The Aversion: A Family War Over a Fille du Roi's Estate
The Aversion
What the court file of 1697 says about a Fille du Roi, the husband who outlived her, and the children who took him before a judge.
On 28 February 1697, Guillaume Roger, the provost judge of the seigneury of Notre-Dame-des-Anges, wrote a word into an order that has followed one Charlesbourg family ever since: aversion.
The defendant was Pierre Guilbault, habitant of Charlesbourg, about fifty years old and married again for seven weeks. The plaintiffs were the heirs of his first wife: Joseph Guilbault, twenty-four; François Dubois, acting for his wife Marie, twenty-eight; and Étienne Guilbault, who had turned twenty-two that month.
The matter was the community of goods Pierre had held with their mother. Her name was Louise Senécal. She had been dead for nearly four years at the least, and no one has yet found the day she died.
The Woman at the Center
Louise Senécal was baptised at Saint-Éloi in Rouen on 15 February 1637. Her mother, Françoise Campion, was buried there when Louise was eight. Thirty years later she was in Québec, one of the young women the Crown sent to New France who are known as the Filles du Roi.
On 30 September 1667 she and Pierre Guilbault went before the notary Pierre Duquet. Pierre settled on her a douaire préfix of 200 livres — the provision she would have as his widow — and the contract recorded that Louise brought 100 livres of her own into the community. Neither of them could sign. Six days later they were married at Notre-Dame-de-Québec.
They settled at Charlesbourg and had four children: Marie in 1668, Joseph in 1672, Étienne in 1675 and Elisabeth in 1679. When Elisabeth was baptised at Québec in December 1679, the priest named her mother as the wife of Pierre Guilbaut —
"…et à ce qu'elle dit dudit Pierre Guilbaut son mary, duquel elle est séparée."
…and, by her own account, of the said Pierre Guilbaut her husband, from whom she is separated. — Baptism of Elisabeth Guilbault, Notre-Dame-de-Québec, 17 December 1679At the census of 1681 they were enumerated in one household at la Petite Auvergne, with thirty arpents under cultivation, eight cattle, two horses and one gun.
After that, Louise disappears from the record. Her burial has not been found — not in PRDH, and not yet in the registers of Charlesbourg, Québec or the Hôtel-Dieu. The first document that names her as dead is dated 13 April 1693.
Louise's early life and her voyage to New France are the subject of Part 1, "Crossing the Atlantic." Her marriage and the separation of 1679 are in Part 2, "The Hidden Years."
The Widower
On 13 April 1693, before the royal notary Louis Chambalon, Pierre Guillebault veuf en premières noces de Louise Senecal contracted to marry Jeanne Morin, daughter of André Morin of Saint-Bernard. Standing with Pierre were his son-in-law, François Dubois, masson, and his daughter Marie. No marriage followed.
The contract proves only that Louise was dead by that day. How long she had been dead, it does not say.
Louise's share of what she and Pierre had built did not pass at her death to their children as a separate estate. Under the Coutume de Paris, the goods of a married couple formed a single community; at the death of one spouse, half belonged to the survivor and half to the dead spouse's heirs. Before that half could be separated, the community had to be inventoried — and before a widower could remarry, any minor children had to be given guardians. Étienne was a minor, and would be until he was twenty-five.
For nearly four years after the Morin contract, no division of Louise's half has been found. By the end of 1696, Pierre intended to marry again: Françoise Le Blanc, daughter of Jacques Le Blanc, habitant of Saint-Claude, and Suzanne Rousselin.
The Winter of 1697
What the Law Required
Read in order, the acts of January 1697 begin with Pierre.
3 January: A Guardian for Étienne
Pierre appeared before Guillaume Roger "in consequence of our order of the last of December, made on the petition presented to us by him," and brought a council together. For his own side there were no relatives to call — à défaut de parents du costé paternel — so friends sat: Jean and Joseph Normand, Pierre Mortrel and Jacques Duhault. For Louise's side sat François Dubois, as Marie's husband, among others. With Pierre withdrawn, they named him guardian of his minor son, and Pierre Mortrel subrogate guardian — the person charged with watching the minor's interests against the guardian's.
This was the step a widower had to take before he could remarry. So was the inventory that followed on the 4th and 5th.
7 January: A Wedding and a Petition
On Monday the 7th, at St-Charles-Borromée in Charlesbourg, the priest Alexandre Doucet married Pierre Guillebo… veuf en premières noces de Louise Senecal to Françoise Le Blanc. Among the friends of the groom who signed was Thomas Pajot — the father-in-law of Joseph Guilbault.
The same day, in Québec, the Sovereign Council heard a petition presented by Étienne himself, "saying that he is aged twenty-two, as appears by the register of baptisms of the parish of Notre-Dame of this town," and wishing to enjoy the little property that had come to him by his mother's death. The Council ordered letters of emancipation. Baptised on 15 February 1675, he was in fact five weeks short of twenty-two.
The letters did not make Étienne an adult. Once his kin had been heard, they let him enjoy his movable goods and the income of his land — but not sell or mortgage that land until he reached twenty-five.
24 January: The Heirs' Petition
Seventeen days after the wedding, Louise's heirs came before the judge: Joseph Guilbault; François Dubois, as the husband of Marie Guilbault; and Étienne Guilbault. On their petition, the judge ordered Pierre, as widower of Louise Senécal and father of the plaintiffs, to close the inventory of the community and proceed to its division.
1 February: The Inventory Closed
Pierre appeared, in his own name for the community and as guardian of Étienne, with Marie and Joseph Guilbault and with Pierre Mortrel as subrogate guardian. He swore that he had concealed nothing and had put nothing to his own use, and the inventory taken on 4 and 5 January was closed. That inventory — the list of what was in the house at la Petite Auvergne — has not been found.
