Every Record, In Order
Every record on this page has been examined in the original or in a photographic image of it. Nothing here is carried on the authority of an index, an abstract or a compilation.
The three grey markers are different silences. No statement means the act names him and says nothing about whether he was living. Father absent means an act at which he would be expected and does not appear. Unresolved means the record names a Séguin who has not been identified.
The Hand on the Page
Twenty-seven years of acts in which he appears as a party or a witness, and signs. These establish the man, his circle and his hand — the hand that later separates him from the son who carried his name.
Lease of land from Robert Heury
The earliest act naming him. He takes terre no. 8 and an unfinished house in the village for two years from the Saint-Michel, the rent being to clear two arpents a year and finish the house. He is already at Boucherville and already carrying the dit name, a full year before he marries.
He signs. The lessor could not: Robert Heury’s mark stands in an oval beside the signature.
Greffe de Thomas Frérot dit Lachenaye, act 61. BAnQ 06M-CN1-162.
Two cattle leases for Pierre Boucher, as witness
He signs twice in one day as witness to leases granted by the seigneur of Boucherville. Two months after taking Heury’s land he is already in Pierre Boucher’s immediate circle.
Greffe Frérot, acts 65 and 66.
His marriage contract with Jeanne Petit
Seventeen witnesses, among them Pierre Boucher, Jeanne Crevier, René Rémy, Robert Heury and Pierre Chaperon — the same circle that recurs for the next thirty years.
He signs twice. The first signature is Ladéroute; it is struck through, and he signs again as françoisseguin. Jeanne Petit makes her mark.
Greffe Frérot, act 81. The church marriage followed at Boucherville on 31 October.
Three acts in one day: the land is cleared and bought
The day after his contract he witnesses two acts that settle the title to terre no. 8 — in the second, both parties appear by their marks and he signs as the literate witness — and then buys the land himself from Pierre Chaperon, for eighty livres payable in grain.
It is the land he had leased from Robert Heury a year before. The lease, the marriage and the purchase are one sequence over twelve months on one piece of ground.
Greffe Frérot, acts 82, 83 and 84.
Sale of terre no. 8 to François Sénécal
He sells the land four months after buying it, for 120 livres — eighty to Chaperon and forty to himself at the next Saint-Michel. Ten weeks later he takes a granted lot instead.
Greffe Frérot, act 89.
Pierre Boucher concedes thirty-eight lots in one act
Not a personal grant but one contract conceding land to a long chain of men, each lot defined by its neighbours. François takes fifty arpents, two of frontage on the St Lawrence by twenty-five deep.
Robert Heury — from whom he had leased terre no. 8 eighteen months earlier — is a grantee three lots along in the same act. The lease, the marriage, the purchase and sale of that land, and this grant are one seigneurial distribution among one circle of men.
Greffe Frérot, act 103. A seven-page copy of the act follows the minute in the same greffe and has not been collated against it.
Obligation at Montréal to Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène
Summoned by the sergeant Labarre, he acknowledges a debt of eighteen livres five sols to the Carion estate and signs in the notary’s study. The docket on the reverse calls him la Desroute alone, with no surname anywhere on it.
Greffe de Bénigne Basset, act 1591. BAnQ, Montréal.
Baptism of his son Jean-Baptiste
The only act in the corpus signed outside a notary’s study. The register records that the father, the godfather and Julien Beaussault signed, and all three hands are on the page.
Boucherville (Sainte-Famille) register 1669–1695, series photographed at the presbytery. A second copy of the same register transcribes the signing clause and carries no hand but the curé’s.
He and Jeanne Petit sell the farm
Fifty arpents fronting the St Lawrence, with un méchant bâtiment on it, sold to Jean-Baptiste Lamoureux for 850 livres. He signs; she declares she cannot write or sign.
This is the precondition for everything that follows. Seventeen months later they take a strip of land for their lives only, and by 1701 there is no realty to inventory.
Greffe d’Antoine Adhémar, 24 November 1698.
The Eleven Months
The last land, the last signature, the illness, and the contract in which his wife appears as a widow. Everything in this case turns on the eleven months between the two Raimbault acts.
