How the Record Was Built

1. The research question

Where did Jean-Baptiste Séguin dit Ladéroute live between his marriage in 1710 and his death in 1728, and how did he support his family?

The parish registers answer only part of it. Nine children were baptized at Sainte-Famille de Boucherville between 1711 and 1724, a tenth at Chambly in June 1726, and he was buried at Montréal in May 1728 as « habitant de la paroisse de Chambly ». Between those events the registers are silent on land, tenancy and money. A widely copied online narrative fills the silence with a settler’s story — the first family on the land at Vaudreuil, counted in a census of 1725 — but cites nothing. The question was therefore put to the notarial record, which is where land, leases and debts were written down.

2. Finding the acts

The finding aids

The member fiche of the Association des Séguin d’Amérique (no. 6577) and the dated abstracts compiled by Raymond Séguin and Gilles Birtz for La Séguinière (vol. 12, no. 1, March 2002) list the notarial acts of Jean-Baptiste and Geneviève Barbot by date and notary. They were used to locate acts, never as evidence of what an act says.

Two reels and a date index

Marien Tailhandier, royal notary resident in the bourg of Boucherville, drew nine of the twelve acts. His minutes are filmed on two reels, breaking in January 1718: image group 008272947 (August 1699 to February 1718) and 008272948 (February 1718 to August 1730). Each reel carries hand-written index leaves filmed with it, listing the minutes by date in blocks, with a number for where each block begins. The 1713 purchase is in the greffe of Nicolas Senet at Pointe-aux-Trembles, image group 008327233. The two acts of 1734 are in the greffe of Joseph-Charles Raimbault at Montréal, image group 008327823, which has a typed date index at its head.

The index numbers proved to be the camera’s frame stamps, which run eight higher than the viewer’s image numbers on all three reels. The obligation of 11 October 1719, for instance, falls in the index block for that very date at 0407, and opens in the viewer at image 399; the inventory of 8 March 1734 carries frame stamps 02137–02143 and sits at viewer images 2129–2135. Each act was found by opening the viewer about eight images below its date block and reading forward. Navigating by act number, rather than by date, does not work in these greffes.

The acts read

Date	Act	Viewer images
7 Jun 1710	Tailhandier 319 · marriage contract	008272947: 1472–1477
2 Feb 1713	Tailhandier 425 · obligation to Pierre Chaperon	008272947: 1964–1966
5 Feb 1713	Senet 340 · purchase from Jean-Baptiste Leclerc	008327233: 446–448
15 Sep 1715	Tailhandier 549 · lease from Jean Giasson	008272947: 2543–2547
11 Oct 1717	Tailhandier 676 · sale to Pierre Séguin	008272947: 3088–3091
11 Oct 1719	Tailhandier 743 · obligation to Gilles Papin	008272948: 399–401
18 Jun 1720	Tailhandier 829 · lease from Pierre Boucher	008272948: 593–597
21 Jun 1720	Tailhandier 830 · concession to Nicolas Laframboise	008272948: 598–601
31 Oct 1722	Tailhandier 984 · purchase from La Perrière	008272948: 1259–1264
21 Mar 1724	Tailhandier · sale to Joseph Guibord	008272948: 1691–1698
8 Mar 1734	J.-C. Raimbault 1042 · inventory	008327823: 2129–2135
18 Mar 1734	J.-C. Raimbault 1045 · declaration on the Chambly land	008327823: 2140–2141

3. Tying each act to Jean-Baptiste

The name problem

Tailhandier never wrote “Séguin.” In his acts Jean-Baptiste is Baptiste Ceguain, Ceguein, Cegain or Ceguin, and almost never Jean-Baptiste. On the backs of the 1715 and 1720 acts he is filed as « baptiste Laderroutte »; the 1719 debt closes with « lesd. Laderoutte Barbot sa femme »; in 1713 he and his brother are together « dits les Laderoutte ». Three of his brothers — Pierre, Simon and François fils — carried the same dit, lived at Boucherville and used the same notary. And Jean-Baptiste declared in every act he made that he could not sign, so no hand distinguishes him from them.

