Few things were held in higher esteem within the Family Project than our ancestry.
Dad was proudly French, with German on his mother’s side. Mom was Irish, her father’s family making up the English half.
But Mom happily became an honorary Francophile after we’d moved to Maryland in the mid-1960s. We learned that Dad’s ancestor, Gabriel Maupin, “was born in Navarre, France, around 1651, so the traditions of the family say.” After the Huguenot persecutions of the late 17th century, Gabriel and his young family emigrated to America around 1700.
Spending vacations touring the Eastern seaboard, we visited the original Williamsburg, Va., family home (photo above from the late 1960s, me at right), formerly known as the Custis–Maupin House, situated on the south side of Duke of Gloucester Street, across from the Bruton Parish Church.
“Yay!” we nearly shouted in unison. “We’re from France! Probably royal lineage of the Kingdom of Navarre!”
—Or, so the traditions of the family said.*
During the winter of 1970–71, when we packed up and headed to Minnesota, Dad took that particular tradition and ran with it. Our move, he boasted, was “written in the stars” because—wonder of wonders!—we would be living west of Minneapolis, on Lake Minnetonka—in Navarre, Minnesota.
The Family Project was finally “going home,” in a sense.
Well … not so fast, homie.
***
Navarre, Minn., lies at the intersection of County Road 15 (aka Shoreline Drive) and Shadywood Road. It’s now a couple of gas stations, a Culver’s, one bank, a bar, a grocery store, with County 15 all sided by strip malls.
The Navarre we drove through that winter’s day in 1971 included a butcher shop (Axel & Bob’s), a bar named Jimmie’s Lounge, a dry cleaners (owned by high school classmate Mark McCurdy’s family), a bowling alley (The Navarre Lanes), and a tiny, family-run pharmacy called Keaveny Drugs. As you proceeded west on 15 toward Casco Point Road (the location of our new home), you passed a Dairy Queen, a record and head shop called Third Stone from the Sun (or, as we knew it, “Third Stone”), A-1 Rental (its longtime “This Idiot” sign pictured below) and, hard to your right, the old Navarre Drive-In Theater. Before you knew it, you’d whizzed through Navarre and were suddenly in Spring Park, enjoying breathtaking views of Lake Minnetonka.
Hardly “the Kingdom of Navarre,” but hey, a name’s a name. The coincidence was odd.
As kids, we rummaged through Navarre entirely on bicycle. With wide tires, high-rider handlebars and banana-shaped seats, we scooped up all our pocket change and biked to the D.Q. for Mr. Misty slushes or Peanut Buster® Parfaits. We bowled a couple lanes on Saturdays, then on Sundays were dragged to the evangelical church by a freshly devout Family Project. Still, the profane had its chance. One summer Dave Rogers and I stole cigarettes from Keaveny Drugs, furtively smoking them later down by the lake.
Keaveny Drugs was like the Olney drug store in Maryland: narrow aisles, floor-to-ceiling shelving and end-caps packed with gum, candy, postcards, greeting cards, gag gifts and novelties, and (you needed a bulldozer to push me away) racks of the latest comic books. I was in heaven.
We took in summer movies at the drive-in, bought T-bone steaks at Axel & Bob’s, and Dad’s office duds always returned crisply from the dry cleaners. Our official mailing address was Wayzata, we attended grade school in Mound, but we lived in Navarre.
So, it was some years later (Nov. 2001, to be exact) that I learned from an updated family history that we did not originate from the Kingdom of Navarre.**
We did not have royal blood running through our veins.
And no, ancestor Gabriel did not marry an English daughter of the Earl of Spencer which—Gosh, golly, imagine that!—would’ve given us a direct bloodline to the late Princess Diana.
According to Dorothy Maupin Shaffert, the book’s editor, Gabriel Maupin hailed from the Loire Valley, near Orléans, in the river town of Jargeau.
It’s likely Maupins live there to this day.
The same cannot be said, however, of Navarre, Minnesota.
*From the 1969 self-published History of the Maupin Family by Ruby G. Heard Maupin.
** The Story of Gabriel and Marie Maupin: Huguenot Refugees to Virginia in 1700, published by Gateway Press, Baltimore, Md. (2000)