Concession on the Île Grosbois, for two lives only
Marie-Anne Margane de Lavaltrie, widow of Ignace Boucher sieur de Grosbois, with the seigneur’s consent, grants him and Jeanne Petit a strip of standing timber along the channel — two arpents of frontage running to the point of the island — for their lifetimes only, their children barred from claiming even the buildings on it.
He signs. Jeanne Petit declares she cannot. So does the grantor.
Greffe de Marien Tailhandier, act 18. BAnQ 06M-CN1-378.
Lease of two cows from the sieur de Niverville
Two pregnant cows, one black and one brown, valued at forty-five livres each, for three years at half the increase and ten pounds of butter a year for each animal. He is described as living on the island of the demoiselle de Grosbois.
The last act he signed. Three weeks later he was too ill to come to a notary.
Greffe Tailhandier, act 33.
Marriage contract of his daughter Marie Madeleine
He is a husband, not a decedent: ill, absent from the signing, and expected to ratify in person when able. He never did. A notary drawing a marriage contract records widowhood precisely, because dower and community property depend on it.
Greffe de Pierre Raimbault (père), act 402. BAnQ CN1-340. The terminus post quem.
Marriage contract of his daughter Marie Jeanne
Eleven months later, before the same notary, she acts alone, as a widow must. This is the single most important document in the case.
Greffe Raimbault, act 527. The terminus ante quem. The church marriage followed at Longueuil the next day; the contract is dated the 9th.
The Years That Looked Like Life
Parish acts that name him without calling him dead, index lines that seemed to show him transacting, and a burial that fitted him in every particular but the given name. This is the stretch the 1947 reading was built on.
Marriage of Marie Jeanne at Longueuil
The act applies deffunt and deffunte to the groom’s parents and neither word to the bride’s. A reader coming to this record alone would not learn that François had died. The parish index reflects exactly that, marking both of the bride’s parents with dashes.
Saint-Antoine-de-Longueuil, 1669–1730, image 93.
Marriage of François the younger at Boucherville
In one sentence the curé marks one father dead and one mother living, and marks neither Séguin parent. This is the strongest objection to the corrected range, and it is answered not here but in 1715.
The groom did not sign.
Boucherville (Sainte-Famille) register 1696–1717, feuillet 41.
Two leases from Jean Poirier
Indexed in the répertoire under “François Séguin dit Ladéroute,” and for many years the chief evidence that he was still alive. The minute names « françois Ceguens fils » in the body and records that he declared he could not write or sign.
Greffe Tailhandier, act 125.
Second marriage contract of Marie Madeleine
François is not mentioned in this act at all, in either direction — and the reason is instructive. A widow of full age contracted for herself under the Coutume, so the bride is identified by her late husband rather than by her parents, and no filiation clause arises. Her mother Jeanne Petit, demonstrably alive, is absent from it too.
The groom, a bachelor, is identified by filiation, and his father is accordingly marked deffunt. The qualifier follows the clause, not the person.
Her brother-in-law Charles Patenotre and Claude Moreau stand with her. Both spouses made their marks.
Greffe d’Antoine Adhémar, act 6646.
Marriage contract of his son Pierre
The groom’s brother François stands in his place, and declares that he cannot write or sign — the control that fixes the son’s illiteracy one month from the second disputed act, in the same greffe, before the same notary. Pierre himself signs.
Three months before the disputed burial, and this is the act where the father’s absence carries weight: the groom is a bachelor, a parent’s consent is the normal course, and a brother stands in the father’s place. If François were living at Boucherville that winter and transacting before a notary there, that would require explanation.
Greffe Tailhandier, act 154. Attributed to Adhémar in the 1994 article; the act is Tailhandier’s.
Marriage of Pierre at Boucherville
The 1702 pattern repeats exactly: the Séguin parents unqualified and of Boucherville, the bride’s father of Sainte-Anne marked deffunt. Pierre signs.
Boucherville register 1696–1717, feuillet 58.
Obligation to Jacques Aubuchon
The second of the two index lines, nine weeks before the burial at Montréal. The minute names the son, and records that he could not write or sign.
Greffe Tailhandier, act 159. With act 125, this removes the last notarial evidence of a François Séguin dit Ladéroute alive after October 1701.
Burial at Notre-Dame-de-Montréal
Read since 1947 as François under an erroneous given name. Read here as a second man. François’s son Pierre is excluded twice over: he had married at Boucherville three months earlier and his first child was baptised there sixteen days later.
