François Séguin dit Ladéroute
Quick Facts
The Death Date
PRDH-IGD and the Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec record François's death as 9 May 1704. Two documents place it earlier. On 20 November 1700, before notary Pierre Raimbault, Jeanne Petit acts as the wife of François Séguin, "absent pour son indisposition"—absent on account of his illness. On 9 October 1701, before the same notary, she acts as "veufue de deffunct françois Seguin," widow of the late François Séguin. A Boucherville parish act of 11 November 1715 independently records him as deceased, with Jeanne present in the church.
This narrower range was first published by the Association des Séguin d'Amérique in La Séguinière in 1994 and is carried by Denis Beauregard's Genealogy of the French in North America. The 1704 burial at Notre-Dame-de-Montréal names a different man, recorded in the register as Pierre Séguin dit La Deroute, an habitant of Boucherville who died at the Hôtel-Dieu.
A 2025 study of the Carignan-Salières Regiment maintains that the May 1704 burial is François's, entered under an erroneous given name. The two notarial acts of 1703 and 1704 that were once the difficulty have now been read in the original: both name « françois Ceguens fils » in the body, and in both that man declared he could not write or sign. François the father signed his name to fifteen acts between June 1671 and October 1700.
Three further acts of the notary Marien Tailhandier record him as already dead — a marriage contract of 9 November 1706, another of 7 June 1710 which says so twice, and a désistement of 19 March 1713 written down the margin of the concession of April 1700. And at both of the Boucherville marriages that were thought to contradict the range, the curé named the groom's mother among those present and did not name the father.
The full argument, with every act reproduced and cited, is set out in the case study.
Several immigrants bearing the name Séguin came to New France. The most humble, but perhaps the best known due to his numerous descendants, was named François Séguin dit Ladéroute. He came from the region of Bray, west of Beauvais, almost within the boundaries of the present department of the Oise, canton of Le Coudray-Saint-Germer, in the former province of Picardy. His story begins with a marriage in a small village church and ends roughly fifty-six years later—a journey that would establish one of the most prolific families in French-Canadian history, with descendants numbering between 1.89 and 2.31 million today.
Le Pays de Bray—the rolling countryside of Picardy where François was born.
On Tuesday, 14 July 1643, in the small church of Cuigy-en-Bray, Laurent Séguin and Marie Massieu celebrated their marriage. Laurent, the father of our Canadian ancestor, bore the title of clerc—at that time meaning a layman with an education. At Saint-Aubin-en-Bray, on 4 July 1644, Laurent and Marie had their first child, François, baptized. François Boudin and Jeanne Dufour, his godparents, held the little one at the baptismal font; he would become our Canadian Ancestor Séguin.
The Clerc's Family in the Bray
Commemorative plaque at Saint-Aubin-en-Bray: "Hommage à François Séguin... Ancêtre des Séguin d'Amérique." Placed September 1993 by the Association des Séguin d'Amérique.
More children followed François. Renée was baptized at Jaméricourt on 19 November 1645, and at her baptism Laurent was again styled clerc—this time clerc of Jaméricourt. Pierre was baptized at Jouy-sous-Thelle on 29 January 1648 and Laurent there on 10 December 1649. Some compilations add later baptisms at Jouy—a Michel in 1657, a Laurent in 1659 and a Marguerite in 1660—which have not yet been read in the register; a Michel Séguin, son of Laurent, married at Senantes in 1680 and signed at his father's burial. Marriage at Cuigy-en-Bray, a first child at Saint-Aubin, a second at Jaméricourt, more at Jouy-sous-Thelle, and the family's later records at Senantes—five parishes within a few miles of one another, the ordinary geography of a parish clerk who went where the work was.
François left in 1665 and did not return. His mother lived another twelve years: Marie Massieu was buried at Senantes on 12 February 1677, and the act names her « femme de Laurent Seguin son premier mary aagée de cinquante huit ans », buried « en presence dud. Seguin ». Laurent remarried three months later, on 26 May 1677, at Villembray, to Sainte Dumont of that parish.
