Françoise MOURILYAN (née MULLER) (1845-?)

Françoise Mourilyan (née Muller), was the wife of Augustus Giraud Mourilyan who was the brother of Eugénie Sladden (née Mourilyan).

Little is known about Françoise Mourilyan.  In fact her name is never mentioned in the letters; she is simply referred to as “Gus’ wife”.  It seems that they married in 1879 in Paris.  Marriage banns on Ancestry reveal that someone with the surname Mourilyan (no forename given), whose parents were John and Mary Anna (née Wood), was to be joined in matrimony with Françoise Muller.

Gus’ job took him to America, Egypt, Algeria, Egypt and France.  A Mrs Mourilyan, born about 1845, features in some shipping records; it is likely that this was Gus’ wife going out to join him.  Ancestry also reveals that someone by the name of Françoise Muller, born at Ottrot in 1845, signed a French Citizenship declaration Alsace-Lorraine in August 1872.  Alsace-Lorraine was a territory ceded by France to Germany in the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 1871), as a consequence of the Franco-Prussian War. It included most of the region of Alsace and about a quarter of the region of Lorraine. In 1872, those who elected to retain their French citizenship rather than become German, submitted statements in the town hall and published the fact in the weekly "Bulletins des lois de la République française".  It is possible that this was the person who married Gus.

There were frequent complaints from his siblings about Gus not keeping in touch.  By 1914 it seems that Françoise and Gus were back in France but not in good health.

It is not known when either Françoise or Gus died but it was after March 1916.