If you’ve ever loved and lost, then a graveside birthday isn’t unusual, but on April 6, 2023, members of an Australian family visited Batignolles Cemetery in Paris to mark the 200th birthday of a man who is not just dear to them, but also extremely significant to Dubbo – as our city’s founding father.

The family are descendants of colonial French entrepreneur Jean Emile Serisier who was instrumental in the gazetting of Dubbo village on November 23, 1849 – a day that the city honours with the annual Dubbo Day awards.

A native of Bordeaux, Mr Serisier was a tireless Dubbo community stalwart, a magistrate actively involved in the capture of bushranger John Dunn, and a successful Macquarie Street businessman who owned a thriving store servicing the Overland Trade on the site of today’s Sid’s Bottle Shop.

Toward the last decades of his life, he planted 70,000 vines on Old Dubbo Road at his vineyard ‘Eumalga’, and became a negociant, or wine trader, owning a store in Hunter Street, Sydney.

In 1879 he returned to France for the first time since moving to NSW, but would never come home, dying in Paris on February 10, 1880.

Mr Serisier’s great, great grandson, Richard Serisier, kindly shared photos from the family gathering which included his wife Shelley, sister Cathie Doyle (nee Serisier), his son and daughter, Hugo and Aimee, niece Jenny Matts, Katy Anderson and Jos Swanwick.

The headstone, in French and English, refers to Jean Emile Serisier as a negociant and magistrate of Dubbo, NSW, Australia who left behind his wife and five children.