Jean-Baptiste Séguin dit Ladéroute: First Settler of Vaudreuil
Jean-Baptiste Séguin dit Ladéroute
Quick Facts
Jean-Baptiste Séguin dit Ladéroute was born on 10 November 1688 around four o'clock in the afternoon at Boucherville—the seventh child of François Séguin dit Ladéroute, a former soldier of the Carignan-Salières Regiment, and Jeanne Petit, a Fille du Roi from La Rochelle. Two days later, on 12 November, the infant was carried to Sainte-Famille Church and baptized by the Abbé Pierre Rodolphe Guybert de la Saudrays, the same priest who had married his parents sixteen years earlier. His godfather was Jean-Baptiste Ménard, a habitant of neighbouring Longueuil; his godmother was Catherine Ménard of the Sainte-Famille parish.
The stone church where Jean-Baptiste received the sacrament of baptism had stood at the heart of Boucherville since the earliest days of settlement. His father François had worshipped there, had married there, and had seen six older children baptized within its walls. The entry in the register, preserved in the Abbé de la Saudrays' careful hand, records the presence of his father, his godfather, and the witness Julien Beaussault—all of whom signed alongside the priest.
Jean-Baptiste grew up in the world his father had helped build. François had arrived in New France as a young soldier in 1665, fought in the Mohawk campaigns of 1666, and chose to stay when the regiment disbanded. By the time Jean-Baptiste was old enough to understand the rhythms of seigneurial life, Boucherville was a thriving parish on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, its farms reaching back from the riverbank in narrow ribbons. François worked his fifty arpents of land, wove cloth on his loom, and raised a large family—five sons who lived to adulthood, a testament to both Jeanne Petit's endurance and the family's relative stability.
A Brother's Trial: The Salt Protest of 1704–1706
In late 1704, Jean-Baptiste was sixteen years old — old enough to witness, and to remember, a family crisis that revealed just how precarious life in New France could be. His older brother François, twenty-six and named for their father, became caught up in a public protest that would bring the full weight of French colonial justice upon the Séguin family.
The unrest began with salt. Irregular Atlantic shipping and soaring prices had made this essential commodity scarce, threatening the colony's ability to preserve meat and fish for the coming winter. Fearing hunger and hardship, a large crowd gathered at the home of a wholesaler believed to be hoarding significant reserves. Père Belmont, superior of the Sulpician order, stepped forward to calm the situation. The protesters presented a petition requesting that authorities impose a fair price on salt, shift taxation toward other imported goods, and punish those accused of profiteering.
Claude de Ramezay, Governor of Montréal, was absent during the disturbance but, upon returning, negotiated with wholesalers to adopt more reasonable pricing. Père Belmont instructed parish priests to read statements at Mass condemning mutiny. Yet when Governor General Philippe de Vaudreuil learned of Ramezay's intervention, he rebuked him for exceeding his authority and revoked the price regulation, though he ordered refunds for overcharges. Initially inclined to punish the crowd, Vaudreuil was persuaded toward leniency. On 12 December 1704, he instead issued an ordinance forbidding public assemblies under threat of prosecution for sedition.
The matter did not end there. Nearly a year later, on 26 October 1705, Intendant Raudot ordered his Montréal subordinate, Jacques-Alexis Fleury dit Deschambault, to begin legal proceedings against those deemed responsible. Five days later, a separate order targeted François Séguin specifically. Under the judicial system of New France, the accused was effectively presumed guilty unless able to prove otherwise, and François was denied legal counsel.
Interrogated on 31 October 1705, François named an associate, Jean-Baptiste Lapointe, and was questioned again on 25 November. The following day, both men were ordered arrested and imprisoned. François left behind his young family — an eighteen-month-old daughter and a pregnant wife, Marie-Louise Feuillon — uncertain of what fate awaited him.
For young Jean-Baptiste, the ordeal was painfully close to home. Under colonial legal practice, his elder brothers Pierre, aged thirty-three, and Simon, aged thirty-one, were compelled to testify as witnesses against their own sibling.
