User:Historio19/Changuion

Changuion is a Dutch, French and South African family of which a member was ennobled in the Netherlands in 1815.

History
Die surname "Changuion" (pronunciation: ​[ ʃɑ̃ɡɥijɔ̃]) may originally have been Champguyon and may have been derived from the eponymous commune of Champguyon in Marne, France. One of the first historical mentions of the surname appeared in 1562 as a result of the massacre of Wassy, a town in the old French province of Champagne. An ancestor, Pierre Changuion, was namely mentioned as being one of the Protestant churchgoers who were attacked by Roman Catholics. After this event, some of Pierre's family moved to Vitry. The majority of the Changuions decided to leave France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 due to the resulting religious persecutions. They then settled in neighbouring Protestant countries. Today there are still some Changuions living in the region of France where the family originally came from.

The Dutch and South African branches of the family started with Jean Changuion, who was born in Vitry in 1660 and buried in Halle (Saale) in Germany in 1700. His son François (1694-1777) moved to Amsterdam in about 1717 where he was burgher and bookdealer. In 1724 Francois established a printing house, which would become very successful. His grandson François Daniël (1766-1850) was elevated to the Dutch nobility on 16 September 1815 due to his role as secretary of the provisional government of the Netherlands (the Triumvirate under Van Hogendorp) in 1813. Through his elevation to the nobility, he and his descendants were allowed to use the predicate jonkheer and jonkvrouw. In 1823, F.D. Changuion was in absentia found guilty of fraud by a court. Two years later, in 1825, a list of the persons belonging to the nobility was compiled for the first time in the Netherlands. Only F.D. Changuion's children born before 27 February 1823 (the date of his sentencing), and not he, were named on this list. These children remained part of the nobility, and could therefore pass their nobility down to their descendants. This is also the current point of view of the High Council of Nobility of the Netherlands.

Briët argued in 2019 that a decision that implied that F.D. Changuion was stripped of his noble status, was never taken. Moreover disbarment from the nobility is not based on any statutory regulation or other legal grounds, according to Briët. This opinion of Briët is not shared by everyone. F.D. Changuion was generally considered to no longer belong to the Dutch nobility after 1825.

One of François Daniël's sons, Antoine Changuion (1803-1881) moved to South Africa in 1831 to take up a professorship at the South African Athenaeum (founded in 1829, later known as the South African College and currently as the University of Cape Town).

Some descendants

 * François Changuion (1694-1777), burgher, bookdealer en publisher in Amsterdam
 * François Changuion (1727-after 1776), council in the court of police and justice in Essequebo (then part of a Dutch colony and now the Cooperative Republic of Guyana) and president of the orphanage, petty bourgeoisie of Deventer.
 * Jonkheer Dr. François Daniël Changuion (1766-1850), member of the city council and aldermen of Leiden, secretary of the provisional government (the Triumvirate under Van Hogendorp) in 1813, commissioner-general with the British troops, the first ambassador of the Netherlands to the United States of America, elevated to the Dutch nobility in 1815, not mentioned on the nobility list from 1825.
 * Prof. Jonkheer Dr. Antoine Nicolas Ernest Changuion (1803-1881), professor in Cape Town, prodigious writer in theological and literary fields; he had nine children and from these sprang an extensive progeny belonging to the Dutch nobility. All the Changuions who come from South Africa today are descended from his son Louis Annes Changuion (1840-1910). A branch of A.N.E. Changuion's descendants, namely the descendants of his son Abraham Arnoldus Faure Changuion (1835-1877), changed their surname to Chanquin.