A name in an index is therefore not enough. Each act was tied to him by something in its body that only he could match.

Act	What ties it to him
1710	Names his parents: « fils de deffuns François Ceguain et de Jeanne Petis », with Jeanne Petit stipulating as his mother; the bride is Geneviève Barbot.
1713	Borrowed with his brother Simon. Three days later Senet sold the Île Jésus land to « Jean Baptiste Seguin La deroute demeurant a Boucherville » — the one notary in the series to write Séguin — and that purchase is recited as title in the 1717 sale by Jean-Baptiste and Geneviève.
1715	The lessee is « baptiste Ceguain dit la Deroute ». At Joseph’s baptism in November 1717 the curé styled the father « Fermier de Giasson », tying the Giasson lessee to the husband of Geneviève Barbot.
1717–1724	Geneviève Barbot is a party in her own right in every act; the 1717 sale also names Pierre as « leur frere ».
1720 (no. 830)	Not his act. « Baptiste Ceguain La Deroutte » appears only as a neighbour of Nicolas Laframboise in the fourth range. Read with the Boucher lease three days earlier, in which the same notary names « Baptiste Ceguain dit Laderoutte et Geneviefve Barbot sa femme »; no other Baptiste of the family is known at Boucherville in 1720.
1734	Both acts name him as the late husband of Geneviève Boisdoré, « feu Jean Bapt. Seguin dit La Deroute », and the inventory is attended by his brother Simon as uncle of the minors.

4. Residence, year by year

Each act states where the parties lived. Read in order, with the registers, they give an unbroken line.

Date	Residence as written	Source
Jun 1710	demeurant aud. Boucherville	Tailhandier 319
Feb 1713	demeurant aud. Boucherville	Tailhandier 425
Sep 1715	lessee of Giasson’s farm at Boucherville	Tailhandier 549
Oct 1717	demeurant aud. Boucherville	Tailhandier 676
Sep 1719	on the seigneur’s farm depuis lad. St Michel	Tailhandier 829
Oct 1719	la maison de la veuve Dufort ou ils demeurent, in the bourg	Tailhandier 743
Oct 1722	en la maison de la ferme a Mr de Boucherville ou ils demeurent	Tailhandier 984
Mar 1724	demeurant en ce bourg de Boucherville	sale to Guibord
Nov 1724	mariés et parroissiens de Boucherville	baptism of Jean-Louis
Sep 1725	godfather at Chambly as Jean Baptiste La Deroute	baptism of Joseph Saintonge
Jun 1726	child baptized at Chambly	baptism of Marie Françoise Agathe
May 1728	habitant de la paroisse de Chambly	burial

The farm lease of June 1720 names a barn, a stable and a henhouse but no house, while the debt of October 1719 places the couple in a widow’s house in the bourg. The two are consistent if they worked the farm, which lay close to the bourg, while lodging in town; by 1722 they lived in « la maison de la ferme ». That reading is an inference; the acts do not explain the arrangement.

The widow is not named in act 743. She was very probably Marie-Charlotte Philippe-Étienne: her husband Prudent Bougret dit Dufort was buried at Boucherville on 13 November 1708, she lived there until her death in 1731, and her son Jean-Louis Bougret dit Du Fort stood godfather to the couple’s son Jean-Louis in 1724. No other widow Dufort of Boucherville in 1719 has been found, but none has been searched for; the identification rests on PRDH and is held at probable.

5. The Vaudreuil entry of 1725

The document

The settler narrative describes a census of 1725 in which Jean-Baptiste holds concession no. 15 de l’Anse ahead of the Léger and Poirier families. No census of Vaudreuil for that year has been found. The document that fits the description is the aveu et dénombrement rendered by Philippe de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil, before the intendant Michel Bégon at Québec on 2 March 1725 — a seigneur’s formal declaration of his fief and the holdings in it, made for the King’s land roll. A contemporary copy was found at Rigaud by Robert-Lionel Séguin and published by Lionel Groulx in 1949; the original is at BAnQ, Aveux et dénombrements, régime français, cahier 1, folio 202.

