Marie Gaillard dit Daire
Marie Gaillard dit Daire
A Woman Who Shaped a Lineage
Marie Gaillard crossed the Atlantic in her early twenties as one of the Filles du roi. She married a soldier from the Pyrenees, bore six children in ten years, and was widowed before she was forty. Within a year she had married again, merging her household with that of another widower and raising two sets of children under one roof. Six years later her daughter married her stepson, permanently joining the two families. She outlived that second husband by fifteen years and died at Lachine in 1736, having survived every adult she had known when she first stepped ashore at Quebec.
She left no letters and no document in her own hand, and three records say so directly: her marriage contract of 1669, in which she and Jean Perrier both declared they could not write or sign; the marriage contract of 1684, which she did not sign; and her eldest daughter's second marriage in 1694, at which she told the priest she did not know how to sign. What survives of her is what survives of most colonial women: her name in the margins of other people's records. Parish registers, two censuses, a marriage contract, a burial entry. From those fragments a life can be reconstructed, though not a voice.
Two Lines Converge
Through her daughter Marie Madeleine:
Through her stepson and son-in-law Pierre:
And onward to the Guilbault line:
The 1688 marriage of Marie's daughter to her stepson means every descendant of that union descends from both households she brought together — from Marie through Madeleine, and from Jean Sabourin through Pierre.
The Decision to Leave: Normandy, 1669
Marie was born in Normandy in the 1640s. Her own account of her parish survives only at second hand, in the record of her marriage: the priest at Notre-Dame de Québec wrote that she came from la paroisse de Clermont Sainte-Croix, archevêché de Rouen. Her marriage contract of 1684 gives the place as Mont-Sainte-Croix. Both point to the same corner of the Pays de Bray northeast of Rouen. The two compilations resolve them differently but land within about five kilometres of each other: PRDH gives Ernemont-sur-Buchy, the Genealogy of the French in North America gives Sainte-Croix-sur-Buchy. Neither is a record reading — both are identifications made from the same two variants above — and the precise commune remains unsettled.
Her parents were named twice, and differently each time. At her 1669 marriage she is Marie Daire, daughter of the late Pierre Daire and Marie Gaillard. In her 1684 marriage contract she is Marie Gaillard, daughter of the late Pierre Gaillard and the late Marie Martin. Her descendants adopted Gaillard.
On the surname: Two records, two sets of parental names, one woman. The variance is documented rather than resolved. No French baptismal record has been located, and until one is, the family's original surname cannot be stated with confidence. She is styled here as she appears across the whole run of Canadian records: Marie Gaillard dit Daire.
Her father was dead by 1669 — the marriage register names him deffunct — and her mother by 1684. What options a fatherless young woman had in rural Normandy were narrow ones. She took the King's offer of passage to New France, where a colony short of marriageable women was prepared to underwrite her crossing.
She reached Quebec in the summer of 1669. Peter Gagné's compilation of the Filles du roi lists her among that year's cohort (Landry 315, Dumas 212). Within three months she was contracted to marry.
The First Marriage: A Soldier from Béarn
Jean Perrier dit Lafleur had been in the colony for four years by the time Marie arrived. Born at Pau, he had enlisted around 1664 and reached Quebec in the summer of 1665. Which company he came with is disputed between two contemporary documents — the 1668 roll of soldiers turned habitants places him in the La Brisardière company of the Régiment d'Orléans, which had spent a year in the West Indies under Tracy before sailing north; a notarial act of 1667 places him in another company of the Carignan-Salières, which came directly from France. The question is set out on his own page. When the troops were offered the choice of returning to France or staying as settlers, he stayed.
In the census of 1666 he appears not as a landholder but as engagé domestique — an indentured servant — in the household of Jean Nau, a shoemaker. Two years later, on 10 December 1668, the seigneur of Beauport granted him a concession of his own, and the following autumn he married.
Marriage Register, Notre-Dame de Québec, 6 October 1669
The register calls him Poirier, not Perrier. The two forms alternate throughout his life and across his children's records; the 1674 baptism of one of his sons has him as Jean Perier dit lafleur, and the databases index him under both. The dispensation from the third bann suggests haste, which was ordinary in a colony where the marriage season was short and the shipping calendar shorter.
A marriage contract had been drawn two weeks earlier, on 22 September 1669, before the notary Romain Becquet — and the original minute records where, and in whose company.
It was passed en cette ville de Québec, en la maison de lad. dame Bourdon, before noon. Dame Bourdon was Anne Gasnier, widow of Jean Bourdon, procureur général au Conseil Souverain — the woman charged with receiving the Filles du roi and seeing them married. The contract was drawn in the house where the King's Daughters were lodged, and she signed it.
So did Marie-Barbe de Boullongne, widow of Louis d'Ailleboust, formerly governor of New France. Both women are named in the body of the act among the parens et amis assembled for the bride, and both signatures stand at the foot of it. Marie had been in the colony perhaps ten weeks. In place of the family she did not have, a former governor's widow and the procureur général's widow stood for her.
Jean is described in the minute as an habitant at the côte de Beauport — he came to the contract with the concession of December 1668 already in hand. The settlement gives Marie customary dower or three hundred livres tournois préfix, at her election. Peter Gagné puts the goods she brought with her at an estimated two hundred livres, to which the King's gift of fifty livres was added — figures that most likely derive from this act, though the clause carrying them has not been isolated in the minute and they are repeated here as his. Then the closing clause:
Marriage Contract, Romain Becquet, 22 September 1669
That is the earliest of the three records in which Marie Gaillard's illiteracy is entered, and the only one that also covers her first husband.
Building a Household: Beauport, 1669–1682
The concession Jean had received in December 1668 lay in the village of Saint-Michel, in the seigneury of Beauport. It measured two arpents of frontage. In exchange he owed the seigneur an annual rent payable at Martinmas, one sol of cens for each arpent of frontage, and two live capons; he was obliged to grind his grain at the seigneurial mill, to allow roads across the land where the seigneury judged them necessary, and to fence his frontage from neighbour to neighbour. He had no claim against damage done by his neighbours' livestock.
Onto that ground Marie moved in October 1669. Over the next decade she bore six children.
The census of November 1681 caught the household whole. Jean Perrier is recorded at 35 and Marie Gaillard at 34, with six children beneath them: Marie and Marthe bracketed together at eleven or twelve, Jacques at eight, Madeleine at six, Marguerite at four, and François given in months. Against the household stands a single entry: fusil — one gun. The columns for livestock and for arpents under cultivation are blank.
