Les Essarts is the Forbes family estate at Saint-Briac, France, and the international family seat of the descendants of James Grant Forbes (b. Shanghai, China), a member of the Forbes family of China and Boston who settled in Brittany at Les Essarts. He is the grandfather of two famous politicians, Brice Lalonde, a Green Party candidate for President of France in 1981, and US Senator John Forbes Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America in 2004. Many of the Forbes family have socialized during summers spent in Brittany at Les Essarts.
Les Essarts had been occupied and used as a Nazi headquarters during World War II. When the Germans fled, they bombed Les Essarts and burnt it down. The sprawling estate was rebuilt in 1954.
Les Essarts is also considered a Winthrop family estate. As the two families are related and the Winthrops still have use of Les Essarts.
Famous quotes containing the words les, family and/or estate:
“The deer and the dachshund are one.
Well, the gods grow out of the weather.
The people grow out of the weather;
The gods grow out of the people.
Encore, encore, encore les dieux . . .”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“When one family builds a wall, two families benefit from it.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I should probably take that disturbance into account.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)