 Five generations before Rousseau, his ancestor Didier, a bookseller who may have published Protestant tracts, had escaped persecution from French Catholics by fleeing to Geneva in 1549, where he became a wine merchant.Rousseau was proud that his family, of the "moyen" order (or middle-class), had voting rights in the city.Throughout his life, he generally signed his books "Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva".