Stave splitters from generation to generation

Specialized in the stave split for two centuries, Charlois family has since been constantly promoting the french oaks, including oaks from Bertranges forest, and their priceless forest heritage.

Specialized in the stave split for two centuries, Charlois family has since been constantly promoting the french oaks, including oaks from Bertranges forest, and their priceless forest heritage. La Nièvre civil registry archives can indeed attest that Jean Charlois, born in Chaulgnes in 1807, is the first splitter of the Charlois line.

Jean Charlois is, on his father’s side, son and grandson of roofer, while the birth certificate of his mother, Jeanne Lithier, born in 1781 in Saint-Aubin-les-Forges, specifies that his father, François Lithier, is a woodcutter. The certificate also indicates that Jeanne Lithier’ godfather is « pierre merlin Woodcutter », parent of her mother, Claudine Merlin. This family presumably owes its surname to its woodcutter activity because merlin is a tool used to split the wood. The reunification of Charlois families, roofers and Lithier, woodcutters, could thus appear as a marriage of convenience in order to associate a tool, the oak shingle, and a use, buildings roofing.

At the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century, the roofer profession in a « woody country » like the Bertranges region, was directly linked to the forest since the roofing of buildings was then mainly made of thatch or oak shingles. The use of tile or slate only appears in the Nièvre region in the 19th century. In his book devoted to the Bourbonnais and Nivernais rural architecture, Jean Guibal states that « several authors have noted in the past the presence of shingles in the Morvan, around Château-Chinon, and apparently in the north Nivernais until Puisaye. These shingles, made of oak, might be used in sufficient quantities to have made the profession of shingle crackers existed so long. » The practice of oak shingle roofing is confirmed by Vauban, native from the Morvan, in his Oisivetés ; « When it is well nailed and made of good wood, it can last 25 years ; and then, turning it over, it lasts 10 or 12 years longer. Only the half-well-off people use it, because it is cheap in countries where there is a lot of wood ; so we do not see much more than there. »

The population census of Chaulgnes’municipality in 1820 counts 1,220 individuals whos  57 carry the Charlois surname, divided into 10 families whose heads of families exercise the professions of roofer (4), winegrower (4) and innkeeper (2). Unlike his ancestors, Jean Charlois turned to the trade of splitter as indicated by his death certificate (July 16, 1879) : « Jean Charlois, thirty-eight years old, splitter, […] son of the deceased, and Claude Pacault, […], neighbor, […] state that Jean Charlois, seventy-three years old, born in this commune, splitter, […] died in his home. » Jean Charlois’four sons (the eldest, Pierre, having died in 1845 at the age of 8), also practice the profession of splitter. The 1901 census specifies, for instance, that Jean Charlois’s third son, Antoine, assisted by his two eldest sons, Jean-Etienne and Léonard, are splitting for the Nourry family, forest loggers in Poiseux. Five years later, in 1906, the Charlois establish their own business : Jean-Etienne as a lumber, while Léonard and Henri split wood for their father, Antoine. Antoine and Marie Charlois’youngest son, Eugène, born in 1900 is too young to work. He began as a splitter at the age of fourteen before setting up his own business in 1928 in Murlin village.

Picture caption : @Raoul Saulnier d’Anchald photograph [ca. 1903]. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the stave split activity is not sedentary yet. Splitters work directly on the cutting areas and often live in the forest, in conical lodges covered with wood chips.