That blank is meaningful, because on the same page the enumerator filled those columns wherever there was something to fill them with. Michel Filion, four households above, is credited with one gun, one pistol, ten horned cattle and twenty-five arpents. Mathurin Chaillé, immediately above the Perriers, has one gun, four cattle and ten arpents. The Perrier household has none of it.
Thirteen years after the concession, the two arpents of frontage had produced nothing the enumerator thought worth recording. The likeliest explanation is not incompetence but occupation: the record of his daughter's marriage in 1683 describes Jean Perrier as a maître tisserand — a master weaver. He held land, but he was not a farmer.
Within months Jean Perrier was dead. No burial record has been located. The fact of his death rests on the marriage record of September 1682, in which Marie is described as his widow, and on her 1684 marriage contract, which names her veufve de deffunct Jean Baptiste Perier. She was in her mid or late thirties, with six children, the eldest eleven and the youngest not yet two.
The February 1674 Baptism
One entry, two identities. The Beauport record for February 1674 gives a single child of Jean Perrier and Marie Gaillard, born on the 16th and baptized on the 25th, and names that child Jean. The compiled authorities do not agree on who it was.
One caution before the readings are set out. The February 1674 entry has so far been consulted only in the greffe transcript of the Beauport register — a later fair copy on ruled paper, in a single uniform hand. That copy has been shown to depart from the contemporaneous volume elsewhere: at the 1682 marriage it restyles the officiant and drops a clause. A transcript that rewords a formula can also normalise a name, and the whole of this dispute turns on one given name. Until folio 6 is read in the seventeenth-century hand, what follows should be understood as a dispute over what the transcript says.
| Source | Reading |
|---|---|
| Beauport register, greffe transcript | “a esté baptisé Jean Perier fils de Jean Perier dit lafleur et de Marie Gaillard sa femme né le seizième jour du dit mois.” Godparents Paul Vachon and Marie Madeleine Marsolet. |
| Genealogy of the French in North America [1125] | Assigns the entry to a son Jean, born 16 Feb 1674, baptized 25 Feb 1674, dead before the 1681 census. Lists Marie Madeleine separately, born about 1675, known only from that census. |
| PRDH-IGD, individual #28379 and family #2848 | Assigns the identical dates — birth 16 Feb 1674, baptism 25 Feb 1674, Beauport — to Marie Madeleine Josephe Perrier, the daughter who married Pierre Sabourin in 1688. The family view lists six children and no son named Jean. |
| DGFQ / DGAQ (Beauregard, note) | Presume that Jean and Madeleine are the same person. |
The stakes are not trivial. If the February 1674 child is Jean, then a seventh child existed and died before 1681, and Marie Madeleine's birth is undocumented. If the child is Marie Madeleine, then the register's Jean is a scribal error or a later change of name, and the family had six children rather than seven. Either way the 1681 census shows six living children, and either way Marie was widowed with six.
What the census ages suggest
The 1681 enumeration offers the first independent test, and it can be calibrated. The enumerator recorded completed years: Jacques, born in December 1672, was eight years and eleven months in November 1681 and was entered as eight; the twins, born in August 1670, were eleven years and three months and were entered as eleven. François, not yet two, was given in months. Where the ages can be checked against a documented baptism, they are right.
On that scale Madeleine, recorded at six, had completed six years but not seven — placing her birth between November 1674 and November 1675. A child born on 16 February 1674 would have completed seven years by that November and should have been entered as seven.
This favours the reading in which Jean and Madeleine are two children rather than one, and it is the reading the Genealogy of the French in North America adopts, giving Madeleine's birth as about 1675 on the authority of this same census. It is not decisive. Colonial enumerators recorded ages by estimate, and a seven-year-old written down as six is an unremarkable error. But it is the first piece of evidence that bears on the question from outside the two compilations, and it points away from the merge.
A second instance of the same editorial move
The February 1674 entry is not the only place where a Perrier child's given name in the register differs from the name the compilations carry. The Lachine marriage of 30 November 1711 records the union of Jean Perrier, fils de Jean Perrier et de Marie Gaillard, with Marguerite Paré. PRDH transcribes the act the same way, rendering the groom's given name as Jean in marriage no. 14381 — and then attaches that marriage, in family no. 2848, to Jacques, the son baptized in December 1672.
That does not settle the 1674 question, and it is not offered as though it did. What it establishes is a pattern in how this family's records have been handled: on at least two occasions a register name has been set aside in favour of a reconstructed identity, without the substitution being marked. Whether either substitution is correct is a separate matter, and both are treated here as open.
This page does not resolve the question. Both readings are recorded here because both are held by responsible compilations, and because the register alone cannot distinguish between a son who died unrecorded and a daughter recorded under the wrong name. A dedicated case study is in preparation.
Widowhood and the Strategic Remarriage
A widow with six young children and a farm that had produced neither crops nor cattle had a narrow set of options. Remarriage was the ordinary one. Colonial households required two adults; the legal and economic machinery of the colony assumed a male head; and children needed feeding whatever the law assumed.
On 22 September 1682, less than a year after Jean Perrier's death, Marie married Jean Sabourin at Beauport. The register describes him as veuf de Mathurine Renou, de la paroisse de Mont-Lambert, évêché d'Angoulême — a widower, from the Angoumois. Marie is veufve de deffunct Jean Baptiste Perier.
The marriage was made in haste. A single bann was published on the 21st, the Bishop of Quebec dispensing with the other two, and the couple were married the following day. Charles Amador Martin officiated, describing himself in the contemporaneous register as a priest performing the curial functions in the parish of Beauport. The same entry places Marie de cette paroisse — a parishioner of Beauport in her own right, thirteen years after she landed. The witnesses were Paul Vachon, royal notary at Beauport, and his son Vincent Vachon, both of whom signed; neither party is recorded as signing or as unable to.
The marriage contract came two years after the wedding, not before it. The original minute survives in the greffe of Paul Vachon, royal notary, and was passed at the bourg du Fargy in Beauport on the afternoon of 27 September 1684. It names Jean Sabourin as the son of the late Jean Sabourin and Estiennette Jouineaus, of the parish of Mont-Lambert in the diocese of Angoulême. It names Marie as the widow of the late Jean Baptiste Perier, daughter of the late Pierre Gaillard and the late Marie Martin. The wrapper is docketed in the notary's hand: 27 Sept 1684 — Mariage entre Jean Sabourin + Marie Gaillard.
The act is written throughout in the future tense of a contract drawn before a wedding. Each party promises to take the other pour sa femme et legitime espouse, pour son mary et legitime espoux, and the marriage is to be solemnized in the face of the Church le plustost que faire ce pourra — as soon as it may be done. They had by then been married for two years and a week. Nothing in the minute acknowledges that.
