This gentleman is really famous, unfortunately not quite an ancestor but yes, connected by marriage. He was born in Saint Malo, France
on 11th February 1699 and at the tender age of 10 went aboard ship and began an illustrious career as a seafarer. He served in the French East IndiaCompany and in 1724, promoted to Captain, he showed such bravery in the conquest of strategic ports that one, on the Malabar Coast, was named after him (the town of Mahé).
Some sources have it that he was granted the name Mahé as a reward
but since the genealogical tree on the website of the Amis de Mahé de
la Bourdonnais shows that his ancestors already had the surname Mahé, this seems to be inaccurate.
He retired from the sea and became a diplomat, serving the Portuguese for a couple of years and then as Governor of the Île de France (Mauritius). Later he went back to sea and took the Seychelles Islands for France, naming the principal island Mahé.
Due to a bitter personal dispute with another important official called Joseph Dupleix, which came to
a head after the battle of Madras in 1746, our man was sent to the Bastille for two years accused of bad administration and corruption but was eventually released as innocent. The imprisonment affected his health and he died shortly after his release.
Genealogy
Grandfather - Bertrand Mahé, sieur de la Bigotière (1630-1715)
Father - Jacques Mahé, sieur de la Bourdonnais (1674-1705)
Mother - Servanne Ludivine Tranchant de Prèbois (1671-1741)
First wife was Marie-Anne LeBrun de la Franquerie (1712-1738) with whom he had two children, who both died in infancy.
Second wife was Charlotte Elisabeth de Combault d'Auteuil. They had two daughters and a son, Louis François Mahé de la Bourdonnais, who in turn had four sons. The oldest later edited and published the memoirs of his famous grandfather. the youngest, Louis Charles Mahé de la Bourdonnais (1780-1841) wa in turn a famous character, being a champion chess player whose matches can even today be studied move by move on the internet. Louis married an Englishwoman, moved to London, lost all his money and is buried in Kensal Green. They seem to have had one son who died young.
So this is all very interesting but where is the connection?
Moving forward 100 years or so, Florence Mabel Patterson née Elmer, my g-grandmother, had gone to India in search of fortune, a new husband or both. She married Emile Gaston Burridge Chinal in Agra, India, on 14th January 1920.
Emile's father's name was - wait for it - Eugene Adolph Mahé Chinal. And Eugene's mother was Michon Marie Delphine Mahé de la Bourdonnais (1816-1847).
There is the connection.
What is not clear is who is Michon Marie´s father. One family tree states that her father was born in 1746 but this seems a bit off for a child born in 1816. Nevertheless, the connection is there.
Moving forward again, Eugene Mahé Chinal and his wife Catherine Burridge had seven children apart from Emile. All are accounted for except for him. Two stayed in India, two moved to America, one to New Zealand and two to England. Emile disappeared without trace. Things obviously didn't work out between him and Florence because she returned to the UK, Scotland precisely, and in the most part went back to calling herself Patterson. Emile is last heard of in 1932. A publishing company in Bombay wrote to Florence in reply to her letter (sadly not surviving) stating that Mr. Chinal was in a town called Bannu on what would now be the Pakistan/India border (Khyber Pass). What he was doing there, and what became of him, we will probably never know.
