Maison Deman

Family portrait · Labart–Wauthy branch

Lydie Labart

A short life, an enduring memory — from Saint-Amand to the Wauthy family, the fragile story of a young mother whose face has returned to us.

24 November 1892 · Saint-Amandabout 1930 · place still unknownJohnny Deman’s Sosa ancestor 15
ACivil records still to be retrieved BPrivate family medical letter from 1994 CGeneanet trees to be checked against records TMemory handed down by the family

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Lydie Labart, a short life, an enduring memory.

For a long time, the name Lydie Marie Joseph Labart fitted into a few lines: a birth in Saint-Amand, a life shared with Amand Joseph Wauthy, three known children and a death that came far too soon. The family kept one simple and terrible sentence: after losing a child, Lydie was said to have died “of grief”.

Yet something essential was missing: her face. The portrait attached to her Geneanet profile now allows us to see this young woman as more than a sequence of dates. The image tells us neither when it was taken nor who made it. It does, however, restore a presence to the woman whom family memory never forgot.

Historic portrait of Lydie Marie Joseph Labart
Lydie Marie Joseph Labart. Portrait attached to her profile in Johnny Deman’s Geneanet tree; identification checked on 15 August 2026. The date, photographer and holder of the original remain unknown.
Historic portrait of Amand Joseph Wauthy, husband of Lydie Labart
Amand Joseph Wauthy, Lydie’s husband. Portrait attached to his profile in Johnny Deman’s Geneanet tree; identification checked on 15 August 2026. Its date and photographer are unknown.

Born in Saint-Amand in 1892

The family tree dates Lydie’s birth to Thursday, 24 November 1892, in Saint-Amand, Hainaut. Her birth record has not yet been read for this project: the date agrees across the consulted trees, but it must still be linked to the image or precise reference of the original record.

The Belgian State Archives describe Saint-Amand at the time as a small rural municipality of 1,176 inhabitants in 1890, connected to the Charleroi–Namur road by a dirt track and sustained mainly by agriculture. Stone and lime quarries supplemented its economy. This landscape of fields, paths and neighbouring villages was Lydie’s first world.

The official ten-year birth index for Saint-Amand covering 1891–1900 is preserved and listed online. It provides the next route towards the exact reference for Lydie’s birth.

The Labart and Vassart families

In the working family tree, Lydie is the daughter of Joseph Ghislain Labart, born in 1850 and deceased about 1915, and Clémence Ghislaine Vassart, born in 1853. These identities structure the branch, but the corresponding civil records must still be added to the research file.

Her paternal grandparents are named as Casimir Joseph Labart (1821–1892) and Marie-Thérèse Marmier (1821–1887), married in 1846. On her mother’s side appear Joseph Vassart (1822–1897) and Marie Catherine Linet (1826–1858), married in 1851.

Genealogical caution: this ancestry comes from the family tree and the Geneanet compilations consulted. It guides the research; it does not replace the original records.

Lydie and Amand

Lydie shared her life with Amand Joseph Wauthy, born in Wagnelée on 23 August 1887. The date and place of their marriage have not yet been established in the project. Amand’s portrait shows him in a suit, looking straight at the camera with the particular solemnity of early twentieth-century photography.

Three children are currently named in the tree: Paula Wauthy, born in 1919 and deceased in 2008; Alice Wauthy, whose dates remain unknown; and Alexandre Wauthy, born in 1921. Paula became Johnny Deman’s maternal grandmother.

Amand survived Lydie by many years. He died in Marbais on 26 December 1955, aged 68. The couple’s birth, marriage and death records could clarify their homes, occupations and the precise chronology of their life together.

“Of grief”

Family tradition said that Lydie lost a young child and died in a clinic around 1930. For decades, the family summarised the tragedy with the words “of grief”. This was not a diagnosis, but the emotional form in which the memory travelled through the generations.

A letter dated 14 November 1994, sent to Suzette Wauthy by Dr P. Even, then chief physician at the psychiatric institute in Saint-Servais, casts important light on the story. The doctor wrote that Suzette’s grandmother suffered a severe depression after losing a child, stopped eating and was institutionalised for the final three months of her life.

Because Suzette was the daughter of one of Paula’s brothers, Johnny confirmed that the grandmother in this family context was Lydie. The identification is coherent, but Lydie’s name does not appear in the letter. Nor does the document provide the exact date or place of death, or the reference of a hospital file.

The letter does not replace a death record. It does, however, turn a family phrase into a medically plausible account without erasing the pain held in the words “of grief”.

Beau Vallon’s official history records that an asylum for impoverished women and children was founded on the heights of Saint-Servais in 1914 and expanded between 1923 and 1925. This provides context for local psychiatric care, but does not in itself prove that Lydie was treated at that particular institution.

The children after Lydie

Family memory relates that after their mother’s death, Paula, her brother and her sister were raised by nuns in an orphanage. The institution has not yet been identified and no admission register has been found.

This rupture helps us understand Lydie’s place in the family story. Her disappearance was not only the end of a young life: it abruptly reshaped the childhood of those who remained. Paula emerged with a strength that her descendants continued to recognise in her.

What we know — and what remains to be found

Two portraits now restore a face to the couple. The tree provides a coherent family structure. The 1994 letter strongly corroborates the circumstances handed down around Lydie’s death. Yet the decisive documents are still missing.

Priority research: retrieve Lydie’s birth record through the 1891–1900 ten-year index; find the Labart–Wauthy marriage; identify the child lost about five years before her death; locate Lydie’s death record, the hospital admission register and the orphanage that received Paula, Alice and Alexandre.

To tell Lydie’s story today is not to close the file with a beautiful narrative. It is to bring together what can be brought together, leave the unknowns visible and never confuse family love with documentary proof. Her face has returned. The records are still waiting to be found.