What is striking about the document is the company Marie kept in it. Standing as her parens et amis — the kin and friends who assembled to witness the promises — were Nicolas Juchereau, Sieur de Saint-Denis, formerly a councillor of the Conseil Souverain and captain of militia at Beauport, and his wife Damoiselle Marie Giffard, of the seigneurial family that had granted her first husband his land. Also named were Paul Ignard, Marie Bonville, and the Sieur Louis Prevost. Jean Sabourin's side was represented by Jean Robert Duprac, Vincent Vachon and Mathurin Chaillé.
Five people signed the minute: Nicolas Juchereau de Saint-Denis, Marie Giffard, Jean Robert Duprac, Vincent Vachon, and Paul Vachon the notary. Neither party signed. The act closes with the notary's standard formula recording that those who had not signed declared they did not know how to write or to sign, having been questioned in accordance with the ordonnance. It is the earliest located document to place Marie Gaillard's illiteracy on the record.
The Juchereau connection was not new in 1684. Four years earlier, at the baptism of Marie's youngest child in February 1680, Nicolas Juchereau's six-year-old daughter Charlotte Françoise had stood as godmother, and the godfather had been François Madeleine Ruette Demonceaux, écuyer, councillor to the King and deputy attorney general at the Conseil Souverain. The child was given both his godfather's names.
A landless widow, twelve years in the colony, unable to sign her own name, is supported in her marriage contract by a former member of the Sovereign Council and the seigneur's daughter — and had four years earlier secured two officers of that same Council as godparents to her son. Whatever Marie Gaillard's material circumstances at Beauport, she was not without standing there.
Managing the Blended Household
Two sets of children came together in 1682. Marie's six ranged from twelve-year-old twins to a two-year-old. Jean Sabourin brought his own, among them Pierre, born about 1666 and already near adulthood.
Marie's Children (Perrier)
- Marie, 12
- Marie Marthe, 12
- Jacques, 9
- Marie Madeleine, 7 or 8 (see the February 1674 question)
- Marguerite, c. 5
- François Madeleine, 2
Jean Sabourin's Children
- Pierre, c. 16
- Further children by Mathurine Renoux are reported but not yet documented here; the roster awaits parish confirmation.
The household moved west within fifteen months of the wedding. On 6 December 1683, at Lachine, the marriage record of Marie's eldest daughter describes Jean Sabourin as a laboureur living on the island of Montréal. The family's centre of gravity had shifted permanently: every subsequent marriage, baptism and burial in this line was celebrated at Montréal, Lachine, Pointe-Claire or Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, and none at Beauport.
That same record shows where at least one of Marie's children had gone. Marie Perrier, then thirteen, was married out of another household entirely: the priest recorded her as demeurant en la maison et au service de Me Rolland — living in the house and in the service of Monsieur Rolland of that parish. Her groom, Guillaume Loret, was a laboureur and habitant of Lachine, son of the late Guillaume Loret, master roofer, and the late Olive Lebeau, both natives of the diocese of Vannes in Brittany.
Two banns were published and the third dispensed by François Dollier de Casson, vicar general on the island of Montréal. Neither the couple nor the witnesses could write. The record names Marie Gaillard as the bride's mother, living, and now the wife of Jean Sabourin — and her first husband, the bride's father, as deffunct Jean Perier vivant maître tisserand, natif de la ville de Pau.
The blended household is not merely an inference from the 1682 marriage. Ten years on, at Marguerite's wedding in September 1692, the priest at Notre-Dame de Montréal named Jean Sabourin among the witnesses and identified him in the record as le beau-père de l'épouse — the bride's stepfather. Whatever the arrangement had been at Beauport in 1682, it was still being described in those terms a decade later and two hundred and fifty kilometres upriver.
The Union That Bound Two Families
On 24 May 1688, at Notre-Dame de Montréal, Marie's daughter Marie Madeleine Josephe Perrier married Pierre Sabourin — her stepbrother, and the son of her mother's husband.
There was no blood relationship and therefore no canonical impediment. Marriages between step-siblings were not unusual in blended colonial families, where a household's children were often each other's nearest acquaintances. But the consequence in this case was durable: it fused the Perrier and Sabourin lines permanently. Their daughter Marie Madeleine Sabourin, born in 1699, carries both descents, and every generation after her carries both.
Marriage Register, Notre-Dame de Montréal, 24 May 1688
The entry names both sets of parents, and in doing so it names Marie Gaillard as a living woman on both sides of the ledger — mother of the bride, wife of the groom's father. It also gives Pierre's mother as Mathurine Vignaud, where the Beauport register of 1682 had called her Mathurine Renou. The forms are close enough to be the same name badly heard twice, but they are not identical, and the point is recorded rather than smoothed over.
A marriage contract preceded the ceremony by some eight weeks. The notary's répertoire for 1688 carries, under 27 March, act number 1009: Contract de mariage Entre Pierre Sabourin & Magdeleine Perrier. That is an index entry and not the act itself; the contract's contents, and the identity of the notary who drew it, remain to be retrieved.
The ordinary sequence in New France was contract first, wedding after — as here, eight weeks apart, and as at Marie's own first marriage in 1669, where the interval was two weeks. That makes the arrangement of her second marriage the more conspicuous: married at Beauport in September 1682, with no contract drawn until September 1684.
The other children's marriages
Marie's children married across four decades, and the records of those marriages are the thread by which her own later life can be followed. Marie married Guillaume Loret dit Lafontaine at Lachine in December 1683 and, after his death, Jean Brunet dit Lestang at Lachine in October 1694. Marthe married a soldier of the Marquis de Crisafy's company, surnamed Charlebois dit Jolly, at Montréal in November 1686; the register does not give his given name, and the compilations supply Jean Charles from later records. Marguerite married Jacques Thomelet at Montréal in September 1692 and, thirty-four years later and twice widowed, Michel Baugis at Lachine in December 1726. A Perrier son married Marguerite Paré at Lachine in November 1711.
Two of those weddings show the family acting as a family. At the 1711 marriage the witnesses included Jacob Toumelet and Jean Brunet — the husbands of the groom's sisters Marguerite and Marie. At the 1726 marriage the bride's sister Marie Perier, then living at Pointe-Claire, stood among the witnesses, together with the bride's niece Élisabeth Messaguer. Forty years after they left Beauport, the Perrier children were still standing up for each other at the altar.
Madeleine herself was widowed. On 31 January 1710 she married again, at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, to René Fortin dit Lagrandeur.
The Montréal Years
Marie and Jean Sabourin lived out four decades in the Montréal district. The notarial record of those years — land purchases, concessions taken and surrendered, leases — has not yet been assembled to a standard that permits publication here, and the specific transactions once attributed to them on this page have been withdrawn pending citation.
