Bauche1909–2009
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The Family Home at Lesse Redu

The place where all seven Bauche children were born, and the house the family calls its ancestral home.

The place

The family sources give the birthplace of Emile Joseph, Marie Felicie and all seven of their children as “Lesse Redu, Province de Luxembourg, Belgium”. [S2][S3]

Redu is a village of the municipality of Libin, in the Province of Luxembourg in Wallonia. Before the 1977 merger Redu was a commune of its own that included the hamlet of Lesse, and the river La Lesse runs nearby; one album photograph of the river is captioned “one mile downstream from the village of Lesse”. [S7][S34][S4]

Background, not a family source. Redu’s location is taken from Wikipedia; the pairing “Lesse Redu” is the family’s own wording.

The house

The photograph on the original bauche.ca site shows a long, two-storey house of local stone under a steep roof, with two visible chimneys and wooden doors. It is captioned simply “The Bauche Ancestral Home in Lesse Redu, Belgium.” [S1]

Long two-storey stone house with a steep dark roof, chimneys and wooden doors, seen from a grassy slope.
The Bauche Ancestral Home in Lesse Redu, Belgium.

The river and the village

a family member’s photographs of La Lesse show the river that gives the hamlet its name. In Redu itself, a war monument carries an inscription that includes the name BAUCHE Alphonse, Gendarme, 15-2-1918. [S4]

lead, not proof Online family trees (not documents) describe an Alphonse Joseph Bauche, born at Redu on 12 February 1873, a gendarme who died in the Netherlands in February 1918, and make him a first cousin of Emile Joseph. The dates differ slightly from the monument, and no record has been seen. [S21]

A clear, fast-flowing river between wooded banks.
The river La Lesse, one mile downstream from the village of Lesse.
Stone statue of a soldier on a monument in front of a stone wall.
Statue in Redu, Belgium.
Close-up of a plaque with names, ranks and dates, flanked by Belgian flags, under the words “À ses glorieux enfants”.
Inscription on the monument. The names include “BAUCHE Alphonse, Gendarme, 15-2-1918”.

What we do not know yet open questions

  • Whether the hamlet named “Bauche”, on the river Bocq in the municipality of Yvoir (Province of Namur), has anything to do with the family. It is in another province and valley, roughly 40 km north-west of Redu, and we have found nothing that links the two. [S23]
  • Who built the house, when, how long the Bauche family lived in it, and whether it is the house in which the children were born.
  • Its address or land-registry (cadastre) reference.
  • Whether the “Alphonse Bauche” named on the Redu monument belongs to this family. The inscription gives a rank and the date 15-2-1918 but no parents or birthplace; this is a research lead, not a conclusion.
  • Where to look: parish and civil registers for Redu/Libin at the State Archives in Arlon (the Redu civil acts can also be read free on FamilySearch), the Belgian land registry, and the Libin municipal records. [S24]