Amiraux

Amiraux family page

This was the Huguenot family of two, or perhaps three of Jersey's early silversmiths, one of whom emigrated to Canada.

A c1750 porringer or loving cup by Pierre Amiraux,sold at Christie's in 2006 for £4,560

Record Search

Direct links to lists of baptisms, marriages and burials for the Amiraux family can be found under Family Records opposite. If you want to search for records for a spelling variant of Amiraux, or for any other family name, just click below on the first letter of the
family name you are interested in. This will open a new tab in your browser giving you a list of family names beginning with that letter,
for which there are baptism records in our database of half a million church and public registry records.

You can also select marriages or burials. Select the name you want
and when the list of records is displayed you can easily refine the search, choosing a single parish, given name(s) and/or start and end dates.

The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.

New records

From August 2020 we have started adding records from non-Anglican churches, and this process will continue as more records, held by Jersey Archive, are digitised and indexed. Our database now includes buttons enabling a search within registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These records will automatically appear within the results of any search made from this page.

A--B--C--D--E--F--G--H--I--J--K--L--M--N--O--P--Q--R--S--T--U--V--W--X--Y--Z

If you can help with information about the Amiraux family, please contact editorial@jerripedia.org, using Jerripedia as the subject of your email. We are particularly interested in information which will help create further family trees, family histories and photographs

A blue link anywhere in the text will lead you to another page with more information on this family

Origins of surname

The name is derived from the French amiral, meaning 'admiral'. This originated in the Arabic 'Amir' and could be applied to an army chief, as well as a naval officer

Early records

The name first appeared in Jersey records in the early 1720s, with the baptism of the children of Pierre and Marie Aimee Tifneaux in St Helier. Pierre was a Huguenot refugee and went through the abjuration process in 1719, under the name Pierre de la Galaire. The records show that he came from Saumur.

The situation is very confused, however. A timeline of silversmiths in Jersey shown a Pierre Amiraux in business in 1696, and a second Pierre in 1747. The family tree below shows that there were three Pierres in successive generations. It is suggested that the middle one emigrated with his family to Canada and returned to Jersey, where he died, his son Pierre remaining in Canada where he married and raised a family. There are also at least two generations in which a son Pierre died in infancy and was followed later by another son given the same name.

Online trees are no help. Those at Ancestry are mainly copied from each other and get very confused with the profusion of Pierres.

The first Pierre Amiraux appears to have arrived in the island from Saumur after the revocation of the Edit of Nantes in 1685. Either he, or his son, or both, worked as a silversmith at 1 Queen Street, St Helier. The son Pierre was a lieutenant in the East Regiment of the Royal Jersey Militia, the owner of a privateer, the Revenge, and a town surveyor. In addition to all these activities he was a founder member of the Jersey Chamber of Commerce, the first chamber in the English speaking world.

Pierre Amiraux also played a significant part in the Battle of Jersey in 1781. Having been arrested by a French officer and bound to Captain Charleton, he was forced to lead his captors to the residence of the Governor, Moses Corbet, to accept the surrender.

Other researchers suggest that this Pierre was in Canada from 1772 to 1804, having travelled there after the birth of his son Pierre in 1772. However, Jersey records show clearly that this son Pierre was followed by three further children, Matthieu, Marguerite and a second Pierre, all born in Jersey, which suggests that any emigration did not happen until after 1781, and perhaps it was only the last-born Pierre who crossed the Atlantic.

There are other possible explanations for this confusion. One is that there are baptism records missing, the other is that two children of the middle Pierre by his second wife Jeanne Canivet were named Pierre, and that both survived, one living in Jersey and the other emigrating to Canada. We have to admit that we have yet to unravel all these complications to our total satisfaction.

Variants

• Amiraux

Family records

Family trees

• Descendants of Pierre Amiraux

Church records

Tips for using these links

• Amiraux baptisms in Jersey
• Amiraux marriages in Jersey (groom)
• Amiraux marriages in Jersey (bride)
• Amiraux burials in Jersey

• Amiraux burial records 1820-1978

Family businesses

As did many other individuals, Matthew Amiraux and William Le Breton described themselves as 'Jersey Bank', which did not exist, to issue their own banknotes in 1815. If they had 1,747 £1 notes in circulation, that would have brought in about £87,000 at today's values

Tips

The church record links above will open in a new tab in your browser and generate the most up-to-date list of each set of records from our database. These lists replace earlier Family page baptism lists, which were not regularly updated. They have the added advantage that they produce a chronological listing for the family name in all parishes, so you do not have to search through A-Z indexes, parish by parish.

We have included some important spelling variants on some family pages, but it may be worth searching for records for a different spelling variant. Think of searching for variants with or without a prefix, such as Le or De. To search for further variants, or for any other family name, just click on the appropriate link below for the first letter of the family name, and a new tab will open, giving you the option to choose baptism, marriage or burial records. You will then see a list of available names for that type of record and you can select any name from that list. That will display all records of the chosen type for that family name, and you can narrow the search by adding a given name, selecting a parish or setting start and end dates in the form you will see above. You can also change the family name, or search for a partial name if you are not certain of the spelling

The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.

New records

Since August 2020 we have added several thousand new records from the registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These will appear in date order within a general search of the records and are also individually searchable within the database search form