Keywords: Ancien Régime, Louis XV Period, Property Deed, Legal Ephemera, Notarial Instrument, Seigneurial Estate, Land Conveyance, Paleography, Genealogy, Lille Region, Eighteenth Century, Handwritten Document, Iron Gall Ink, Laid Paper, Archival Manuscript

Summary:
An extensive French manuscript legal instrument dated 1743, recording the acquisition and formal confirmation of landed property for Dame Marie Marguerite Potteau, identified in the document as the wife of Messire Robert François de Surmont, chevalier and seigneur de Fontaine.

The opening employs the traditional legal formula, ‘À tous ceux qui ces présentes lettres verront…’—‘To all those who shall see these present letters’—and records the appearance of the parties and their representatives before a royal tabellionary or seigneurial authority. It refers to an earlier contract of sale, the presentation of that contract to the royal tabellion, and the subsequent registration, confirmation, and preservation of the purchaser’s rights.

The text describes a substantial rural property holding consisting of a dwelling house or principal residence, barn, gates, stables, associated buildings, gardens planted with fruit trees, standing timber, meadowland, and cultivated or arable acreage. The extent of the land is expressed through historic regional measurements including bonniers, cents, and verges, systems formerly used in northern France and the adjoining Low Countries. References within the manuscript appear to concern several neighboring seigneurial jurisdictions, including lands identified with the Grand Bar and Petit Bar estates. Does this represent a piece of a larger historical context.

In antique condition consistent with a manuscript approaching three centuries of age.

Measurement: 10 x 7 in. (25.4 x 17.8 cm.) approx

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