Famous Unrelated Petelles.

Abbé August Pétel.

"About the Petelle family this is a much wider picture. I have been successful in getting a few books by and about Petelle's or Petel's as I have long since understood was the correct and original spelling of the name. I have a book by an Abbe August Petel which shows the name extant back to 1362 or 600 years ago. There were quite a bunch of them at that time in the Champagne Province of France."
Excerpt from letter dated December 24, 1966 from Charles F. Petelle to Wally B. Petelle

August Petel was born in Essoyes, Aube, France on 3 February 1846. He was ordained in 1869 and served as curé at St. Julien.  The abbot was an historian, writing about the Knights Templars and other subjects. The articles were published by the Société Académique de l'Aube in the early 1900's. He apparently researched his surname finding evidence of the name as far back as 1362, though Charlie did not give the title of the book in his letter. Some of the abbot's books, written in French, are available online. He died on 28 May 1915.