He outlived his eldest son. Laurent Séguin was buried at Senantes on 22 November 1706, aged about eighty-five, and the act still calls him maistre Laurent Seguin, clerc de l'église—the office he had held when he married in 1643, sixty-three years before. His sons Michel and Pierre stood at the burial, and both signed the register. Whether word of François's death in New France ever reached the Bray is not recorded.
The Soldier Years: Carignan-Salières Regiment (1665–1668)
At a very young age, François Séguin left his family home and went to earn his living by whatever means at hand. Perhaps he did an apprenticeship in a trade. As soon as he could, he enlisted as a soldier—joining the elite Carignan-Salières Regiment, the first professional military force King Louis XIV sent to defend New France.
Officer and Men of the Carignan-Salières Regiment, 1665. Full-dress uniform at center; for winter service they dressed as the figure at right—"A Canadian going to war on snowshoes." From La Potherie's Histoire, 1722.
Joseph Drouin, writing in 1931, and later Marcel Trudel place François in the Company of St-Ours, commanded by Captain Pierre de Saint-Ours, a minor French noble who would later become one of the most prominent seigneurs in New France. Peter Gagné has him enlisting in the company of Delamongue, who retired shortly before the regiment sailed and handed the company to his ensign, Saint-Ours. The company left La Rochelle on 24 May 1665 aboard Le Justice, one of seven ships that carried the regiment's twenty-four companies, and reached Quebec on 14 September 1665.
The regiment's mission was critical: defend the colony and suppress the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) raids that had brought New France to its knees. This was a professional military force—well trained, disciplined, and organized—something the colony had never had before.
The Meaning of "Ladéroute"
Why did François bear the surname dit Ladéroute—literally "along the road" or "on the march"? This military nickname is telling. Dit-names like this were common among career soldiers and often associated with men accustomed to long marches, patrol duty, and escorting supplies or messengers. It fits a man used to movement and frontier service, not a sedentary garrison role.
Such nicknames often originated before arrival in Canada, hinting that François may already have had military experience in France before joining the regiment. As Thomas J. Laforest noted, the exact origin remains "a military mystery"—but the name itself speaks to a life defined by the road.
Fort Duty on the Richelieu River
Plan des forts faicts par le Regiment Carignan Salières—the chain of forts along the Richelieu River, New France's most vulnerable invasion corridor.
The Richelieu River was the invasion corridor used by Iroquois war parties coming north from present-day New York. The regiment, company by company, built a chain of forts to guard this vulnerable approach: Fort Richelieu at Sorel, Fort Chambly, Fort Sainte-Thérèse, and Fort Saint-Jean.
The St-Ours Company spent the winter of 1665-1666 at the newly built fort at Sorel. A soldier's duties there included clearing land, building palisades, digging ditches, standing watch along river corridors, and conducting patrols between forts. This was grueling physical labor mixed with constant military readiness.
Unlike European warfare, these soldiers had to adapt quickly: enduring harsh Canadian winters in cramped forts, learning to move on snowshoes, and adapting to woodland warfare against an enemy who knew the terrain intimately. Conditions that defeated many European soldiers.
The 1666 Campaign Against the Mohawk
In 1666, companies of the regiment—including St-Ours'—took part in punitive expeditions south into Mohawk territory under the command of Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy. Villages were burned. Crops were destroyed. The campaign, though brutal, forced a lasting peace treaty that would hold for nearly two decades.
This peace is one reason New France survived long enough to grow. The regiment that brought François Séguin to Canada was part of it—the first successful military defense of the colony, at one of the most decisive moments in Canadian history.
Captain Pierre de Saint-Ours himself went with Tracy's expedition, and would later receive the seigneury of Saint-Ours on the Richelieu River. Near the end of his life he remembered his soldiers. Lying ill but sound of mind, he made a donation en cas de mort before the notary Antoine Adhémar, datelined « 7 7bre 1709 »—the seventh of September 1709—leaving four hundred livres, payable after his death, to the soldiers « de la compagnie qu'il avoit cy devant dans les troupes »—the company he had formerly commanded—« du detachement de la marine ». The words point to the Marine troops Saint-Ours commanded in the colony after the regiment had gone. Yet at least one of the men had followed him since 1665: the Lucas of the list is very probably Luc Poupart dit Lafortune, a soldier of the Saint-Ours company who stands on the roll of 1668 as La fortune.
