Genealogy Chat

Tireur de grève means strike shooter, in the war many men were strike shooters, they were the people who caused "air strikes" usually machine gunners (would be easier if they had used that term ;) )
Titre due greve means title owed tax. Gentry had to pay tax on their titles. Lords, ladys, dukes etc "paid" for their class. This doesnt sound like an occupation to me though.
Does that help at all?

just shows what I know about warfare Peter!!!!
or rather wht I donlt know

You can have a striker in a Blacksmiths or a shipyard

any help

Mavis

I just asked my daughter-in-law who is French Canadian and is a teacher. She also has never heard of the expression but said basically what I had said. Tireur is a sharp-shooter and greve is strike as being on strike.
Back to square one!

Ann,

I would say that resistance fighters and guerillas were almost the opposite of mercenaries.

Peter

ah well - should've paid more attention in French class!!!
I'll ask my daughter in law - she's Belgian, expect she'll know

No, Janet, there's definitely nothing military about it.

Ann, those Google translations are totally useless. Most words have more than one meaning, and automatic translators can't tell from the context which one to use, so the resuls are often wildly wrong.

well when I googled for a translation, although I couldn't read most of what was on the page!!! I could read "Resistance fighters" and "geurrillas" so sounds a bit like mercenaries

I am so sorry to have not got back to you all. Thank you for your ideas. Its on ancestry.fr in some marriage banns transcriptions. (Do you think I can find one example now. How annoying!) I think one of the men concerned was related to my ggrandfather. Now ggrandfathers family run a lucrative translation service on board ocean liners. Ggrandfather married the daughter of an Iron works owner. I wondered if it could be the french equivalent of a hammerman.

There is also another possibility. As it was during the time of the Franco Prussian war I wondered if it was related to the soldiers/privateers who were recruited from the gun clubs in France.

Dredger ?????

Derek

It certainly doesn't mean a footballer or pool player - where on earth does that idea come from?

Literally, it's a beach-taker or digger, which is why I guessed at a sand quarryman.

I'd thought of beachcomber and discounted it, because my dictionaries translate that as "ramasseur d'épaves". However, I've now found a couple of references to "batteur de grève", which does mean beachcomber, so I guess "tireur de grève" might be an old-fashioned way of saying it.

Just asked a friend who teaches French. She says it could be a beachcomber.

the verb tirer can mean to pull to haul to stretch to pull out extract pull off draw print off fire let off or gain
greve can mean shore beach strand or
srike
so it could mean somone who works on a beach and helps to haul boats out

Or even footballer?

Think it could mean pool or snooker player?

ah well, back to the drawing board then

"I put it in google and it asked "do you mean "titre due greve" - does that help?"

No, sorry, that doesn't help at all, it's totally meaningless.

I googled it and got a photo of a postcard, Chalons sur Marne, la maison d'un tireur de greve. (Chalons on the Marne, the house of (a you know what)
The house looks like it's in the middle of the river.

I put it in google and it asked "do you mean "titre due greve" - does that help?

Ignore Babelfish - it comes up with a load of rubbish.

A grève can be a strike (as in going on strike) and a tireur can be a marksman, but the two put together make no sense at all.

I would guess it's something like a sand quarryman, because grève also means the strip of sand along a river bank or sea shore, and tirer can mean extract. Tireur de tourbe means peat-digger.

It can't be a common expression, because it's not in any of my French dictionaries.