Manila folder labelled 'Malcor Transcripts'

Containers:

Box 3 (MS Acc22.020)

Component identifier:

File 46

Content Summary:

A precious collection of documents relating to Dumont d'Urville, was donated to the French naval archives in January 1884 by Luc Frédéric Antoine Malcor (1827–1917) 'Agent principal de Commissaire de la Marine, Toulon', see his Légion d'Honneur file at the Archives nationales, Paris, LH/1703/50. These documents are preserved in the Service historique de la Défense, Château de Vincennes. Malcor had acquired these documents from a nephew of Captain Louis-Clement Salvy (1783–1863). At the time, Malcor described the elder Salvy as the 'proper nephew of M[ada]me Dumont d'Urville' (See Malcor's 'avertissement' setting out the provenance of the documents in Papiers du Contre-Amiral Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville, Fonds Privés, 7 GG2 carton 1 [previously GG2 30]). In fact, Louis-Clement Salvy was the explorer's stepfather-in-law: the man his wife's divorced mother, Josephine Hélène Las de Guérin (1780–1861), married in Toulon on 24 November 1817. Madame Salvy inherited part of d'Urville's papers on her daughter's death in 1842 and, in turn, her second husband inherited them from her when she died in 1861. His beneficiary would keep them for another two decades before entrusting them to Malcor for donation. The balance of the papers from the Salvy estate, which did not go to the Château de Vincennes (including d'Urville's private journals from the 1830–7), were acquired by the Bibliothèque municipale de Toulon (Ms 65, Ms 131–3). Fortuitously, Malcor, gave transcriptions of several shorter documents (together with some personal observations on d'Urville, his family and his writings), to the naval archives in Vincennes. This was fortuitous, because some of the originals in Toulon disappeared during the Second World War. Edward Duyker photographed Malcor's transcriptions in 2007.

Immediate source of acquisition:

This collection was acquired from Edward Duyker in multiple instalments from 1996 to 2022.

Subjects:

Exploration
History

Access and use