On 8 December 1705, François and Lapointe were transported to Québec City for further depositions. Christmas passed while they remained in custody. On 4 January 1706, nine additional witnesses were called at the request of prosecutor Paul Dupuy. Finally, on 9 January, judgment was rendered: both men were found guilty of participating in unauthorized assemblies and presenting a petition contrary to the governor's ordinance. François was singled out for having delivered "seditious speeches" capable of inciting revolt. Each was fined thirty livres and warned against further violations.
By contemporary standards, the punishment was considered mild. Under the earlier administration of Frontenac, such offenses might have resulted in sentences to the king's galleys. Even so, Minister Pontchartrain later reproached Vaudreuil, as late as June 1707, for excessive leniency and for failing to make a stronger example of the accused.
Was François a troublemaker — or a leader willing to risk his liberty in pursuit of fairness for his fellow colonists? The records allow both interpretations. What is certain is that sixteen-year-old Jean-Baptiste witnessed the arrest, the compelled testimony of his own brothers, the journey to Québec, and the final verdict. These were the realities of justice, authority, and survival that shaped our ancestor as he entered adulthood.
Marriage at Sainte-Famille: 7 June 1710
Four years after his brother's trial, Jean-Baptiste stood in the same stone church where he had been baptized—this time to be married. On 7 June 1710, at age twenty-one, he wed Geneviève Barbot dite Boisdoré, aged twenty-one, daughter of Jean Barbot dit Boisdoré and Marie Denoyon. The ceremony was performed by an old friend of the family: the Abbé Pierre Rodolphe de la Saudrays, the same priest who had married Jean-Baptiste's parents in 1672, baptized Geneviève in 1689, and baptized Jean-Baptiste himself in 1688.
Geneviève had been born on 20 July 1689 and baptized the following day—also at Sainte-Famille de Boucherville. Her godfather was Jean Lafons, the Capitaine de la Côte de Boucherville, a sign of her family's standing in the community. She and Jean-Baptiste had grown up within the same parish, attended the same church, been baptized by the same priest. Their union was as rooted in this place as any marriage could be.
The marriage register reveals several important details. Jean-Baptiste's father François is identified as "deffunt"—deceased—confirming that he had already died. His mother Jeanne Petit is noted as living and residing at Boucherville. The couple had obtained a dispensation from the banns from the Vicar General of the Bishop of Québec. Among the witnesses were "le Sieur Boisdoré père de l'épouse" (the bride's father), "Monsieur La Baume chirurgien et notaire royal" (a surgeon and royal notary), "Monsieur Tétro maître d'école" (the schoolmaster), and Nicolas Dubray—friends and associates of both families who signed alongside the priest.
A Growing Family at Boucherville (1711–1724)
Over the next fourteen years, Jean-Baptiste and Geneviève built their family within the parish boundaries of Boucherville. Nine children were born and baptized at Sainte-Famille Church between 1711 and 1724—a steady rhythm of births that speaks to both the couple's rootedness in this community and the priest's diligent recording.
Their first child, Marie Josèphe, was born and baptized on 28 March 1711. She did not survive her first year, dying on 22 April 1712 and buried the following day at Boucherville. A son, Louis, was born just weeks before Marie Josèphe's death—on 8 April 1712—as if the household could not pause between grief and new life. Then came Jean-Baptiste fils in May 1714, Pierre in January 1716, Joseph in November 1717, Marie Louise in September 1719, Jean in March 1722, our ancestor Marie Charlotte in March 1723, and a third Jean-Baptiste (petit-fils) in November 1724.
The baptism records reveal the web of relationships that sustained this family. At Joseph's baptism in 1717, the register notes Jean-Baptiste as "Fermier de Giasson"—a tenant farmer working the Giasson concession—and names his godfather as his uncle Joseph Séguin dit Ladéroute, François's younger son and a fur trader. When Marie Louise was baptized in September 1719, her godfather was Pierre Deboucherville, Écuyer—a member of the founding seigneurial family itself. Pierre's baptism in January 1716 was performed not by the curé but by Bouffandeau, who stepped in during the priest's absence.