Most of the shares are fifty livres, and the men are named as soldiers knew one another—Latourpin, Sans Souci, Brindamour, Quinssat, Rimbault the elder and his brother Duclos, and Lucas Poupart. Among them is « a Seguin cinquante livres »—no given name, no dit, no residence and no family. François Séguin dit Ladéroute had been dead since 1701 at the latest. Robert-Lionel Séguin, writing in 1947, concluded that the money must have passed to his heirs. The act itself says nothing of heirs. André Sévigny and Louise Trudeau, in their 2026 dictionary of the Marine soldiers, take this Séguin to be probably François's son Jean-Baptiste, then unmarried; the act gives no given name, and which Séguin the captain meant is not yet proven.
From Soldier to Settler
Commemorative plaque at Boucherville listing the 22 soldiers of the Carignan-Salières Regiment who settled there between 1669 and 1695. François Séguin dit Ladéroute appears in the final line. Société d'histoire des Îles-Percées.
When the Carignan-Salières Regiment was officially disbanded in 1667-1668, about 800 soldiers returned to France. The remaining 400 stayed. Officers were encouraged to remain with promises of seigneuries; their troops were promised concessions of land within those same fiefs. Many married the newly arrived Filles du Roi and began new lives as habitants.
François Séguin was among those who stayed. A commemorative plaque erected by the Société d'histoire des Îles-Percées lists the 22 soldiers of the regiment who settled at Boucherville between 1669 and 1695. There, in the final line, appears his name: François Séguin dit Ladéroute.
This is the moment when men like him stopped being "troops" and became founders of families. Family accounts hold that about 1668, when Saint-Ours was asked to raise men for the garrison of Ville-Marie, François Séguin, still a bachelor, went to the defense of Montréal. By 1671, he had leased his first piece of land at Boucherville. By 1672, he would marry a King's Daughter named Jeanne Petit.
The soldier had become a settler. The road that began in Picardy, wound through the forts of the Richelieu, and led at last to a concession on the St. Lawrence—Ladéroute had found his destination.
Jeanne Petit: A King's Daughter
Jeanne Petit was part of the contingent of 125 Filles du Roi who came to New France in 1671. On Wednesday, 21 September 1672, there was a marriage contract between Jeanne—born at Sainte-Marguerite de La Rochelle—and François Séguin. At age 16, she was already an orphan. Pierre Boucher himself witnessed the ceremony. Pierre De Caumont joined François and Jeanne in bonds of matrimony on Monday, 31 October 1672.
Building at Boucherville
François Séguin's lot (#36) is fourth from the bottom, between Jacques Bourdon and Pierre Martin. From "François Séguin ou L'impossible défi" (1992).
On 22 September 1672, François Séguin bought a homestead from Pierre Chaperon consisting of 2 arpents by 25 deep. On 4 April 1673, with 37 other concessionaires, he obtained his plot of land from seigneur Pierre Boucher. In the census of 1681, we learn that François stated his profession: WEAVER! In the early days of New France weaving was a man's trade.
The Séguin Family
Eleven children were born to François and Jeanne: Françoise, Marie-Madeleine, François, Jeanne, Pierre, Simon, Catherine, Jean-Baptiste, Geneviève, Joseph and Joseph. Catherine, Geneviève, and Joseph (born 10 August 1692) died in infancy. All three were buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Famille de Boucherville.
The Séguin family counted 76 members in the third generation and seems to have enjoyed the gift of longevity.
Jean-Baptiste, my own ancestor through the Guilbault Line, married Geneviève Barbeau dit Boisdore on 7 June 1710 at Boucherville and brought ten children into the world. He died at the hospital in Montréal on 13 May 1728 and was buried the following day at Notre-Dame de Montréal.
Twenty-Fourth Hour
On 24 November 1698, François sold his concession to Jean-Baptiste Lamoureux for 850 livres. For his 50 arpents of land "with a poor building built upon it", he received 400 livres in playing card money, 200 in merchandise, and 60 in wheat. Did he feel his strength declining? Was his final hour approaching?