What can be said rests on the parish registers, and they place her in the room twice. In September 1692, at Notre-Dame de Montréal, her husband stood as witness to Marguerite's wedding and was recorded as the bride's stepfather. Two years later, on 19 October 1694, at Saints-Anges de Lachine, both of them appear.
Marriage Register, Saints-Anges de Lachine, 19 October 1694
This is the only surviving parish record that places Marie Gaillard bodily at an event and reports something she said. It is a small thing, and what it reports is a negative: asked whether she could sign the register at her eldest daughter's second wedding, she answered with the others that she could not. It is nonetheless the closest the documents come to her own voice.
Beyond that, the parish registers establish the shape of the years: the couple remained in the Montréal district for the rest of their lives, their children married and were buried in its parishes, and Marie was still living within reach of Lachine at her death in 1736.
Jean Sabourin was buried on 28 September 1721 in the cemetery at Pointe-Claire. The entry is brief. It gives no age, names no wife or children, and states no relationship to anyone; two witnesses declared they could not sign. The identification rests on the name, the date and the parish, and on the absence of any competing candidate — which is weaker ground than the rest of this page stands on, and is flagged as such below. Marie, in her middle or late seventies, became a widow for the second time. She did not remarry.
The Last Fifteen Years: 1721–1736
The reasoning that had driven her to Jean Sabourin in 1682 no longer applied. Her children were grown and married, her grandchildren were themselves marrying, and there was no farm that required a second pair of adult hands. For fifteen years she lived as veuve Sabourin.
She was not out of the family's sight in those years. In December 1726, at Lachine, her daughter Marguerite married for the second time; the witnesses were drawn from both households and included another of Marie's daughters. Marie herself is not named in that record, and no document places her anywhere between 1721 and her death.
She died on 12 July 1736 and was buried the next day in the cemetery at Lachine.
Burial Register, Saints-Anges de Lachine, 13 July 1736
The priest recorded her as about ninety-three, which would place her birth around 1643. The 1681 census gives her age as 34, which would place it around 1647. Colonial ages were estimates, and the two figures cannot both be right; the range is stated here rather than reconciled. She was somewhere between eighty-eight and ninety-three.
Neither witness at her grave could write, and both said so to the priest — as she herself had done, in the same words and in the same parish, forty-two years before.
She had outlived her first husband by fifty-four years and her second by fifteen. She had crossed an ocean in her early twenties, built one household and then merged it with another, and lived to see her great-grandchildren. Jean Perrier gave her children; Jean Sabourin gave her a second household. What she gave her descendants was the plain fact of their existence.
Database Records: Structured Transcription
The PRDH-IGD compiles parish register entries into family reconstitutions. The records below are database conclusions derived from the registers, not independent witnesses to them; where a conclusion differs from a register reading, the register governs. Each element has been checked against the sources listed at the foot of this page.
PRDH Couple #2848 — Jean Perrier & Marie Gaillard
| Field | Entry |
|---|---|
| Couple number | 2848 |
| Husband | Jean Perrier |
| His father | Jean Poirier Perrier |
| His mother | Marie Dervie |
| Wife | Marie Gaillard |
| Her father | Pierre Gaillard |
| Her mother | Marie Gaillard Martin |
| Marriage | 6 October 1669, Québec (Notre-Dame-de-Québec) |
| Her death | 12 July 1736 |
| Her burial | 13 July 1736, Montréal, Lachine (Saints-Anges) |
| Subsequent couple | Marie Gaillard with Jean Sabourin |
Children recorded under couple #2848
| Sex | Child & spouse | Birth (baptism), place | Marriage, place | Death (burial), place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| f | Marie Guillaume Laure Fontaine Lafontaine |
21 August 1670 Québec (Notre-Dame-de-Québec) |
6 December 1683 Montréal, Lachine (Saints-Anges) |
5 December 1740 Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal) |
| f | Marie Marthe Jean Charles Charlebois Jolibois |
21 August 1670 Québec (Notre-Dame-de-Québec) |
25 November 1686 Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal) |
20 October 1750 Pointe-Claire (Saint-Joachim) |
| m | Jacques Marguerite Paré |
10 December 1672 Québec (Notre-Dame-de-Québec) |
30 November 1711 Montréal, Lachine (Saints-Anges) |
20 December 1737 Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal) |
| f | Marie Madeleine Josephe Pierre Sabourin |
16 February 1674 Beauport (Nativité-de-Notre-Dame) |
24 May 1688 Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal) |
— |
| f | Marie Marguerite Jacques Jacob Thomelet |
Vers 1677 Lieu indéterminé (au Québec) |
1 September 1692 Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal) |
18 December 1755 Montréal, Lachine (Saints-Anges) |
| m | François Madeleine | 21 February 1680 Beauport (Nativité-de-Notre-Dame) |
— | — |
PRDH records six children and no son named Jean: the 16 February 1674 birth is assigned here to Marie Madeleine Josephe. Three entries require a note. The 1670 and 1672 births are indexed to Québec because that is where the entries were written; all three registers state that the ceremonies took place in the Beauport chapel. The 1711 marriage is attached here to Jacques, but the Lachine register and PRDH's own transcription of that act (marriage no. 14381) both name the groom Jean. Second marriages of the children are not shown in this view: Marie married again in 1694, and Marguerite in 1726. Highlighted row indicates the line of descent.
PRDH Individual #22753 — Marie Gaillard
| Field | Entry |
|---|---|
| Status | Immigrant |
| Father | Pierre Gaillard |
| Mother | Marie Gaillard Martin |
| Birth | Vers 1647, Ernemont, archdiocese of Rouen, Normandy (now Ernemont-sur-Buchy, arr. Rouen, Seine-Maritime) |
| Death | 12 July 1736 |
| Burial | 13 July 1736, Montréal, Lachine (Saints-Anges) |
| First marriage | 6 October 1669, Québec (Notre-Dame-de-Québec), to Jean Perrier his father Jean Poirier Perrier; his mother Marie Dervie |
| Second marriage | 22 September 1682, Beauport (Nativité-de-Notre-Dame), to Jean Sabourin his father Jean Sabourin; his mother Antoinette Pineau |
Two elements of this record are contradicted by the original documents. The 1669 marriage register gives her parish as Clermont-Sainte-Croix, not Ernemont; and the 1684 marriage contract names Jean Sabourin's mother as Estiennette Jouineaus, not Antoinette Pineau. Both discrepancies remain open.
