Certain of a face, searching for a life - Charles Obzée Duchemin, photograph by Jacques-Philippe Potteau,1862

 

Charles Obzée (actually Elizée?) Duchemin, Tambour-major des Zouaves de la Garde Impériale (Tambour Major of the Imperial Guard Zouaves.) Said to have been born in Sainte-Rose, Guadeloupe - a different record states Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti - there is extremely little information available about his life online, and almost all of it wrong. He has been identified as of paternal French (Burgundian) and maternal Kalinago/Carib heritage. A frequently shared online source states that he was born in 1817, but that he was twenty-seven when the portraits were taken in 1862. So he would either be forty-five in that year, or would have to have been born in 1835 to have been that age. In the same year he sat for the photographer, he was said to have been "promoted to brigadier general, formally becoming the first Black general in the French Army." This last is a complete fabrication, seemingly an attempt to make him more "interesting," his life more dramatic. But then it appears that the internet has even gotten his name wrong.

He was indeed born in Sainte-Rose, Guadeloupe, on 25 May 1833. (Which would have made him twenty-nine in 1862, rather than twenty-seven.) His father is believed to have been Norman rather than Burgundian, and the Caribbean origins of his mother are in question. While it is unknown why and when he left Guadeloupe for France, he enlisted in the 7th Artillery Regiment in 1853 at the age of twenty. After several promotions and transfers to other regiments, he joined the Zouaves of the Garde Impériale on 1 January 1862 - the year of these portraits - where he remained for only five years, before being discharged in April 1867. But only three months later, he re-enlisted and rose rapidly in the ranks, eventually reaching the rank of captain, before his retirement in 1885; among other awards, he had been made a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1881. He died on 11 July 1908 in Angers.

For more detailed information on his life and career, as well as a genealogy, please read this PDF (in French).