The Complete Record
A documentary biography is only as strong as the documents behind it. This archive presents them.
The companion documentary biography of Marguerite Gaulin tells her story across seventy-five years and two continents. The methodology page documents how that story was assembled, source by source. This archive is the third leg of the triangle: a visual catalog of the primary sources referenced in the research.
Each document carries its identifier from the working research log, its evidentiary tier, and a caption naming what it documents and where the original survives. The sections move geographically and chronologically — from the parish records of seventeenth-century Perche, across the Atlantic to the parish and notarial records of New France, through the three royal censuses, and finally to the database references and cartographic context that frame the whole.
Compiled database cards are not reproduced here. A card and the parish act it indexes are one witness, not two, and their agreement is not corroboration. What the cards usefully supply is a reference number — the means by which another researcher retrieves the act — and those numbers are given as text, in the caption of the register act each one indexes and in the reference index at Section V.
France: The Perche Origins
The documentary trail begins in the rolling country of the Perche, west of Paris, where Marguerite Gaulin was baptized in May 1627. Her parish was Saint-Martin-du-Vieux-Bellême. Her future husband Jean Crête was baptized twenty miles away, at Saint-Aubin de Tourouvre, in November 1626. Both parish registers survive in transcription or partial original at the Archives départementales de l'Orne (AD-61).
The Gaulin entries from Saint-Martin reach this research by two routes: Archange Godbout's 1925 verbatim transcription, Origine des familles canadiennes-françaises, which copied the register entries before mid-twentieth-century access restrictions; and the Fichier Origine project of the Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie, which supplies register extracts alongside its own transcriptions. The Tourouvre entries survive in the original parish register at AD-61.
Godbout: Gaulin-Bonnemer Family
Archange Godbout, Origine des familles canadiennes-françaises, p. 168 — verbatim transcriptions of four Gaulin baptisms (Vincent 1620, Marie 1623, Marguerite 1627, François 1630) from the Saint-Martin parish register.
Godbout: Surname Index
The compendium index page cross-referencing the register forms Gollin and Gollins with the standardized Gaulin — the basis for treating the variants as one family.
Marguerite Gaulin's Baptism
The baptismal act itself, supplied with Fichier Origine record #241711 alongside that project's own transcription. "Le quatorzième de may aud[it] an (1627) fut baptisée Marguerite, fille de Vincent Gollins et de Marie Boulemer; fut son parrain Martin Messot, fut sa marraine Anne Bouton." Godbout's 1925 transcription reads the same act independently, and the two agree.
François Gaulin's Baptism
Marguerite's youngest brother, and one of three Gaulin siblings who crossed to New France — with Marguerite herself and their brother Pierre. Godfather François Huet; godmother Marie Bouscher. Fichier Origine #241710.
Antoine Crête's Baptism
Father of Jean Crête (Marguerite's husband). Recorded in Latin. Diocese of Chartres. AD-61 microfilm.
Antoine Crête × Jeanne Legrand
Marriage of Marguerite's future parents-in-law. Witnessed by Father Guillaume Loyseau. PRDH couple record #72 gives 29 October 1620; the register reading of 1619 governs (DC-04).
Jean Crête's Baptism
Marguerite's future husband, son of Antoine Crête and Jeanne Legrand. Register entry #317. Diocese of Chartres (DC-09). Fichier Origine #241071.
Marie Crête (Jean's Sister)
Jean's elder sister. Remained in France.
Tourouvre Commemorative Plaque
Modern plaque at Tourouvre listing parish emigrants to New France. Names include Jean Crête and Noël Juchereau.
New France: Parish Registers
The Quebec parish registers document the central forty-nine years of Marguerite's life — from her 1654 marriage at Sieur Giffard's manor through the baptisms of her ten children, the marriages of her daughters, and her own burial in January 1703.
Each act is shown as the register itself. Where a PRDH-IGD card indexes the act, its record number is given in the caption so the entry can be retrieved; the card is not reproduced, because it is derived from the register on the same page and adds no independent witness. One event in this section — the 1685 marriage of Louis Crête at La Rochelle — has no retrieved register image and is described in the caption to his burial.
Crête–Gaulin Marriage
Notre-Dame de Québec marriage register, p. 121. The ceremony performed in the manor house of Sieur Robert Giffard, seigneur of Beauport, by Father Paul Ragueneau S.J. Both mothers named as défunte.
Louis Crête — Baptism
Born 6 May 1656. Emergency-baptized at home by neighbour Anne Martin; solemn ceremonies by Joseph Poncet S.J. in the absence of Jérôme Lalemant. Indexed at PRDH-IGD.
Marie Crête — Baptism
Born 6 October 1657. Officiated by Gabriel de Queylus (Sulpician, Vicar Apostolic). Godparents François Guyon and Marie Rocheron. The 8th great-grandmother through whom the direct line descends. PRDH-IGD baptism #57636, which renders the mother's surname as Colin — the register's own spelling.
Marguerite Crête I — Baptism
Born 27 March 1659. Baptized at Sieur Robert Giffard's manor house by Paul Ragueneau S.J. — the first documented sacramental event at the Giffard residence. Godparents in the register: Pierre Godin and Jeanne L'Anglois. PRDH-IGD baptism #57726, which notes "BAPTISEE A BEAUPORT CHEZ M. GIFFARD" and renders the godfather as Pierre Golin; Godin and Golin are separate Beauport families and the register governs.
Marie Françoise Crête — Baptism
Born 20 July 1660. Robert Giffard personally emergency-baptized the infant at his manor "pour peril de mort"; solemn ceremonies by Paul Ragueneau S.J. Godfather Joseph Giffard (the seigneur's son); godmother Françoise Juchereau (Giffard's granddaughter). PRDH-IGD baptism #57802; individual record #19407 gives her death and burial at 29 November 1702.