The Îles-de-Boucherville today. François and Jeanne spent their final years together on Île Grosbois, visible across the water from their former concession.
On 15 April 1700, François Séguin and Jeanne Petit were granted permission by Madame Marie-Anne de La Valtrie, widow of Pierre Boucher's son Ignace Boucher, Sieur de Grosbois, to live on 16 square arpents of land on the Île Grosbois. The grant was for their lifetime only. François, in addition to giving two work days each autumn, was committed to taking care of the widow's two cows.
Unfortunately, François's health declined rapidly. On 20 November 1700, when his daughter Marie-Madeleine contracted to marry Antoine Marie of Longueuil, François could not attend. The notary Pierre Raimbault recorded Jeanne Petit acting alone, as "femme de françois Seguin... habitant de Boucherville absent pour son indisposition, de laquelle elle promet faire agreer et ratifier ce present toutes fois et quand"—wife of François Séguin, resident of Boucherville, absent on account of his illness, and she promises to have him approve and ratify this present contract whenever required.
He was alive, then, but too ill to travel, and expected to recover enough to sign. He never did. By 9 October 1701, at the marriage contract of daughter Marie-Jeanne, Jeanne is "veufue de deffunct françois Seguin"—widow of the late François Séguin. He would have been 56 or 57 years old.
No burial record has been found for him, at Sainte-Famille de Boucherville or elsewhere, and his place of death is not established. His last recorded residence was the Île Grosbois, where he and Jeanne held their strip of land for life—a quiet end, wherever it came, for the soldier who had traveled so far "along the road."
On 19 March 1713, after living on the island for thirteen years—twelve of them as a widow—Jeanne returned the land to Madame de La Valtrie and went to live with her eldest son François's family, then settled on Île Jésus; they would move to Lachenaie only in the 1720s. This brave ancestress continued her pilgrimage until her death on 29 March 1733, at about age 77. She was buried the next day from Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue Church in Longueuil.
François and Jeanne, that which you have desired, you saw; that which you hoped for, you held; you are now together in Paradise with all those whom you loved in France and in New-France, with all your descendants who carry today in their veins your pure and generous blood.
Additional research on Île Grosbois and François's final years contributed by Kenneth Seguin via the Association des Séguin d'Amérique.
Key Dates
Connection to The Guilbault Line
Primary Source Documents
Maps & Places
Military Service
Census Record
Origin & Marriage Documents
Children's Baptism Records
Children Who Died in Infancy
Death Date Evidence (Case Study)
Database Records: Transcriptions
The entries below transcribe the compiled database records for François Séguin dit Ladéroute. These are derivative compilations, not original documents. They index and interpret the parish registers and notarial acts shown above, and where the two disagree, the register governs.
| Name | Francois SEGUIN LADEROUTE |
| Father | Laurent SEGUIN |
| Mother | Marie MOSSIEU |
| Baptism | 4 July 1644 — st-aubin-en-bray, ev. beauvais, picardie (ar. beauvais, oise) |
| Death | 9 May 1704 (disputed — see note) |
| Burial | 10 May 1704 — Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal) (disputed — see note) |
| First marriage | 31 October 1672 — Boucherville (Ste-Famille), with Jeanne PETIT, daughter of Jean PETIT and Jeanne GAUDREAU |
Death and burial entries in dispute. The 1704 burial recorded here belongs to a man named in the register as Pierre Séguin dit La Deroute. François is documented alive on 20 November 1700 and identified as deceased by 9 October 1701. See the death date case study.