Only two people attended: a priest of the seminary and the parish beadle.
Notre-Dame-de-Montréal, BêMêS 1700–1704. The decedent remains unidentified.
Baptism of his granddaughter Marie Françoise
First child of François the younger and Marie Louise Feuillon, sixteen days after the disputed burial. Her godfather is her uncle Simon Séguin. Neither grandparent is named.
Boucherville (Sainte-Famille) register, 25 May 1704.
Four Acts, and a Widow
Three contracts drawn by the family’s own parish notary, a marginal act written beside the grant it ends, and finally the curé’s own register — each recording François Séguin as dead.
Marriage contract of his son Simon
The earliest notarial record of the death after October 1701, closing a five-year gap in which the file held nothing. Drawn at Boucherville by the family’s own notary, with Jeanne Petit present as sa mère and Pierre Boucher among the bride’s party.
Greffe Tailhandier, act 227.
Donation by Pierre de Saint-Ours to his former soldiers
Sick in bed but sound of mind, Saint-Ours gives fifty livres each, payable after his death, to men named by their dits alone — Latourpin, Sans Souci, Séguin, Brindamour, Rimbault, Duclos. No given name, no residence, no filiation, eight years after François died.
Which Séguin this is has not been established. The act is dated 7 7bre, September; two secondary accounts give 7 November, misreading the abbreviation.
Greffe d’Antoine Adhémar, 7 September 1709.
Marriage contract of his son Jean-Baptiste
Recorded twice in one act: in the body, and again in a marginal insertion giving the groom’s filiation as fils de deffuns François Ceguain et de Jeanne Petis ses pere et mere.
Passed en la maison du presbitaire in the presence of Guibert de la Saudrays, curé of Boucherville — the same priest who wrote the filiation clauses of 1702 and 1704 — and he signed the page. Groom and mother both declared they could not write or sign.
Greffe Tailhandier, act 319.
Jeanne Petit surrenders the Île Grosbois tenancy
No separate contract exists. The act runs down the left margin of the first page of the 1700 concession, in a later hand, closing the life tenancy from the far end: granted in April 1700 for two lives, surrendered by the survivor thirteen years later for two ells of local cloth.
Greffe Tailhandier, act 18, margin of page 1.
Second marriage of his son Simon, at Boucherville
The act that answers the objection of 1702, and it answers it from inside the same register. Here the curé qualifies a parent of his own parish as deffunt, and in the same sentence omits the qualifier for a father whom a notary had called deffunt Joseph Cool the previous day.
Across the three acts, all six fathers named were dead. The pattern of 1702 and 1704 is reversed in both halves here.
Boucherville register 1696–1717, feuillet 148. Contract of the previous day: greffe Tailhandier, act 569.
Burial of Jeanne Petit at Longueuil
She had been a widow for thirty-two years. The act names her Françoise Petit; the identification rests on the mourners, and the variance is recorded rather than smoothed away.
Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue, Longueuil, 30 March 1733.
The notarial minutes and parish registers cited on this page are held by Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Each act is cited to its BAnQ cote together with the image group or ark through which it was consulted. The fonds creator for the notarial records is Montréal (Québec : district judiciaire), Notariat. Where images appear on these pages they are reproduced from BAnQ holdings and credited as such.
Four acts record François Séguin as dead — in 1701, 1706, 1710 and 1713 — three of them drawn at Boucherville by the notary the family used all their lives. Not one act anywhere records him as living after 20 November 1700.
What the 1704 reading rested on was a different thing: records that say nothing. The marriages of 1701, 1702 and 1704 name him in filiation clauses, which establish descent and not survival. The two notarial entries of 1703 and 1704 were index lines, and the minutes beneath them name his son. A burial fits him in surname, dit name and parish, and differs in the given name.
Silence was read as testimony. That is the whole of the error, and it is the reason every entry above states not only what the record says but whether it says anything at all.
How these records were weighed — originals separated from the index layer, the father’s hand used to tell him from his son, three explanations tested and eliminated for the parish silence, and the searches that came back empty with their extent stated — is set out in the methodology. Every act is reproduced and cited in the document gallery.
The Case Study Full Methodology Documents & Sources