Brent burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Daniel Carroll Brent, son of Robert Brent and Anne Carroll, died 31 January 1841 in Paris and was buried there in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Section 46. His stone reads "Daniel Brent, of Stafford, County Virginia, Consul, of the United States, of America, for Paris & deceased, at Paris, the 31st January. A.D. 1841." Daniel had served in the Department of the Treasury and had also been appointed Chief Clerk at the State Department. Daniel's wife, Eliza Walsh, had died in 1816. One of Daniel's brothers was Robert Brent, the first mayor of Washington, D.C. Another brother was my ancestor, Col. William Brent. Daniel's uncle was Archbishop John Carroll. He was named for another uncle, Daniel Carroll II, who signed the Articles of Confederation and also the Constitution.
The photograph of Père Lachaise Cemetery is from Wikimedia Commons web page, titled "Père Lachaise in Paris," taken January 2010 by user Janericloebe who released his photo into the public domain.
Buried in the same spot in Section 46 is Elizabeth Carroll Brent, first wife of Henry Johnson Brent and daughter of Daniel Carroll of Duddington and his wife Anne Boyce. Henry Johnson Brent was the nephew of Daniel Carroll Brent beside whom his wife was buried. Her inscription reads "Mrs. Elizabeth G., wife of Henry J. Brent, of Washington. U.S. America, who died on the morning of, the 8th January 1846." Elizabeth's middle initial was C, for Carroll, not G., and it is not known if it was transcribed incorrectly or whether the original inscription was incorrect.
Père Lachaise Cemetery is a beautiful, old cemetery in Paris and a tourist attraction, as many famous people are buried there.
In 2014 a Brent researcher went to Père Lachaise to find the gravesite of these two Brents. In speaking with an official in the cemetery office he found that Daniel Carroll Brent and Elizabeth Carroll Brent are no longer in the cemetery. After one hundred years, if no one pays the maintenance fees, then the graves are removed and the bones moved to a common ossuary. It is not known what might have happened to the tombstones. This researcher is now on a mission to find the bones and/or the gravestones, and have them reinterred in the St. John the Evangelist Cemetery in Forest Glen, Maryland, where many other Brents and Carrolls are buried.
Source for the burial information: "Inscriptions on the Tombstones of Americans Buried in Père La Chaise Cemetery, Paris, France," J. Rutgers Leroy, Esq., Paris, Contributor; The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 43, No. 169, January 1919, pp.251-256.