PRDH Individual #28379 — Marie Madeleine Josephe Perrier
| Field | Entry |
|---|---|
| Father | Jean Perrier |
| Mother | Marie Gaillard |
| Birth | 16 February 1674 |
| Baptism | 25 February 1674, Beauport (Nativité-de-Notre-Dame) |
| First marriage | 24 May 1688, Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal), to Pierre Sabourin his father Jean Sabourin; his mother Mathurine Renoux |
| Second marriage | 31 January 1710, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue (Sainte-Anne), to René Fortin Lagrandeur his father Louis Fortin Lagrandeur; his mother Catherine Chatillon Godin |
The birth and baptism dates in this record are those of the child the Beauport register names Jean. See The February 1674 Baptism above.
PRDH Individual #5034 — Marie Marguerite Perrier
| Field | Entry |
|---|---|
| Father | Jean Perrier |
| Mother | Marie Gaillard |
| Birth | Vers 1677 |
| Death | 18 December 1755 |
| Burial | 20 December 1755, Montréal, Lachine (Saints-Anges) |
| First marriage | 1 September 1692, Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal), to Jacques Jacob Thomelet his father Jean Thomelet; his mother Catherine Beaudreau |
| Second marriage | 2 December 1726, Montréal, Lachine (Saints-Anges), to Michel Bougie his father Michel Bougie; his mother Marie Madeleine Dubois |
PRDH renders the second husband's surname as Bougie on this individual card and as Baugis on the marriage card (no. 14431); the Lachine register reads Baugis. The 1726 register gives Marguerite's age as about forty-eight, implying a birth about 1678. Three statements converge: the 1681 census age of four implies about 1677, the 1726 marriage about 1678, and the 1755 burial about 1678.
Unresolved Questions
Research on this family is open on several fronts. These are stated rather than papered over:
| Question | State of the evidence |
|---|---|
| The February 1674 child | The register names Jean; PRDH assigns the entry to Marie Madeleine; DGFQ and DGAQ presume the two are one person. The 1681 census age of six for Madeleine leans against the merge but does not settle it. |
| The groom of 1711 | The Lachine register names him Jean Perrier, son of Jean Perrier and Marie Gaillard, and PRDH transcribes the act the same way in marriage no. 14381. PRDH's family reconstitution nonetheless attaches the marriage to Jacques, baptized December 1672. Whether one man is meant under two names, or a second son survived to 1711, is not established. The Lachine entry survives as a later registrar's copy, which is a further reason not to press the spelling too hard. |
| The Beauport exemplars | Two versions of the Beauport register survive for these years: the contemporaneous cahiers and a later greffe transcript on ruled paper. They are one witness, not two. Collation at the 1682 marriage — the earliest entry present in both — shows the transcript rewording the officiant's style and dropping a phrase. The February 1674 and February 1680 entries have been read only in the transcript. Of the seven Beauport volumes filmed for this parish, only one covers years before 1681, and it is the film on which the transcript sits; whether original cahiers for 1674 and 1680 survive within it has not yet been established. Until that is settled, the given name in the February 1674 entry rests on a copy known to be imperfect. |
| Marie's Norman parish | Marriage register: Clermont-Sainte-Croix. Marriage contract: Mont-Sainte-Croix. PRDH: Ernemont-sur-Buchy. GFNA: Sainte-Croix-sur-Buchy (Seine-Maritime, INSEE 76571), reached explicitly from the same two variants. The last two are identifications, not independent evidence, and the communes they name are adjacent. No French baptism located. |
| Her year of birth | 1681 census implies c. 1647; the 1736 burial implies c. 1643. Both are estimates recorded by others. |
| Jean Perrier's year of birth | The 1666 census gives his age as 24, implying c. 1642; the 1681 census gives 35, implying c. 1646. |
| His death and burial | No burial record located. Death established only by Marie's status as widow in September 1682. |
| Jean Sabourin's burial | The Pointe-Claire entry of 28 September 1721 gives no age, no spouse, no children and no relationship of any kind; the given name is written Jean Baptiste. The identification rests on name, date and parish alone, and is the weakest link in the closing section of this page. |
| The 1684 marriage contract | The original minute has now been read at BAnQ. It confirms the anomaly rather than explaining it: the act is dated 27 September 1684, two years and a week after the wedding, yet is drafted throughout in prospective language — the marriage to be solemnized le plustost que faire ce pourra. Why a couple already married should have a contract drawn in these terms is unresolved. Deferred community-property arrangements and post-nuptial settlements both occur in the colony; which, if either, applies here has not been established. |
| Jean Sabourin's origin | The 1682 Beauport register and the 1684 contract both give Mont-Lambert in the diocese of Angoulême. Gagné gives Montalembert in the diocese of Poitiers, Poitou, and adds that Sabourin was a plowman born about 1641 who had married Mathurine Ranaud at La Rochelle in 1666 and had six children by her. Montalembert is a real commune, so this is probably an identification of the place rather than a correction of the record — the same kind of move as Ernemont and Sainte-Croix for Marie — but the diocese is reassigned without explanation and the point is unresolved. |
| Jean Sabourin's mother | Contract: Estiennette Jouineaus. PRDH: Antoinette Pineau. Not reconciled. |
| Pierre Sabourin's mother | Mathurine Renou in the 1682 Beauport register; Mathurine Vignaud in the 1688 Montréal register; Mathurine Renoux in PRDH. Probably one name variously heard, but not established. |
| The 1688 marriage contract | Known only from a notarial répertoire: 27 March 1688, act no. 1009. The notary is unidentified and the act itself has not been read. |
| The groom of 1686 | The Montréal register gives only the surname Charlebois dit Jolly and the company he served in; PRDH leaves the given name blank in marriage no. 47505 and notes that the officiant did not sign. Jean Charles comes from later records, not from this one. |
| The diocese of Pau | The 1669 marriage places Pau in the diocese of Bayonne; the 1683 marriage of his daughter places it in the diocese of Bordeaux. Neither is correct for the period, and both are second-hand. |
| Jean Perrier as weaver and soldier | The 1683 record calls him a master weaver. How that trade relates to his military service and to the Beauport concession is not yet worked out. |
| François Madeleine Perrier | Baptized February 1680, with two figures from the Conseil Souverain's circle as godparents. Engaged for the West with his brother Jacques on 9 August 1700, so living at twenty; the engagement contract itself has not been retrieved. No marriage, death or burial found after that date. |
| The Sabourin children | Pierre is documented. Gagné states that Jean Sabourin had six children by Mathurine Ranaud, whom he married at La Rochelle in 1666, and that he and Marie Gaillard had none together. Neither statement has been checked against a primary source here, and the roster is not yet established. |
Document Gallery
The records in which Marie Gaillard appears, from her arrival in 1669 to her burial in 1736. Records documenting her first husband's military service and land are held on his own page.
