Esdras CORNUT 
(ID #I10804)
(male)
- TITLES/'DIT' NAMES/OCCUPATIONS: minister
- BIRTH: bef 1600
- DEATH: ABT 1658, Nyon?
Father: Pierre CORNUT (dates unknown)
Mother: Claudine _____ (dates unknown)
Family 1
:
Jeanne PARIS (d. bef 1632)
- +Jeanne Esther CORNUT (bp. 12 NOV 1620)
- Nicolas CORNUT (bp. 8 JAN 1622)
- Pierre Antoine CORNUT (bp. 15 OCT 1623)
Family 2
:
Susanne BONARD (dates unknown)
Movements need to be traced in order to locate possible marriage records. Dictionnaire Historique (Mottaz 1914) has him as Deacon at Aubonne 1618, Burtigny 1618-1620, St. Livres 1620-1625, Bursins 1625, Etoy 1625-1628, Nyon 1628-1658. The registers at Nyon give his tenure as 26 oct 1628 to September, 1658, very likely the date of his death. The next minister at Nyon was installed 16 sep 1658.
A notation in the registers at Nyon seems to say that he was from the parish of Lutry or Savigny, and Cornut is indeed a surname frequently encountered in records from Lutry. In fact, there was a Pierre Cornut who was pastor at Savigny 1627-1644, evidently the father of Esdras. Pierre, said to have been the minister at Messery-pr�s-Thonon (Haute-Savoie) for eight years, is known to have had a son Antoine Cornut who remained in Savigny (notary there) and who in turn had a son Esdras. Pierre also had a son Abraham baptised at La Rossini�re 04 dec 1608 who was deacon and then second minister at Morges 1637-1638. Pierre is believed to have had four sons, and at least one genealogy is believed to be in private hands.
The handwriting of Esdras Cornut in the registers of St. Livres and Nyon is highly stylized and, at times, extremely difficult to read. Oddly, a few entries in a very similar hand were noticed in the registers of the Eglise R�form�e of Ste.Marie-aux-Mines, Haut-Rhin, France, in the years 1616-1617. Could our Esdras have been a deacon there before taking his position at Aubonne in 1618?
Esdras is almost certainly the son of the minister Pierre Cornut. The baptisms of some of Pierre's children have been found, but not that of Esdras. Another uncertainty is exactly when Pierre left his post at Messery, of which, apparently, no trace remains in the records of that area. It is possible that Esdras was born there. During that period, the most likely explanation for the name Esdras (Greek and then French equivalent of the Hebrew name that has come into English as Ezra) is that he was named after someone who served as his parrain at his baptism. It is very possible that our Esdras was born in the parish of Messery.
Equally uncertain is where he met his wives. Neither marriage has been found, nor have any testaments or other documents that tell us anything about his two marriages or his family. The first marriage might have taken place during his tenure at Burtigny 1618-1620, but the registers of that parish prior to 1676 have been lost. (Note the existence of a series of terriers and other registers containing reconnaissances at Burtigny and surrounding areas in the collection ACV P de Mestral I, which should be all be examined.)
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_Pierre CORNUT ______|
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|--Esdras CORNUT
| (1600 - 1658)
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|_Claudine _____ _____|
m 1600 |
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Pierre CORNUT (ID #I21275)
(male)
- TITLES/'DIT' NAMES/OCCUPATIONS: minister
Family 1
:
Claudine _____ (dates unknown)
- +Esdras CORNUT (b. bef 1600, d. ABT 1658)
- Marie CORNUT (bp. 13 JUN 1602)
- Jean Pierre CORNUT (bp. 6 MAY 1604)
- Antoine CORNUT (bp. 3 DEC 1606)
- Abraham CORNUT (bp. 4 DEC 1608)
Originally (?) from Messery, Haute-Savoie, he was deacon at Aigle in 1599. He was pastor at Rossini�res in 1600, where he and his wife Claudine baptised several children. He was still at Rossini�res as late as 1610. He was at Dommartin 1611-1627, during which time his daughter Marie and his son Jean Pierre were noted at least once as sponsors at baptisms. Next, he was pastor at Savigny 1627-1644, where he is believed to have died, and where at least some of his children became established.