First Settler of Vaudreuil Township
The 1725 Census of Vaudreuil
On 25 March 1725, the first census of Vaudreuil, conducted by Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, counted 38 families in the newly organized township. Eight never settled to work the land. Thirty families established themselves on their concessions. Jean-Baptiste Séguin was among them—and the date of his possession of Concession #15 de l'Anse predated that of the Léger and Poirier families, making his the oldest settled family in the seigneurie.
At some point between 1724 and 1725, Jean-Baptiste and Geneviève left the parish where both had been born, married, and raised nine children, and relocated westward to the new seigneurie of Vaudreuil. The reasons for this move are not recorded, but the timing suggests a family seeking fresh land as the older concessions at Boucherville became crowded. By the 1725 census, Jean-Baptiste had already established himself as a farmer—the earliest documented settler of what would become one of the most important townships in the Montréal region.
This was the same Vaudreuil whose seigneur, Philippe de Rigaud, had once been the governor who dealt leniently with Jean-Baptiste's brother François during the salt protest two decades earlier. Whether Jean-Baptiste reflected on this irony as he cleared his new concession is unknown, but the connection underscores how small and interconnected the colonial world remained.
In 1783—more than half a century after Jean-Baptiste's death—a telling record survives. William Atkinson of Nova Scotia purchased Lot #15 above Pointe Cavagnol from the heirs of Jean-Baptiste Séguin for his daughter Elizabeth, who was married to John Mark Crank. The Cranks settled on the land in 1789. The concession Jean-Baptiste had first cleared remained identified with his name even generations later.
Move to Chambly and Final Days
The family did not remain at Vaudreuil. By 1726, Jean-Baptiste and Geneviève had moved again—this time east to Chambly, on the Richelieu River. The evidence comes from their tenth and last child: Marie Françoise Agathe, born 17 June 1726 and baptized at St-Joseph de Chambly. She was the only one of their ten children not baptized at Boucherville. The reason for this second relocation is unknown, but the Richelieu River corridor held its own significance—it was along this same river that Jean-Baptiste's father François had served as a young soldier in the Carignan-Salières Regiment sixty years earlier.
Jean-Baptiste did not live long in Chambly. On 13 May 1728, he died at the Hôtel-Dieu in Montréal, the colony's hospital. He was approximately forty years old—though the burial record estimated his age at forty-five. The register names him simply as "Jean Baptiste La Deroute, habitant de la paroisse de Chambly," confirming his Chambly residence. He was buried the following day, 14 May 1728, in the cemetery of Notre-Dame de Montréal.
The burial entry is stark in its economy. No family members are named as witnesses—only a fellow priest, M. Falcoz, and the beadle Simon Monginos. He had died "d'hier à l'hôpital de cette ville"—yesterday, at the hospital of this city. He was buried "dans le cimetière hors de la ville"—in the cemetery outside the city walls. Whatever illness had brought him to the Hôtel-Dieu, it had taken him far from his family at Chambly.
He left behind Geneviève, age thirty-eight, with ten children ranging from the two-year-old Agathe to the seventeen-year-old Louis. The eldest surviving sons—Louis, Jean-Baptiste fils, and Pierre—were approaching adulthood, but the younger children still needed years of care. Geneviève would prove more than equal to the task.
Geneviève: Three Marriages and Eighty-Four Years
Geneviève Barbot dite Boisdoré did not remain a widow long. On 18 April 1730—less than two years after Jean-Baptiste's death—she married Philippe Charles Rolland at Notre-Dame de Montréal. When Rolland too passed, she married a third time: Jean Bénard Beausoleil, on 3 February 1744, again at Notre-Dame. Three marriages across thirty-four years, each recorded in a different church, each marking a new chapter in an extraordinarily long colonial life.
