel was born in 1606. Gabriel’s brother Antoine had a great-grandson, Charles Marie de la Condamine (d 1774), a mathematician and physician who travelled to England/London and who, despite near-calamitous setbacks, managed – almost single-handedly – to ‘measure the Earth’ by triangulation, in Ecuador.
Guernsey-born de la Condamines were descended from **Gabriel de la Condamine, via Georges and his elder son, “Guernsey” Andre (b 1665). [The family can now only be found in France.]
Andre became a Huguenot and turned his back on affluence: he fled with his fervently Huguenot wife Jeanne (b 1668), reaching Guernsey, penniless, in 1714.
“Guernsey” Andre and Jeanne had 7 children: of these, 3 of them made their way to London.
“Guernsey” Jean-Jacques de la Condamine (1711-1764): in 1760, “Guernsey” Andre’s son Jean-Jacques de la Condamine married Jersey-born Marie Neel. They had 2 children in Guernsey: Mary (b 1761, who married Guernseyman George Bell) and Jean “John” (b 1763); the latter became Guernsey Militia’s Colonel and King Comptroller.
In 1788 Jean “John” married Guernsey-born Elisabeth (nee de Coutart); they had 9 children. In 1790 “John” owned a business, Condamine & Co; but his tobacco and wine warehouse in St Peter Port’s Smith Street – where a tobacconist’s shop was in situ in the early 1990s – was destroyed by fire.
Their son Robert Coutart de la Condamine was born in 1800 (d1870). He left Guernsey for Leith/Edinburgh, where he met and married Bethia McFarquhar, b1810. They had 7 children (including a son ***Robert) and lived at 39 Drummond Place.
They owned or leased wine and tobacco warehouse(s) in Duke Street, Leith – and, possibly, in Shore Place.
These buildings are within 1 mile of where, in 2020, London-born Lucy de la Condamine Ozanne and her Glaswegian husband David Bell live, with their Edinburgh-born son: Freddie Stuart Ozanne Bell.
***Robert and Alice de la Condamine’s 4 Bedford/London-born children were a) Gertrude; b) Stella (paternal grandmother to 2 Londoners: James “Jack” de la Condamine Ozanne, b1951, and his sister Mary); Stella was born in London also, in 1871; she married Guernseyman Robert Ozanne: see photo of her, with violin); c) Katherine; d) Robert “Robin” de la Condamine, b 1877, a Wildean actor who adopted the stage-name Farquharson; his central London career was celebrated in autobiographies by Gielgud and Acton.
“Robin’s” nephew was Guernseyman/Londoner John Gabriel Ozanne, d1993: see Bletchley Park Trust’s 1941/2 photo. JGO married Londoner Sheila (nee Easson, a Glaswegian family). Their 2 children were: former Spitalfields freelance and part-time City worker James “Jack” Ozanne (born in London N8) and Mary, 1957-2016.
