Joseph Aveline

Joseph Aveline (1881-1958) was a 20th-century French politician and agricultural expert from the Orne department of France, who served as mayor of Dorceau for a half century and, as parliamentary deputy, opposed full powers to Marshall Philippe Pétain in July 1940. Joseph Louis Aveline was born on December 10, 1881, on a cattle-breeding farm in Dorceau (now part of the Rémalard-en-Perche commune) in Orne, France. His parents were Louis Joseph Aveline and Cécile Aline Poussin. His father had started the "New Farm" (French le Ferme-Neuve) there to breed Percheron horses and cattle of Normandy. He kept 40 Percheron horses, which he exported worldwide. Aveline spent his life as both politician and champion of Norman animal husbandry. In 1851, Aveline's father built la Ferme-Neuve ("the New Farm") into a closed-court estate at a former farm. In 1908, Aveline encircled with ten redwood (sequoia) as natural protection. (He had brought the trees back from a trip to Illinois in 1902.) The farm was famed for breeding Percheron horses and Normande dairy cattle bulls. In 1914, Aveline began serving for France in World War I through the war's end in 1918, for which he received the Croix de Guerre. After demobilization, he took over management of the farm. The Aveline family had already been breeding Percheron in the early 1800s: We find the name of Aveline for the first time in 1823 at Mont Gaudray. He had a brown-bay mare... M. Cousin, commune of Peray, had a dapple-gray stallion, born 1827, slightly under 16 hands, which served 40 mares in 1832, 43 mares in 1833, and 42 in 1834. We find the names of Avelines and Hamelin among the owners of mares served by this horse... His relative, Charles Paul Aveline (1853-1917) received a short biographical entry in the 1917 book A History of the Percheron Horse: of particular note was M. Charles Aveline' brown Percheron named "Dragon." In 1889, there is mention that Percheron "Gris-Blue 9477" was appartenant à M. Joseph Aveline ("owned by Mr. Joseph Aveline").