Legacy
Denis Beauregard's Genealogy of the French in North America estimates that between 1,050,000 and 1,470,000 Quebecers descend from the marriage of Jean Perrier and Marie Gaillard. The database itself records thirteen generations and more than four thousand marriages in that descent, the most recent in 2020.
Marie Gaillard is not an allied ancestor of the Guilbault line but a direct one, and she stands at the head of two of its descents rather than one. The 1688 marriage of her daughter to her stepson is the reason: after that year the Perrier and Sabourin lines run together, and their convergence in Marie Madeleine Sabourin in 1699 carries forward through the LaRocque and Guilbault generations to the present.
On the Filles du roi: Marie Gaillard is documented in Peter Gagné's King's Daughters and Founding Mothers under the standard reference numbers Landry 315 and Dumas 212. Roughly eight hundred women came to New France under the King's programme between 1663 and 1673. Their collective demographic effect on the French-Canadian population is among the best-documented facts of the colony's history; the effect on the women themselves is far less well recorded, and in Marie's case must be inferred entirely from documents written by other people.
Part of a series
This biography belongs to Filles du roi & Filles à marier, a set of documentary lives reconstructed from parish registers, censuses and notarial minutes — women who crossed to New France with almost nothing written in their own hand.
Sources
Census Records
“Recensement du Canada, 1666,” digital images, Library and Archives Canada (https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/fra/accueil/notice?idnumber=2318856&app=fonandcol : accessed 26 January 2026), household of Jean Nau, page 93, entry for Jean Poirier, engagé domestique, age 24; Finding aid MSS0446, MIKAN 2318856; citing Centre des archives d'outre-mer (France), G1 vol. 460, folio 45v.
“Recensement du Canada fait par l'intendant Du Chesneau,” digital images, Library and Archives Canada (https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/CollectionSearch/Pages/record.aspx?app=fonandcol&IdNumber=2318858 : accessed 26 January 2026), household of Jean Perrier, 14 November 1681, Beauport, image 267; Finding aid MSS0446, MIKAN 2318858; citing Centre des archives d'outre-mer (France), G1 vol. 460. Household recorded as Jean Perrier 35, Marie Gaillard 34, and six children — Marie and Marthe bracketed at 11 or 12, Jacques 8, Madeleine 6, Marguerite 4, François in months; one fusil, with the columns for bestiaux and arpents en valeur left blank. Compare, on the same page, the households of Michel Filion (1 fusil, 1 pistolet, 10 bêtes à cornes, 25 arpents) and Mathurin Chaillé (1 fusil, 4 bêtes à cornes, 10 arpents).
Parish Registers
Notre-Dame de Québec (Québec), “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1621–1679,” page 347, marriage of Jean Poirier and Marie Daire, 6 October 1669; “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 26 January 2026); citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
Notre-Dame de Québec, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1667–1679,” page 59, baptisms of Marthe and Marie, daughters of Jean Perrier dit Lafleur and Marie Gaillard, 22 August 1670, born the previous day, administered en la chapelle de Beauport by Father Jean Blanchet, S.J.; godparents Nicolas Bellanger and Marthe de Rainville, wife of Pierre Marcou (Marthe), and Pierre Toupin dit Lapierre and Marie Michel, wife of Paul de Rainville (Marie); “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
Notre-Dame de Québec, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1667–1679,” page 124, baptism of Jacques, son of Jean Perier and Marie Gaillart, 10 December 1672, born the same day, administered dans la chapelle de Beauport by Father Léonard, Récollet; godparents Jacques Doublet de l'Isle and Marie Morin, wife of Estienne Dauphin; entry written by Louis Ango, curé of Notre-Dame de Québec. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. This entry, like the twins' of 1670, is indexed to Québec although the ceremony took place at Beauport; PRDH notes the point on its baptism card.
Nativité-de-Notre-Dame de Beauport, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1673–1699” (greffe transcript), folio 6, baptism of Jean Perier, son of Jean Perier dit Lafleur and Marie Gaillard, born 16 February and baptized February 1674, godparents Paul Vachon and Marie Madeleine Marsolet, wife of François Guyon Sieur des Prés; officiating, Christophe Perret; “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. This reading rests on the greffe transcript alone. The contemporaneous Beauport register covers February 1674 and has not yet been examined for this entry. Since the transcript is demonstrably not word-perfect — see the 1682 marriage above — the given name recorded here requires confirmation in the seventeenth-century hand before it can be treated as the register's reading.
Nativité-de-Notre-Dame de Beauport, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1673–1699” (greffe transcript, not yet collated with the contemporaneous register), folio 20, baptism of François Madeleine Perié, son of Jean Perié and Marie Gaillard, of Beauport, 23 February 1680, born 21 February; godfather François Madeleine Ruette Demonceaux, écuyer, conseiller du roi and deputy attorney general at the Conseil Souverain; godmother Charlotte Françoise Juchereau, six-year-old daughter of Nicolas Juchereau des Denis, écuyer; officiating, Francheville, priest. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Compare PRDH-IGD baptism no. 75932.
Nativité-de-Notre-Dame de Beauport, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1673–1699” (greffe transcript), folio 43, marriage of Jean Sabourin, widower of Mathurine Renou, of the parish of Mont-Lambert, diocese of Angoulême, and Marie Gaillard, widow of the late Jean Baptiste Perier, 22 September 1682; one bann published 21 September, dispensation from the remaining two granted by the Bishop of Quebec; witnesses Paul Vachon, royal notary at Beauport, and Vincent Vachon his son, both signing. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. The same entry has been read in the contemporaneous Beauport cahiers — Nativité-de-Notre-Dame de Beauport, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1681–1744,” image 12 of 389, FamilySearch ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G99S-NZW5, waypoint HCSM-FM9; the film opens with a typed carton inventory identifying carton no. 4, 1681–1693, thirteen cahiers, and giving 1682 as complete from 6 January to 26 December. The two exemplars differ in one sentence: the seventeenth-century volume styles the officiant Charles Amador Martin prestre faisant les fonctions curiales en la paroisse de Beauport and describes the bride as de cette paroisse, where the transcript reads Charles Amador Martin prestre curé de Beauport and omits the phrase locating Marie. The contemporaneous reading governs.
Saints-Anges de Lachine, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1676–1778,” marriage of Guillaume Loret and Marie Perrier, 6 December 1683; groom son of the late Guillaume Loret, master roofer, and the late Olive Lebeau, of the diocese of Vannes; bride daughter of the late Jean Perier, in his lifetime master weaver, native of Pau, and of Marie Gaillard his widow, then wife of Jean Sabourin, laboureur, resident on the island of Montréal; the bride living in the house and service of Monsieur Rolland of that parish; two banns published, the third dispensed by M. Dollier, vicar general; officiating, Rémy, curé. Digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L993-4QMP : accessed 26 January 2026), image 346 of 862; citing Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal.
