southern slopes of the Ormont Hills between the hamlet of Vanifosse and Frapelle have been owned and controlled between a dispersed succession of landlords and protectors, but the ecclesiastical administration has been a much more constant theme, the village being subject to the former monastery of Bertrimoutier and still, today, within the parish of Bertrimoutier. During the early and middle Medieval periods, it is thought that Le Pair Grandrupt and Villers were part of a single extended village in the Duchy of Lorraine. At some point, probably in the fourteenth century and possibly in connection with plague induced depopulation, Villers disappeared. It was replaced by Neuvillers ("new Villars") a short distance to the east: but now that the territories of the various settlements were no longer contiguous, the communities drifted apart. In 1594 the territory belonged to the provostship of Saint-Dié and the bailiwick of Nancy. Between the end of the Duchy of Burgundy in 1477 and the final incorporation of Lorraine into France that followed the death of the Last Duke in 1766, there were several French invasions and periods of occupation affecting Lorraine and other de facto buffer states between France and the Holy Roman Empire, but relatively untroubled in their mountain seclusion the administrative arrangements of the hamlets of Le Pair, Grandrupt and Vanifosse remained unchanged except that in 1710 the bailiwick was switched to Saint-Dié. See also Communes of the Vosges department References Communes of Vosges (department)