Ferdinand Duviard

Ferdinand Jean Marie Valentin Duviard, (11 June 1889 – 2 February 1965) was a French high school teacher in Cahors, a writer and novelist. He became an Esperantist in 1905, wrote for many publications and was active in Esperanto youth groups. With Charles Pichon (b. 1893) he co-founded Francan Federacion de Junaj Esperantistoj (French Federation of Young Esperantists).

Ferdinand Duviard was born in Fontenay-sous-Bois, Seine-Saint-Denis. His parents were Auguste Emile Duviard (1859–1949) and Valentine Clotilde Fabre (1858–1942), the daughter of novelist Ferdinand Fabre (1827–1898). He learned Esperanto at age 16 in 1905, the year of the first Universal Congress of Esperanto at Boulogne-sur-Mer. Duviard edited the magazine Juneco ("Youth") during 1909 and 1910, and he was a member of Lingva Komitato, the guiding committee for the Esperanto language, until shortly after the end of World War I.

In 1910 he married his first wife, Elisabeth Antoinette Adam (1883–1965), by whom he had two sons, Pierre (1911–2001) and Jacques (1915–2000), and a daughter, Hélène (1912–2008). Ferdinand, Elisabeth and their three children lived until November 1915 on rue Molière in La Roche-sur-Yon, before settling in the Paris region of Coulommiers. The writer Dominique Duviard (1940–1983), was a grandson of Ferdinand Duviard; he contributed a preface to a modern reprint of Ferdinand's book Les Cotillons barrés.

The couple divorced in 1924, and he remarried Anna Marie Marsan (1906–1960) the following year. Duvard's fourth child, François Eugène Duviard-Marsan (1926–2007) was later to become Governor of Rotary International and received a knighthood, the Ordre National du Mérite.

Duviard was a brother-in-law of Carlo Bourlet (1866–1913), who died at age 47, and whose "immense merit" was acknowledged by L. L. Zamenhof, the father of Esperanto. Bourlet's wife, Thérèse Marie Adam (1872–1923), was the sister of Duviard's first wife Elisabeth Antoinette Adam.

...
Wikipedia