The story of how Boban came from humble circumstances to become a world-renowned expert in the field of pre-Columbian studies is one of inspiring self-invention. It is filled with almost unbelievable achievements, various mysteries, some contradictions, and a few large gaps. His journey from recognition to anonymity and later rediscovery through his connection with crystal skulls is also a cautionary tale of how little we control our legacies. No matter what legitimate contributions we make, we may ultimately be remembered for what we did on our worst day. Research has revealed a nuanced history of a complex human being who dared greatly and accomplished much.
Boban Family History
Eugène André Boban Duvergé was born in Paris on 10 March 1834. The surname Boban, which he and some family members used occasionally with Duvergé or Duverger, does not seem particularly French, and caused some ongoing confusion among even his close friends and colleagues as to its spelling. It may have its origins in Croatia, where Boban is a rather common surname, associated with the village of Bobanova Draga in what is now Bosnia Herzegovina (Bellamy 2003). This said, his paternal ancestors had lived in France since before the 1740s.
The first family members recorded in France were his great-great-grandparents, René Boban, a master cloth maker specializing in serge, and his wife, Marie Houdu, who lived in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, between Le Mans and Angers. For several generations the family continued to live in and around Angers, moving back and forth to Paris as their economic circumstances dictated.
Eugène’s grandfather, André Michel Boban Duvergé, was a tailor, like his father and grandfather before him. He married three times. His first wife was Marie Renée Hémon, a seamstress. She died in 1805, leaving him to raise their infant son, also named André.
Two years later, at the age of twenty-nine, André Michel married Marguerite Victoire Licoys, the 21-year-old daughter of a day laborer, who was also a seamstress. She died in 1810, leaving him with a two-year-old son named René Victor Boban dit [called] Duvergé, born in Angers on 4 May 1808. He was Eugène Boban’s father.
In 1815 André Michel, now thirty-seven and a widower for a second time, married Henriette Chardon. Her parents were listed as property owners in the marriage document, so, presumably, she came from a prosperous family. Within the next ten years André Michel and Henriette had three daughters: Françoise Henriette, called Fanny, born in 1816 in Angers; Henriette, born in 1823 in Paris; and Victorine, born in 1825, also in Paris. Eugène Boban’s aunts Fanny and Henriette would play a significant role throughout his life.
As the birth location of two of his daughters’ attests, André Michel and his third wife went to Paris in the early 1820s in search of business opportunities. The family lived at 35, rue des Boucheries in Saint Germain, quite close to the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés on the left bank. The abbey and cloisters of this church had been one of the wealthiest in France, but during the French Revolution they were nearly destroyed by an explosion and fire. In the nineteenth century the area around the surviving church became somewhat less fashionable than it had been in the eighteenth century.1
For reasons of his own, Eugène’s father, René Victor, used only the surname Boban, unlike other immediate family members, and was the first to pursue a profession outside the textile trades. He followed his father to Paris and became a gainier—a craftsman who produced chests, boxes, jewel boxes, scabbards, and other leather-covered luxury items. Gainiers often dyed the hides they used and occasionally gilded and embossed them with specialized tools. Their products were intended for the wealthier classes. In March 1830, when he was twenty-one, René Victor married Laurence Michelle Simon, a laundress who was nineteen. The couple lived in Paris at 3, rue Cardinale, a block away from André Michel’s house, near the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
René Victor and Laurence Michelle Boban eventually had five children. The eldest, Rose Louise, was born in 1831; Eugène André in 1834; and Marie Françoise in 1836. These three were born at rue Cardinale. Julie Félicité, the fourth child, was born around the corner at 1, rue Childebert, in 1838. The youngest, Charlotte Heloise, was born in 1841 in Montrouge, a working-class suburb of Paris, later the 14th arrondissement.
René Victor and his family seem to have fallen squarely into the stratum of French society known as the petit bourgeoisie, a broad denomination that, as historian Gordon Wright notes, “included the mass of little independents of city, town, and village—small enterprisers, shopkeepers, artisans, clerks, schoolmasters, petit employees of the state.” As though speaking about this family directly, he adds, “Some of them inherited an old family tradition of shop keeping or craftsmanship” (Wright 1987: 166).
The Bobans lived in rented flats mostly in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district, until the early 1880s. That their standard of living was relatively modest is indicated by the address of one of the buildings in which they resided, 22, rue des Grands Augustins, constructed in the 1670s.2 The apartment shared by the seven members of the family consisted of two small rooms with a fireplace and a small kitchen alcove. Several other artisans were living and perhaps working at the same address. The other tenants may have been involved in the gainier trade as well, since they are listed as upholsterers, staplers, and leather guilders.3 It seems as though the family was struggling to get by, as were many Parisian artisans and tradespeople of the day.
The history of the Boban Duvergé family in Angers and Paris is illustrative of the economic and social developments of the nineteenth century in France. Following the debacle of the Napoleonic Era, the country was slow to industrialize, falling well behind European rivals such as Germany and England. However, textile production was one area that did experience industrial growth of sorts, although the majority of textile manufacturers were small businesses. According to the economist Armand Audiganne, in 1847 only 318 workshops in the department of the Seine, which included Paris, used mechanical power or employed more than twenty workers. Of the 29,216 clothing and shoe producers in Paris in 1847–48, 18,930 (65 percent) consisted of a proprietor and a single worker or a proprietor working alone (Price 1972: 6–7).
Aside from the slow pace of industrialization in France, another indication of stagnation in economic and social development was the lack of upward mobility in most of the country. At mid-century, the one exception was Paris, although the majority of individuals who were able to enhance their prospects in the capital had moved there from less advantageous circumstances in the provinces, like the Boban Duvergés.
For the first decade and a half after Eugène Boban’s birth, the Orleanist king Louis Philippe ruled France. Uninterested in the pomp and formality that had been hallmarks of previous generations of nobles, he was sometimes called the “Citizen King” or more derogatorily the “Grocer King” (Horne 2006: 251). After 1840, he and his ministers, particularly former historian François Guizot, who became foreign minister and later prime minister, helped expand French business through protective tariffs and low taxes, government deregulation and large expenditures in public works. Like many conservatives today, Guizot firmly believed that France was a country of equal opportunity and that those who failed to get rich and acquire the privileges of the rich had only their own limitations to blame (Wright 1987: 118, 154).
Boban would have finished his primary schooling at about the age of twelve in 1846. There is no record that he went on to receive a secondary education, so he probably assisted his father as a gainier at that stage, learning the trade as an apprentice.
From 1845 onward France had experienced extremely poor harvests, partly caused by a potato blight that had begun spreading across Europe. The situation was extremely difficult for the poorer classes, who saw prices of their two staple foods—wheat and potatoes—rise dramatically at the same time, with other food products in short supply. The weakness in the farming sector soon rippled throughout the French economy. In 1847 alone