Mother's surname. PRDH renders it MOSSIEU; the French parish records and Beauregard's compilation render it MASSIEU. The variant is preserved here as the database states it.
| Rank | Name and role | M.S. | Pr. | Sex |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Francois SEGUIN — spouse of 02 Occupation: habitant Residence: Boucherville (Ste-Famille) Origin: Dombre, évêché de Beauvais, Picardie | c | p | m |
| 02 | Jeanne PETIT — spouse of 01 Origin: Ste-Marguerite, ville et évêché de La Rochelle | c | p | f |
| 03 | Laurent SEGUIN — father of 01, spouse of 04 | m | — | m |
| 04 | Marie MOSSIEU — mother of 01, spouse of 03 | m | — | f |
| 05 | Jean PETIT — father of 02, spouse of 06 | m | — | m |
| 06 | Jeanne GAUDRAU — mother of 02, spouse of 05 | m | — | f |
| 07 | Pierre DECAUMONT Occupation: prêtre, curé Residence: Boucherville (Ste-Famille) | c | p | m |
Legend. M.S. = marital status at the act (c = single, m = married). Pr. = presence at the act (p = present, a = absent, d = deceased, em dash = not stated). No ages are stated for any party. All four parents were in France and are named in the act only as parents of the couple.
Two points of interest. François is recorded as habitant, not soldier — by 1672 the military identity had given way to the land. And the origin stated in the marriage act, Dombre in the diocese of Beauvais, does not match the baptismal parish of Saint-Aubin-en-Bray, though both lie in the same diocese.
| Sex | Child | Birth | Marriage | Death |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| f | Marie Françoise m. Charles Patenaude | 1 Nov 1674 Boucherville | 8 Feb 1694 Montréal | 19 May 1751 Longueuil |
| f | Marie Madeleine m. (1) Antoine Marie Marier Stemarie m. (2) François Achin St-André, Longueuil, 7 Jan 1704 | 16 Aug 1676 Boucherville | 20 Nov 1700 Lieu indéterminé (au Québec) | 25 May 1753 Longueuil |
| m | François m. Marie Louise Filion | 3 Jul 1678 Pointe-aux-Trembles | 22 Feb 1702 Boucherville | 6 Feb 1727 Terrebonne |
| f | Marie Jeanne m. Joseph Robidou | 9 Aug 1680 Boucherville | 10 Oct 1701 Longueuil | 20 Dec 1749 Longueuil |
| m | Pierre m. Marie Barbe Filion, widow of Jean Baptiste Lebert | 24 Aug 1682 Bapt. Pointe-aux-Trembles | 4 Feb 1704 Boucherville | 9 Nov 1760 Mascouche |
| m | Simon m. (1) Marie Lalouette Lebeau m. (2) Madeleine Cole, Boucherville, 11 Nov 1715 | 24 Sep 1684 Pointe-aux-Trembles | 9 Nov 1706 Boucherville | 29 Mar 1758 Boucherville |
| f | Catherine bapt. 20 Nov 1686 | 19 Nov 1686 Boucherville | — | 16 Jan 1688 Boucherville |
| m | Jean Baptiste m. Geneviève Barbeau Boisdore OUR LINE | 10 Nov 1688 Boucherville | 7 Jun 1710 Boucherville | 13 May 1728 Montréal |
| f | Geneviève buried 17 Jul 1691 | 9 Apr 1691 Boucherville | — | 16 Jul 1691 Boucherville |
| m | Joseph (first) | 10 Aug 1692 Boucherville | — | 30 Aug 1692 Boucherville |
| m | Joseph (second) m. Marie Françoise Sauvage | 13 Sep 1694 Boucherville | 12 Apr 1723 Ste-Anne-de-Détroit | 29 Apr 1753 Ste-Anne-de-Détroit |
On the italics. Italics reproduce the database's own typographic convention, which distinguishes a date inferred from a related act — a birth taken from a baptism, a death taken from a burial — from a date stated in the act itself. An italicised date should be verified against the register before being treated as record-stated.