Geneviève died on 22 August 1773 at the mission church of L'Annonciation at Oka (Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes), at the remarkable age of eighty-four. She had been baptized in the same small Boucherville church as the man she first married, and she had outlived him by forty-five years.
At her burial, three of her Séguin sons were present: Jean-Baptiste fils, Pierre, and Jean. That they came to Oka for her funeral speaks to the enduring bonds of this family. Oka, the mission of Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes, was the same church where two of her sons had married Raizenne Shoentakouani sisters decades earlier, and where our ancestor Marie Charlotte had married Jean-Baptiste Larocque Rocbrune in 1744.
Two Brothers and the Raizenne Shoentakouani Sisters
Among the most striking details in the family record is the marriage of two of Jean-Baptiste's sons to sisters from the same Indigenous-French family at the Oka mission. Louis, the eldest surviving son, married Marie Anne Raizenne Shoentakouani in 1736. Six years later, Jean-Baptiste fils married her sister Marie Catherine Raizenne Shoentakouani in 1742.
Their wives were daughters of Ignace Raizenne Shoentakouani and Marie Élisabeth Nimbs Touatogouach—a family that bridged the Indigenous and French worlds at the Lake of Two Mountains mission. These marriages connected the Séguin family to the same mission community where, generations later, Gabriel Guilbault would marry Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe in 1801—our 4th-great-grandmother whose discovery is documented in the Abitakijikokwe Case Study.
The Oka mission church of L'Annonciation appears repeatedly in the Séguin family records: as the site of these marriages, as the place where Geneviève was buried in 1773 with her sons in attendance, and as a crossroads where French, Algonquin, and Haudenosaunee communities converged.
Joseph at Ste-Anne-de-Détroit
While most of Jean-Baptiste's children settled in the corridor between Boucherville, Vaudreuil, and Oka, one son ventured much farther west. Joseph, born 23 November 1717, eventually made his way to Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, where he married Marie Thérèse Tremblay on 7 January 1751 at Ste-Anne-de-Détroit. He died there on 16 February 1795, at the age of seventy-seven.
Joseph was not the first Séguin at Detroit. His uncle—also named Joseph, the second son of François Séguin and Jeanne Petit, born in 1694—had also been a fur trader at the fort. Two generations of Séguins at Detroit, uncle and nephew, extending the family's reach from the St. Lawrence deep into the pays d'en haut.
Marie Charlotte Séguin: Our Ancestor ★
Marie Charlotte Séguin was born on 5 March 1723 at Boucherville and baptized the following day at Sainte-Famille Church—the eighth of Jean-Baptiste and Geneviève's ten children. She was five years old when her father died at the Hôtel-Dieu in Montréal.
On 27 January 1744, at age twenty, Marie Charlotte married Jean-Baptiste Larocque Rocbrune at the mission church of L'Annonciation at Oka. Her husband's mother was Marie Madeleine Sabourin—connecting to yet another surname in the broader Guilbault Line. Marie Charlotte died on 5 December 1796 and was buried at St-Michel de Vaudreuil, the same parish where several of her siblings also found their final rest.
Through Marie Charlotte, the Séguin bloodline passed to Joseph "Thomas" Couillaud Larocque, then to Marie Madeleine Rocbrunes Laroque, and finally to Evangeliste Guilbault—the journalier of St-André-Est whose story opens The Guilbault Line series.