The Aversion
Closing the inventory fixed what there was. It did not divide it. On 28 February 1697, on a further petition from the same plaintiffs, Guillaume Roger issued the order that gives this story its name:
Considering the aversion between the plaintiffs and the defendant…
What the Judge Ordered
- He would go himself to the defendant's house at Charlesbourg.
- The movable goods of the community would be divided by Mathurin Villeneuve and Jacques Duhault, arbitrators named by the court of its own motion.
- The land would be divided by Jean Le Rouge.
The parties, in other words, would not choose the men who divided their property; the court would. One of those men, Jacques Duhault, had sat on Pierre's family council eight weeks earlier as one of his friends.
The order records the hostility and what the court did about it. It does not say what caused it — and neither does anything else in the file. When the division took place, and what each heir received, has not yet been found.
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The People in the File
The court records say nothing about feelings except that one word. What they do show is who stood where, and when.
François Dubois and Marie Guilbault stood with Pierre at the notary's in April 1693. In January 1697 Dubois sat on the council that named Pierre guardian; three weeks later he was a plaintiff against him.
Joseph Guilbault, the elder son, headed the petition. His father-in-law, Thomas Pajot, had signed at Pierre's wedding seventeen days before.
Étienne Guilbault, the youngest, went to the Sovereign Council on the day of his father's wedding and was among the plaintiffs seventeen days later.
Pierre Guilbault began the proceedings himself, as the law required, and swore at the clôture that he had hidden nothing.
What each of them felt, and why the aversion arose, the record leaves unwritten. This essay leaves it there too.
The End
Pierre Guilbault was admitted to the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec and died there on 5 October 1697 — seven months after the aversion order, and nine months after his second wedding. The hospital's register gives a single line: le 3 pierre guillebaut agé de 50 ans de charle Bourg, mort le 5.
Five weeks later, on 10 November 1697, Françoise Le Blanc, widow of Pierre Guillebault, made an accord before Chambalon with Louise's heirs — Joseph and Étienne Guillebault, François Dubois and Marie Guillebault. On 14 February 1698 Étienne ceded his rights in the estates of his father and mother to Joseph, François Dubois and Marie.
Étienne married Marie Françoise Roy at Charlesbourg on 2 March 1699; the register names both his parents as deceased. He died at the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec in 1720, aged forty-five.
What the Documents Reveal
For a family of habitants who could not sign their names, the Guilbaults left an unusually full paper trail for a single year:
- The guardianship of Étienne, 3 January 1697
- The arrêt of the Sovereign Council and the letters of emancipation, 7 January
- Pierre's second marriage, 7 January
- The order on the heirs' petition, 24 January
- The closing of the inventory, 1 February
- The "aversion" order, 28 February
- Pierre's death at the Hôtel-Dieu, 5 October
Read one by one, each is routine. Read in order, they show a law being followed step by step, a family dividing along its lines, and a judge who wrote down, in a single word, that the people before him could not settle it themselves.
And at the center of every act, never present and never signing, is Louise Senécal — named in each as the late wife and mother whose half of the community was being divided.
The Legacy
Through Joseph Olivier Guilbault, the elder son, Louise's line ran on at Charlesbourg — his son Pierre, born in 1710, lived there until 1796 — and west, through his son Charles François and grandson Charles Gabriel, to the voyageur Gabriel Guilbault, who married Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe, a Saulteaux (Ojibwe) woman.
Denis Beauregard's Genealogy of the French in North America estimates Louise Senécal's descendants at between 210,000 and 630,000 Quebecers.
Under the Coutume de Paris, half of what a married couple built belonged to the wife. When Louise died, her half became her children's claim — and in 1697 they pressed it through the court until the judge named arbitrators to divide it.
About the Documents
The court acts are held at the Archives nationales à Québec (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec): the guardianship of 3 January 1697 (03Q,TL5,D2769-110), the order of 24 January (03Q,TL5,D2769-112), the clôture of 1 February (03Q,TL5,D2769-113) and the aversion order of 28 February (03Q,TL5,D2769-119), from the seigneurial court of Notre-Dame-des-Anges; and the arrêt and letters of emancipation of 7 January (TP1,S28,P4979 and P4980), from the Fonds Conseil souverain. The marriage contracts of 1667 and 1693 are in the greffes of Pierre Duquet and Louis Chambalon. The parish and hospital registers were consulted through FamilySearch.
Louise Senécal is counted among the Filles du Roi by Yves Landry and by Silvio Dumas. No record of her death or burial has been found; she died after the census of 1681 and before 13 April 1693. The full sources, and what is still missing, are set out in the case study methodology.
This is part of an ongoing series documenting the lives of Filles du Roi through primary sources. If you're researching your own Fille du Roi ancestor and have questions about accessing 17th-century Quebec records, reach out — I'm happy to help.
Document Gallery
The documentary trail behind the narrative above. Click any image to view the original at full resolution.
Crossing the Atlantic: How Louise Senécal Became a Fille du Roi
From Rouen to New France — Louise's journey begins.
Read Part 1 →The Aversion
The 1697 court case over her estate, and the word that preserved it.
Are You Connected to the Guilbault Line?
If you descend from the Guilbault (Guilbeau, Guilbeault) family of Charlesbourg and the Quebec parishes, from the children of Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe, or from the founding families of the line — Senécal, Séguin dit Ladéroute, Morin, Couillaud dit Roquebrune, Gaulin — I’d like to compare notes. Documented trees, DNA matches, family papers, and even half-remembered stories have all moved this research forward.
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