Scope. The family sheet lists children born before 1800 and gives one marriage per child. It does not record later remarriages.
| Subject | SÉGUIN dit LADÉROUTE, François, son of Laurent Séguin and Marie Massieu [entry 3298] |
| Baptism | 4 July 1644 — Saint-Aubin-en-Bray (Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Aubin), Oise 60567 |
| Death | Between 20 November 1700 and 10 October 1701 |
| Error flag | The compilation flags the alternative death date carried by the Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec (1042) as an error, resolving it on the two Raimbault marriage contracts of his daughters |
| Marriage | 31 October 1672, Boucherville; contract 21 September 1672, depositary Thomas Frérot |
| Wife | PETIT, Jeanne, daughter of Jean Petit and Jeanne Gaudreau [entry 4483]; King's daughter; born about 1656 per the 1681 census, or 1643 per the 1733 burial; La Rochelle (Sainte-Marguerite), Charente-Maritime 17300; died 29 March 1733, buried 30 March 1733, Longueuil |
| Children | Eleven, as listed in the PRDH family record above, with two additional remarriages noted: Marie Madeleine to François Achim dit Saint-André at Longueuil, 7 January 1704; Simon to Madeleine Cole at Boucherville, 11 November 1715 |
| Descendants | Estimated between 1,890,000 and 2,310,000 Quebecers; 12 generations and 6,725 marriages recorded in the database, the most recent in 2020 |
| Ancestry | Two generations and three marriages traced, the earliest in 1622 |
| mtDNA | Haplogroup T2b2b, computed from Jeanne Petit's female-line progeny. This is a reconstruction from documented descent, not a tested result for Jeanne Petit herself |
| Cited authorities | La Séguinière (1994, 4:2) 9; MSGCF (1947, 2) 219; Landry 355; Dumas 310; Denissen 642; PRDH-RAB; Parchemin; Genealogy of the French families of the Detroit River region |
Source. Denis Beauregard, Genealogy of the French in North America, entry [1732]. © Denis Beauregard, 2005–2026. Data transcribed and rearranged; the compilation's own text is not reproduced.
Both remarriages are confirmed. Simon's second marriage at Boucherville on 11 November 1715 to Madeleine Cole is documented by PRDH individual no. 68334 and union no. 3959, and by the register act itself. Marie Madeleine's second marriage at Longueuil on 7 January 1704 to François Achin dit Saint-André is documented by PRDH individual no. 153. Neither appears on the PRDH family sheet, which records only a first marriage for each child.
Sources & Citations
Primary Sources
- Baptism (1644): Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Aubin Parish, Saint-Aubin-en-Bray, Oise, France. FichierOrigine.
- Marriage Contract (1672): Notary Thomas Frérot, 21 September 1672. BAnQ.
- Marriage Record (1672): Boucherville (Ste-Famille) Parish, 31 October 1672. Officiant Pierre de Caumont.
- Census (1681): Recensement de la Nouvelle-France, Seigneurie de Boucherville. LAC.
- Marriage Contract, Marie Madeleine (1700): Notary Pierre Raimbault, Act 402. BAnQ.
- Marriage Contract, Marie Jeanne (1701): Notary Pierre Raimbault, Act 527. BAnQ.
- Children's Baptisms and Burials (1674–1694): Boucherville (Ste-Famille) and Pointe-aux-Trembles Parish Registers, registers of 1669–1695 and 1685–1695.
- Marriage of Simon Séguin and Madeleine Cole (1715): Boucherville (Ste-Famille) Parish Register, 1696–1717, feuillet 148, 11 November 1715.
- Judicial proceedings (1705–1706): BAnQ, Fonds Intendants, E1,S1,D1, pieces P21, P22, P38, P47, P53, P54.
- Negative search: The Boucherville (Ste-Famille) register of baptisms, marriages, and burials for the year 1700 was examined; it contains no marriage act for Antoine Marie and Marie Madeleine Séguin. PRDH likewise assigns the union no parish location. The 20 November 1700 contract is the only located record of the marriage.
Derivative Compilations
- PRDH-IGD. Individual #68331, Couple #3764, Family #4015. Université de Montréal.
- Beauregard, Denis. "Genealogy of the French in North America." Family Sheet [1732]. © 2005–2026.
- La Séguinière (Association des Séguin d'Amérique), 1994, vol. 4, no. 2, p. 9 — earliest published statement of the corrected death range.
Secondary Sources
- Laforest, Thomas J. Our French Canadian Ancestors, Volume 18. LISI Press, 1990.
- Séguin-Pharand, Yolande. François Séguin ou L'impossible défi. Association des Séguin d'Amérique, 1992.
Related Case Study
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