What is the connection between the town of Cadillac in the Gironde and the famous American car brand?

“Mr. Cadillac”, announcer in Acadia

The name sounds good. Yes, but why this choice of Cadillac? Although it has nothing to do with the bastide town of Entre-deux-Mers, where it is not from, Tarnais nevertheless has a strong link with it. To create this new identity, he was probably inspired by the relationship between his father, a lawyer in the Parliament of Toulouse, and someone. Sylvestre d’Esparbès de Lussan de Goutcouncilor of the Parliament of Toulouse, grandfather of Lamothe-Bardigues, and, at that time, lord of Cadillac (today Cadillac-sur-Garonne)Launay and Moutet.

Tarnais is ready to ensure success and social development in New France. Trading in leather and liquor, he traveled the length and breadth of Acadia for four years, extending his explorations to New England and New Holland. Returning to Paris in 1690, he was successfully appointed a naval officer by the Minister of the Navy, Count Pontchartrain, then returned to Acadia. In 1694, he was appointed commander of all posts in the Pays d’En-Haut and was left to take command at Fort Michilimackinac, which controlled all the fur trade between Missouri, Mississippi, the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley.

The founder of Ponchartain, the future Detroit, the car capital of America in the 20th century.

During his many travels, he discovered a favorable location on the shores of Lake Michigan, and founded, on July 24, 1701, Fort Pontchartrain, on the north bank of the Detroit River. Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac, however, will end his life in the Southwest. Returning to France in 1717, after becoming governor of Louisiana, he stayed with his family in La Rochelle. Imprisoned in Paris along with his son for “making indecent speeches against the government of the province and colonies”, then released, Cadillac received the cross of Saint-Louis as a reward for thirty years of faithful service in America. When he died, aged 72, in 1730, near his village of Castelsarrasin where he had been appointed governor, he left behind thirteen children, six daughters and seven sons.

The life of Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac was a novel, which began and ended in the Southwest, of course, but it will not have escaped your attention that he still has no connection with the city © girondine de l’Entre-deux-Mers. . No more than the famous American car brand of the same name. Be patient, we are almost there.

General Motors, sponsor of the Cadillac Palace restoration

It has been renamed Detroitthe site founded by Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac, located between great lakes and river valleys, would prove to be strategic in becoming a major industrial center in the 19th century, then in the 20th century, an automobile capital.

In 1902, Detroit celebrated its bicentennial. Henry M. Leland then he decides to pay tribute to the traveler of Tarn by naming him his car company of his name and using his coat of arms as a logo Founder of General Motors, William Crapo Duranthe bought the Cadillac brand in 1909 and integrated it into his company and made it his luxury car division.

Almost half a century later, in 1952, the terrible women’s prison housed since the 19th century in the castle of Cadillac in the Gironde, was closed to the administration. The building was badly damaged following a fire in 1928, the building lost its original appearance and was in danger of falling into disrepair. The “Château de Cadillac development association” was created. Affected; of course, in the name of the former elegant residence of the Dukes of Épernon, the directors of General Motors will be the first patrons of its restoration, in 1953.