Notre-Dame de Montréal, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1681–1694,” marriage of [given name not recorded] Charlebois dit Jolly, of the company of the Marquis de Crisafy, son of Antoine Charlebois of the parish of Saint-André, ville de Saint-Macaire, diocese of Bordeaux, and of Marie Dosque, and Marthe Perrier, daughter of the late Jean Perrier and Marie Gaillard, 25 November 1686; banns published without impediment. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal. Compare PRDH-IGD marriage no. 47505, which leaves the groom's given name blank and records that the officiant did not sign.
Notre-Dame de Montréal, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1642–1699,” marriage of Pierre Sabourin, son of Jean Sabourin and the late Mathurine Vignaud, and Magdeleine Perrier, daughter of the late Jean Perrier and Marie Gaillard, 24 May 1688; witnesses Gaillard and Charles Bois, neither able to sign; officiating E. Guyotte, curé. Digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9MB-DQ4G : accessed 26 January 2026), image 560 of 1937; citing Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal.
Notre-Dame de Montréal, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1681–1694,” marriage of Jacques Thommelet, son of Jean Thommelet and Catherine Badreau, of the bourg de la Coupechanière, diocese of Luçon, and Marguerite Perrier, daughter of the late Jean Perrier and Marie Gaillard, 1 September 1692; dispensation from two banns; witnesses Alexis Bau and Jean Sabourin, described in the entry as le beau-père de l'épouse, together with Jacob Tournelet; officiating Étienne Guyotte, curé. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal. Compare PRDH-IGD marriage no. 47586.
Saints-Anges de Lachine, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1676–1756,” folio 45, marriage of Jean Brunet, son of Mathieu Brunet dit Lestang, habitant of the parish, and Marie Blanchard his wife, and Marie Perrier, widow of Guillaume Lauret dit Lafontaine, habitant of Lachine, 19 October 1694, by written dispensation of the vicar general dated the previous day; made in the presence of Mathieu Brunet, Marie Blanchard and Catherine Brunet on the groom's side, and of Jean Sabourin and Marie Gaillard his wife, mere de la dite Perrier, and Barbe du Chesne on the bride's side, lesquels ont tous declaré ne sçavoir signer de ce enquis; officiating Rémy, curé. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal. Compare PRDH-IGD marriage no. 14309. This is the only located parish record placing Marie Gaillard personally at an event and reporting a statement made by her; compare the 1684 marriage contract below.
Sainte-Anne-du-Bout-de-l'Île (Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue), “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1703–1795,” marriage of Marie Madeleine Perrier and René Fortin dit Lagrandeur, 31 January 1710; “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
Saints-Anges de Lachine, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1676–1756,” folio 47 (registrar's copy laid over the original leaf), marriage of Jean Perrier, fils de Jean Perrier et de Marie Gaillard, and Marguerite Paré, daughter of Jean Paré and Marguerite Picard, 30 November 1711; two banns published and the third dispensed by M. de la Colombière, vicar general; present Jean Paré and Jacob Toumelet, who signed, and Jean Brunet and Martin Foucher, who could not; officiating Villermaula, curé. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal. PRDH-IGD marriage no. 14381 transcribes the groom's given name as Jean; PRDH family no. 2848 attaches the marriage to Jacques Perrier, baptized 10 December 1672. See Unresolved Questions.
Saint-Joachim de Pointe-Claire, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1715–1744,” burial of Jean [Baptiste] Sabourin in the cemetery of Pointe-Claire, 28 September 1721, in the presence of Jean Baume and two further witnesses whose names are not securely legible, all declaring they did not know how to sign; officiating Breul, priest. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal. The entry states no age, no spouse and no relationship; the identification with Marie Gaillard's second husband rests on name, date and parish.
Saints-Anges de Lachine, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1676–1756,” folio 160, marriage of Michel Baugis, widower of Marie Manville — whose death M. de Belmont certified under date of 30 November — and Marguerite Perier, widow of Jacques Tomelet, aged about forty-eight, 2 December 1726, after one publication, the other two dispensed by M. de Belmont, vicar general of the Bishop of Quebec, by act of 30 November 1726; present Pierre Choret, Toussaint Baugis, Louis Langlois and Michel Baugis fils on the groom's side, and Marie Perier of Pointe-Claire, sister of the bride, and Élisabeth Messaguer, her niece, on the bride's side, all declaring they did not know how to sign; officiating J. Le Tessier, curé of Lachine. “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Archives nationales du Québec, Montréal. Compare PRDH-IGD marriage no. 14431.
Saints-Anges de Lachine, “Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1676–1756,” burial of Marie Gaillard, widow Sabourin, 13 July 1736, aged about ninety-three, witnesses Vital Caron and Jacques Messaguer dit Laplaine, officiating De Vallières, missionary priest of Lachine; “Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621–1979,” FamilySearch (accessed 26 January 2026); citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
Notarial Records
Land concession, Joseph Giffard, écuyer, seigneur de Beauport, to Jean Perrier dit Lafleur, 10 December 1668, before Paul Vachon, notary of the seigneuries of Beauport, Notre-Dame-des-Anges, Beaupré and Île d'Orléans; witnesses Jean Bourdon Romainville, huissier, and Jean Cresté, master wheelwright. Two arpents of frontage in the village of Saint-Michel; annual cens et rentes of fifty sols payable at Martinmas, one sol per arpent of frontage, and two live capons, commencing 1669. Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
Marriage contract, Jean Poirier and Marie Daire, 22 September 1669, before Romain Becquet, royal notary, Québec; original minute, folios 272–273, Greffe de Romain Becquet, CN301,S13, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec; digital images, BAnQ numérique (https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/4064889 : accessed 4 September 2026), files 968–970, image identifiers 03Q_CN301S13P_0968 through 0970. Groom named as habitant at the côte de Beauport, son of the late Jean Poirier and Marie Dervé of the parish of Pau, diocese of Bayonne; bride as daughter of the late Pierre Daire and Marie Gaillard of the parish of Clermont-Sainte-Croix, diocese of Rouen. Among the parens et amis assembled for the bride: Marie-Barbe de Boullongne, widow of Messire Louis d'Ailleboust, and dame Anne Gasnier, widow of Jean Bourdon, procureur général au Conseil Souverain. Dower: customary dower or three hundred livres tournois préfix at the wife's election. Passed at Québec en la maison de lad. dame Bourdon before noon; witnesses including Jean Baptiste Gosset; signed by M. B. de Boullongne, Anne Gasnier and the notary. The act closes: led. futur espoux et la future espouse ont declaré ne sçavoir escrire ny signer de ce enquis suivant l'ordonnance. The second witness's surname is not securely legible and is omitted here.
