Keywords: legal archive, estate inventory, property transfer, fiscal stamps, laid paper, manuscript folio, genealogical record, 18th century France, land holdings

Summary:
An extensive original French notarial manuscript recording a formal lifetime gift, or donation entre vifs, made by Demoiselle Marie Jeanne Philiberte Richer in favor of Maître Étienne Hay, dated April 6, 1775. Written entirely by hand in brown-black ink on laid paper, the document survives as a substantial stitched folio with an inscribed period paper wrapper.

This looks like it is certainly a part of a larger drama of some type. A donation entre vifs (a gift between living persons) made in Ancien Régime France (1775) was a highly strategic legal instrument. It was not a casual present. Under French customary law, an irrevocable, notarized transfer of property during the donor's lifetime was usually executed for specific socioeconomic, familial, or legal protections or to avoid the heavy royal feudal estate taxes levied upon transfers upon death

The front cover is titled:

“Donation faite par Demlle Marie Jeanne Philiberte Richer à Mtre Étienne Hay, 6 Avril 1775.”

The opening instrument is dated at Auxerre and introduces the act before the appropriate royal and local authority. Richer is described as an adult unmarried woman residing in Auxerre, apparently in the parish of Saint-Eusèbe. The beneficiary, Étienne Hay, is identified as an avocat en Parlement, or attorney admitted before the Parlement, also residing in Auxerre. The document characterizes the transfer as a gift made entre vifs, “pure, simple et irrévocable,” indicating an immediate and legally binding donation between living persons rather than a testamentary bequest.

A substantial documentary object relating to property ownership, women’s legal and financial agency, inheritance practices, rural landholding, hereditary rents and notarial administration in Burgundy during the reign of Louis XVI.

In antique condition consistent with approximately 250 years of age.

Measurement: 10 x 7 1/2 in. (25.4 x 19.1 cm.) approx

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