The Chevalier D’Eon: A Case of Double Identity

Charles Genevive Louis Auguste Andre Thimothee D’Eon de Beaumont, known as the Chevalier D’Eon, was born in the year 1728 in Tonnerre, a small ancient town near Dijon in the province of Burgundy. His father, Louis Deon de Beaumont, was an advocate in Parliament, a King’s Counsellor, and a member of the petite noblesse—the use of the particule which converted Deon to D’Eon was granted by Louis XV to the Chevalier when he was thirty-five years old. For reasons best known to his mother, he was dressed as a girl until he was seven years old. At the age of thirteen he left home for the College Mazarin in Paris, where he remained for the next eight years and took a degree in civil and common law. His father having died, he sought and obtained a position in the Generalite de Paris, the Government department in which the elder Deon had served.