What it can and cannot carry

• It is ordered by place, not by age. The holdings are listed « a commancer au sud en courant au nord ouest » along the shore. The narrative’s Léger and Poirier correspond to the entries for St-Léger and the Desloges family (Desloges dit Poirier), but the order of the list says nothing about who settled first, and the declaration gives no concession dates.
• It names a dit, not a man. « Le nommé LaDeroutte » has no given name and no surname. Ladéroute was carried in the colony by at least three unrelated families — Séguin, Boyer and Dubois. A history of the parish names this holder Ladéroute dit Boyer.
• It does not fit Jean-Baptiste’s known residence. Four months before the declaration he and Geneviève were « parroissiens de Boucherville » at their son’s baptism, and nine months before it they were « demeurant en ce bourg ». Six months after it, on 2 September 1725, « Jean Baptiste La Deroute » stood godfather at Chambly — the same form of name, in the same parish, as his burial of 1728. The LaDeroutte holding already had a house and fourteen arpents ploughed or in meadow — several seasons’ work.

Conclusion. The 1725 entry is real, but its holder is not identified. Nothing in it ties it to Jean-Baptiste, and his own record places him at Boucherville until late 1724 and at Chambly by September 1725. A Boyer dit Ladéroute, or one of Jean-Baptiste’s brothers, is at least as likely. The case study states only what the entry says.

6. Reading the household’s accounts

Tenancy

Both leases are métairies à moitié profit: the landlord supplies land, buildings and stock; the tenant supplies labour and pays half of the grain and increase, with fixed renders of butter, eggs and fowl. In 1715 Jean-Baptiste also undertook to cart Giasson’s half of the grain to Montréal. Neither lease is evidence that he had no land of his own; in 1715 he still held the Île Jésus land, and in 1720 the fourth-range concession.

Credit

The Île Jésus land was bought three days after a loan of 160 livres in card money, and the 1713 act reserves a further running account with the lender. The 1719 debt was in hard money for goods « a leurs urgentes necessités », to a merchant who had witnessed the 1715 lease and the 1717 sale.

The 1724 surrender

The Côte Saint-Jean land was bought in October 1722 for 400 livres: 100 within a year, 300 at a rente of fifteen livres a year. In March 1724 it was passed to Joseph Guibord for 415 livres, payable entirely to the seller, La Perrière: « en principal quatre cent livres et quinze livres d’arrerage ». Four hundred plus one year’s rente is the whole of what was owed. Nothing had been paid, and nothing came back to the family.

The inventory of 1734

The inventory was taken six years after the death, in the room on the Place Notre-Dame where Geneviève then lived with her second husband, and valued « eu égard au temps présent ». It is evidence of what remained of the first marriage’s goods in 1734, not of what Jean-Baptiste owned when he died. Its debts are entered as those of the first marriage, but at least one — the curé’s fee for burying a child — most probably belongs to the second: Geneviève’s daughter by Philippe-Charles Rolland, Marguerite-Geneviève, was buried at Notre-Dame on 26 December 1732, aged two. The totals are reported as the act gives them, without being read as a precise balance of his estate.

The Chambly land

No contract survives for the Chambly purchase, and the declaration of 18 March 1734 explains why: Louis Hertel de Saint-Louis had sold it « que verbal ». It establishes the debt of 315 livres at the death, the sale for the widow’s benefit, and — in the words of the seigneur of Chambly and the fort’s chaplain — that she was « reduite a l’aumosne ».

7. What remains open

• The fourth-range concession. How Jean-Baptiste came to hold it by June 1720, and what became of it. No grant to him has yet been found.
• The 1725 holder. Whether « le nommé LaDeroutte » was a Boyer dit Ladéroute or a Séguin. Tests: the Boyer dit Ladéroute family’s acts in the 1720s; the Séguin brothers’ residences in the same years; the original declaration at BAnQ.
• The Monière credit. The published abstracts report credit drawn at the shop of Alexis Lemoine dit Monière in Montréal in 1717–1718 and 1719. The ledger has not been read.