Auguste Buchot in Louhans Châteaurenard (01), Ain (01)

Auguste Buchot (1851-83) is perhaps best known for his poetry books Les Ruines de Faucigny (1878) and Le Miroir indiscret (1879), although Georges Droux wrote an autobiographical booklet on him: Auguste Buchot: (avec un portrait du poète) (1889) in the Silhouettes contemporaines series. Buchot also wrote the non-fictional Histoire de Pierre Vaux, l'instituteur de Longepierre (1889), on the teacher wrongly accused of arson in Longepierre. There seems to be very little information readily available about him, although the medallion seems to belie his apparent thirty-two years.

 

Ferdinand Berthier in Louhans Châteaurenard (Saône-et-Loire (71))

Ferdinand Berthier (1803-86), born in Louhans, was (surely very oddly) nicknamed 'The Napoleon of the deaf-mutes', and became deaf at the age of four. He was the first deaf member of the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, the founder of the Association de sourds et muets, and became teacher at the Institut national des Sourds et muets in Paris. All his life was devoted to promoting the use of sign language and the civil rights of deaf people.