The Ten Children of Jean-Baptiste Séguin & Geneviève Barbot
| # | Name | Born / Baptized | Place | Marriage | Spouse | Death |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marie Josèphe | 28 Mar 1711 | Boucherville | — | 22 Apr 1712, Boucherville | |
| 2 | Louis | 8 Apr 1712 | Boucherville | 8 Apr 1736, Oka | Marie Anne Raizenne Shoentakouani | 13 Jul 1763, Oka |
| 3 | Jean-Baptiste (fils) | 14 May 1714 | Boucherville | 22 Jul 1742 | Marie Catherine Raizenne Shoentakouani; 2nd m. 1749 M.J. Lamagdeleine Ladouceur | 24 Jul 1786, Vaudreuil |
| 4 | Pierre | 2 Jan 1716 | Boucherville | 3 Feb 1739, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue | Marie Josèphe Mallet; 2nd m. 1761 M.C. André Stamand | 25 Aug 1788, Vaudreuil |
| 5 | Joseph | 23 Nov 1717 | Boucherville | 7 Jan 1751, Ste-Anne-de-Détroit | Marie Thérèse Tremblay | 16 Feb 1795, Détroit |
| 6 | Marie Louise | 22 Sep 1719 | Boucherville | 29 Feb 1740, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue | René Fortin Lagrandeur | — |
| 7 | Jean | 13 Mar 1722 | Boucherville | No further records found | — | |
| 8 | Marie Charlotte ★ OUR ANCESTOR | 5 Mar 1723 | Boucherville | 27 Jan 1744, Oka | Jean-Baptiste Larocque Rocbrune | 5 Dec 1796, Vaudreuil |
| 9 | Jean-Baptiste (petit-fils) | 28 Nov 1724 | Boucherville | 16 May 1749 / 6 Nov 1752, Oka | Marie Amable Mallet / Marguerite Tourangeau Godin | 1 Nov 1779, Oka |
| 10 | Marie Françoise Agathe | 17 Jun 1726 | Chambly | 25 Nov 1743, Montréal | Étienne Guérin Stétienne | 14 Dec 1781, Vaudreuil |
Key Dates
Connection to The Guilbault Line
Primary Source Documents
Jean-Baptiste Séguin dit Ladéroute — Life Records
Geneviève Barbot dite Boisdoré — Life Records
Child 1: Marie Josèphe (1711–1712)
Child 2: Louis (1712–1763) — Married Raizenne Shoentakouani
Child 3: Jean-Baptiste fils (1714–1786)
Child 4: Pierre (1716–1788)
Child 5: Joseph (1717–1795) — Died at Ste-Anne-de-Détroit
Child 6: Marie Louise (1719–?)
Child 7: Jean (1722–?)
Child 8: Marie Charlotte (1723–1796) ★ Our Ancestor
Child 9: Jean-Baptiste petit-fils (1724–1779)
Child 10: Marie Françoise Agathe (1726–1781) — Born at Chambly
Sainte-Famille de Boucherville
Sources & Citations
Primary Sources
- Baptism (1688): Boucherville (Sainte-Famille) Parish Register, 12 November 1688. Priest: P.R. Guybert de la Saudrays.
- Marriage (1710): Boucherville (Sainte-Famille) Parish Register, 7 June 1710. Dispensation from banns by Vicar General of Québec.
- Burial (1728): Notre-Dame de Montréal Parish Register, 14 May 1728. Priest: Jullien.
- Baptism of Geneviève Barbot (1689): Boucherville (Sainte-Famille) Parish Register, 21 July 1689.
- Burial of Geneviève (1773): L'Annonciation, Oka Parish Register, 22 August 1773.
- Children's Baptisms (1711–1724): Boucherville (Sainte-Famille) Parish Registers.
- Baptism of Marie Françoise Agathe (1726): St-Joseph de Chambly Parish Register, 17 June 1726.
- Vaudreuil Census (1725): Census conducted by Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, 25 March 1725.
Secondary Sources
- Association des Séguin d'Amérique. Biography of Jean Baptiste Séguin dit Ladéroute. WikiTree.
- Laforest, Thomas J. Our French Canadian Ancestors. LISI Press.
- Séguin-Pharand, Yolande. François Séguin ou L'impossible défi. Association des Séguin d'Amérique, 1992.
- PRDH-IGD. Family #10660, Individuals #8313, #68314, #93872, #123862, #89486, #27022, #104109, #40823, #118218, #145402, #117695. Université de Montréal.
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