Répertoire of notarial acts, 1688, page 128, entry of 27 March 1688, act no. 1009: Contract de mariage Entre Pierre Sabourin & Magdeleine Perrier. Index entry only; the notary has not yet been identified and the act itself has not been retrieved.
Marriage contract, Jean Sabourin and Marie Gaillard, 27 September 1684, before Paul Vachon, royal notary, bourg du Fargy, Beauport; original minute, four images (docket and three leaves), Greffe de Paul Vachon, CN301,S266, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Québec; digital images, BAnQ numérique (https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/4215637 : accessed 4 September 2026), files 459–462, image identifiers 03Q_CN301S266P_3993 through 3996. Groom named as son of the late Jean Sabourin and Estiennette Jouineaus, of the parish of Mont-Lambert, diocese of Angoulême; bride as widow of the late Jean Baptiste Perier, daughter of the late Pierre Gaillard and the late Marie Martin. On the bride's side: Nicolas Juchereau, écuyer, sieur de Saint-Denis, formerly of the Conseil Souverain and captain of militia at Beauport, and Marie Giffard his wife, Paul Ignard, Marie Bonville and the sieur Louis Prevost; on the groom's side Jean Robert Duprac, Vincent Vachon and Mathurin Chaillé. Signed by Juchereau de Saint-Denis, Marie Giffard, J. Robert Duprac, Vincent Vachon and P. Vachon, notary; neither party signed, the act closing with a declaration that those not signing did not know how to write or sign, being questioned in accordance with the ordonnance.
The same act also survives as a later typescript transcript: images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L92N-N6T8 : accessed 26 January 2026), image 521 of 2330, image group 100626714; citing Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. The transcript is not an independent witness to the contract; where the two differ, the minute governs.
Compiled Databases
Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH-IGD), Université de Montréal (https://www.prdh-igd.com : accessed 26 January 2026), couple no. 2848 (Jean Perrier and Marie Gaillard); couple no. 2849 (Jean Poirier Perrier and Marie Dervie, parents of Jean Perrier); couple no. 4636 (Pierre Daire and Marie Gaillard, parents of Marie Gaillard); couple no. 5780 (Jean Charles Charlebois Jolibois and Marie Marthe Perrier); individual no. 5034 (Marie Marguerite Perrier); individual no. 23600 (Marthe Rainville, godmother at the 1670 baptism, wife of Pierre Marcoux); individual no. 22753 (Marie Gaillard); individual no. 28379 (Marie Madeleine Josephe Perrier); baptism no. 75932 (François Madeleine Perié, 23 February 1680); baptism no. 75902 (the February 1674 Beauport baptism); marriage nos. 47505 (25 November 1686), 47586 (1 September 1692), 14309 (19 October 1694), 14381 (30 November 1711) and 14431 (2 December 1726); burial no. 116072 (Marie Gaillard, 13 July 1736). Read in the French interface.
Beauregard, Denis. “Genealogy of the French in North America.” Family sheet [1125], Jean Perrier ou Poirier dit Lafleur and Marie Gaillard; family sheet [4636], Pierre Daire and Marie Gaillard; family sheet [3449], Jean Poirier and Marie Dervie. © 2005–2026 (accessed 26 January 2026). Reference line for sheet [1125]: PRDH-RAB, Parchemin. Source of the descendant estimate of 1,050,000–1,470,000 Quebecers (13 generations and 4,021 marriages in the database, the most recent in 2020; by strict male line 9 generations and 38 marriages, the last in 1956; by strict female line 12 generations and 107 marriages, the last in 2020); of the identification of Marie's origin as Sainte-Croix-sur-Buchy, Seine-Maritime (INSEE 76571), recorded there against the register and contract variants Clermont-Sainte-Croix (m) and Mont Sainte Croix (cm); and of the note that DGFQ and DGAQ presume Jean and Madeleine to be the same person. The sheet also carries a predicted mtDNA signature for the female line, discussed nowhere on this page: it is a database prediction inferred from testers claiming unbroken maternal descent, not a result for Marie Gaillard, and it has not been audited.
Fichier Origine, Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie (https://www.fichierorigine.com : accessed 26 January 2026).
Published Sources
Gagné, Peter J. From Soldiers to Settlers: The Carignan-Salières Regiment in Canada, 1665–1668. Volume 2, pages 531–532, entries for Perrier dit Lafleur, Jean, and Sabourin, Jean. 2025. Source of the dowry figures (goods estimated at 200 livres plus the King's gift of 50 livres), of the engagements Ouest of 9 August 1700, and of the Montalembert reading of Jean Sabourin's origin; also the source for Pierre Toupin dit Lapierre's arrival with the La Brisardière company and confirmation in 1666, and for Jacques Doublet dit Delisle — witness to the 1669 contract and godfather to the son Jacques in 1672 — belonging to the Petit company. Its source line for the Perrier entry — Gareau, Jetté, PRDH, Roy & Malchelosse, Tanguay, Trudel, Verney — is a list of compilations, several dependent on one another; on register facts it restates rather than corroborates. Gagné adopts the merge of the February 1674 child with Marie Madeleine, and gives Marie's origin as Clermont de Sainte-Croix without resolving it.
Gagné, Peter J. King's Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663–1673. Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Quintin Publications, 2001. Entry for Marie Gaillard (Landry 315, Dumas 212).
Jetté, René. Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec des origines à 1730. Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1983.
A note on independence: PRDH-IGD and the Genealogy of the French in North America both derive from the Quebec parish registers, and Beauregard cites PRDH-RAB throughout. Where the two agree on a register fact they are not two witnesses but one, restated. One qualification: the reference line on family sheet [1125] reads PRDH-RAB, Parchemin, so for this couple Beauregard also drew on the notarial index, and his notarial statements are not simply PRDH restated. Where they disagree — as they do over the February 1674 baptism and over Marie's Norman parish — the disagreement is a signal that the underlying register requires direct examination, and the register reading governs. The same rule applies to PRDH's own two layers: a PRDH transcription of a single act and a PRDH family reconstitution are not independent of each other, and where they conflict, as at the 1711 marriage, the conflict is internal to one source.
Your family has a record like this one
Marie Gaillard left no letters. What survives of her is a marriage register, two census lines, a notarial minute and a burial entry — and from those, a documented life. Most families have more to work with than they think, and the work of finding it is what Storyline Genealogy does.
Every project begins with a written preliminary assessment before any work is proposed.