A descendant using the spelling of Cornu prepared a genealogy in the early 20th Century, apparently still in private hands.
One internet source gives his wife as Claudine Viret, and places him at Messery-pr�s-Thonon (as pasteur) until 1599, leaving that area as a result of persecution of the Eglise R�form�e, then as deacon (or suffragant?) at Aigle. It is perhaps not coincidental that he went to Aigle, as a Cornut family has been known there since at least 1530 (Johannes, a notary, from Samo�ns, commissaire for several terriers in the region around Aigle). This information may have come from a professor Benjamin Cornuz of Savigny.
However, it seems more likely that our Pierre Cornut was not in fact a pasteur at Messery, and certainly not officially, in 1599, because the area around Thonon had been reclaimed from Leurs Excellences de Berne by the house of Savoie a few years earlier, and mass abjurations (any holdouts presumably fleeing to Geneva or across the lake to Nyon) had been held in 1598. Among those who abjured, from the village of Nernier, an annex of the protestant parish of Messery, was Claudine, wife of Bernard Cornu, proof that a Cornu family was in the area. Apart from that, the historians tell us that only three protestant ministers are known to have served at Messery before the abjurations: Claude Duret, in 1579; Spectable J�rome Dubois, pasteur of Messery and Nernier, in 1588; and Jean Michaud, in 1589. In that year, Jean Michaud was the only protestant minister in the entire bailliage de Thonon who was allowed to hold services. (Emile Vuarnet, 1898, Messery-Nernier et leurs environs, M�moires et documents de l'Acad�mie chablaisienne, 12:1-204)
A document at the ACV from the collection of the Association du Vieux-Lausanne (PP 92/498, a single large sheet of paper) bears on one side a very detailed report on the Cornut family, and on the other side, information about the family Chappuis alias Combaz or Delacombaz, suggesting that it might have been part of the collection of documents donated to the Association by the latter family in 1904, or else, as suggested by the inventory of the ACV, possibly an isolated leaf from the Dumur collection of genealogies (ACV P Dumur). The side bearing the Cornut genealogy indicates the information was compiled in 1883, and the script appears consistent with that date. The source was a "cahier manuscrit" in which Antoine Cornut, son of the present Pierre Cornut, had recorded the history of his family and various events of the period, until his death in 1676, with later entries by his descendants. As of 1883, this manuscript was in the hands of "Mr. Daniel Cornuz, fils de Louis et ancien r�gent � Villars-Bramard". The manuscript itself seems to have disappeared from view. The information presented in PP 92/498 gives brief citations or quotations from other sources as well, possibly detailed enough that we might be able to locate some of them. The family is shown to originate from a certain Wllyamoz Cornut of Samo�ns in Faucigny (now in the D�partement du Haute-Savoie, France), and there are a number of additional citations in the inventory of the ACV for various other Cornut who came from Samo�ns in the 16th Century.
Some references for the Classe de Thonon and the history of the reforms in Chablais:
Herminjard, Correspondance des reformateurs.
Hubert Wyrill, R�forme et contre-r�forme en Savoie 1536-1679, de Guillaume Farel � Fran�ois de Sales, R�veil Publications (Lyon, 2001).
Th�odore Clapar�de, Histoire de la r�formation en Savoie, 1893.
1880, tome 2 of M�moires de l'Acad�mie sal�sienne has lists from the Vatican archives of abjurations compiled by Fran�ois de Sales in 1598, containing the names of 2300 heads of family in the area around Thonon, pp. 246 ff.
About Louis Viret, minister at Thonon, he was expelled in 1598 and found employment almost immediately as deacon at Payerne, and then 1601 as pasteur at Dompierre, until his death ? in 1614. Several of his son also followed his calling in the Classe de Payerne.
Another family, bourgeois de Nyon, that came from Messery ("Essert-Messery"), is Quiblier, granted bourgeois status in 1605. Franz-Raoul Campiche prepared a "Livre des habitants et bourgeois de Nyon", mentioned in 1946 as a manuscript of 390 folios still in his possession — does it still exist? The best fit seems to be his work catalogued as ACNyon Orange A-02, registre des bourgeois et habitants de Nyon, 1522-1931. Note also Orange C-11.04, Reverdil dossier, actes priv�s, 1490-1760.
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