Marguerite Crête II — Baptism
Born 30 March 1663. Officiated by Charles de Lauson de Charny, Grand Vicar of Bishop Laval — the first of his three Crête baptisms. Godparents Pierre Soumandre and Marguerite Aubert. She died some six weeks later. PRDH-IGD baptism #57925.
Marguerite Crête II — Burial
"Petite fille agée d'un mois et demy, fille de Jean Creste, habitant de Beauport." The act gives her age as a month and a half, which fits the 30 March birth. The day of the month is read here as the eighteenth and by PRDH couple record #866 as the sixteenth; the register page is to be re-read.
Jean Crête II — Baptism
Officiated by Henri de Bernières, curé of Notre-Dame de Québec. Godfather Noël Juchereau; godmother Louise Coste, wife of Jean Grignon. PRDH-IGD baptism #57972.
Joseph Crête — Baptism
Born 30 April 1666. Officiated by Charles de Lauson de Charny, Grand Vicar. Godfather Nicolas Juchereau de St-Denis; godmother Michelle Thérèse Nau, wife of Joseph Giffard, seigneur of Beauport. An earlier reading of "12 May" was corrected against the register to 2 May. PRDH-IGD baptism #58088.
Marie Crête II — Baptism
Born 16 February 1668. Officiated by Étienne de Carheil S.J. Godfather Robert Pepin — who would marry her elder sister Marie two years later, a family connection already in place before the match. PRDH-IGD baptism #58213.
Louise Crête — Baptism
Born 3 August 1670. Emergency-baptized by Paul Vachon, Royal Notary of Beauport, "pour peril de mort"; solemn ceremonies by Jean Blanchet S.J. The third emergency baptism among the ten children, and the only one of the three who did not survive. PRDH-IGD baptism #58451.
Pierre Crête — Baptism
Born 19 August 1671. Officiated by Charles de Lauson de Charny, Grand Vicar — third of three Crête baptisms. The last of the ten children. Godfather Paul Vachon, the same Royal Notary who had emergency-baptized Louise a year earlier; godmother Marie Derinville, wife of Nicolas Bellanger. PRDH-IGD baptism #58606.
Marie Crête × Robert Pepin
Marriage of the daughter who carries the descent line. Jean Crête named in the register as witness, père de la fille.
Louis Crête — Burial
Died aboard the boat of Sieur Niel on the day of his return from France. He had married Madeleine Briault in France on 28 May 1685, three months earlier; no register image for that marriage has been retrieved, and it is recorded in PRDH-IGD couple #5533. The register reads "le vingt-cinquième jour du mois d'aoust" for the burial; PRDH burial #35618 carries 21 August. The act states no date of death beyond "the very day of his return."
Marguerite Gaulin — Burial
After forty-nine years at Beauport. Died and buried the same day in the cemetery of the Nativité-de-Notre-Dame, aged "environ soixante et quinze ans." Witness Bonaventure Leblond; officiant Father Boullard. Resolves DC-02: January, not February as Lebel and Laforest had it.
Marguerite Gaulin — Burial Detail
Close-up of the entry. The phrase "agée d'environ soixante et quinze ans" is visible in the next-to-last line — the figure that corrects the seventy-six carried in some secondary references.
Jean Crête — Burial
Died 4 March, buried the next day, fourteen years after Marguerite. Pierre Crête, the youngest son, and Jean Lefebvre, the son-in-law, named among the witnesses. The priest recorded his age as about ninety-three; measured from his November 1626 baptism he was ninety.
Royal Censuses, 1666–1681
Three royal census enumerations document the Crête household across fifteen years — bracketing the economic ascent from the wheelwright's lot of 1666 to the demi-seigneurial holding of 1681.
The three enumerations also document a recurring pattern of bureaucratic error: census-takers mis-recorded the surname Gaulin differently each time — Golin in 1666, Gosselin in 1667, Gaudin in 1681. The household's name was its least stable variable.
1666 Census
Jean 40, Marguerite 38, five children at home including the misrecorded "François" who was actually Françoise. A Pierre, 24, entered in the qualités et métiers column as chapellier engagé — a trade, not a surname; none was recorded for him. Archives des Colonies, Série G1, Vol. 460.
1667 Census
Six children including infant Joseph age 1; six cattle; fifteen arpents under cultivation. Neighbours Toussaint Giroux and Pierre Lefebvre. Françoise correctly recorded as female here, resolving the 1666 slip.
1681 Census
Jean 55 (charron). Two firearms, thirteen horned cattle, forty arpents of cleared land. Marie Chapacou 16 as servante.
Notarial Acts
Nine surviving notarial acts trace the property, family, and estate-settlement record of the household across fifty-seven years — from the first inventory of lands at the bourg du Fargy in 1655 to a receipt endorsed in 1716.
The notaries and officers represented here — Paul Vachon at Beauport, Duprac, Florent de la Cetière, Louis Chambalon at Quebec, Trottain at Batiscan, and the royal surveyor Jean Guyon — are the institutional infrastructure that protected family wealth and resolved disputes across two continents and two generations.
Inventory of Lands of Bourg du Fargy
The earliest known Jean Crête land record in Quebec, dated thirteen months after his September 1654 marriage. Records Jean Crête with approximately 5 arpents 79 perches in the bourg du Fargy, alongside Paul Vachon (50 perches), Toussaint Giroux (4 arpents 54 perches), and other inhabitants.
The Marcou Connection
Records Pierre Marcou (1631–1699) with 6 arpents 23 perches as a bourg du Fargy neighbour — the same Pierre Marcou whose daughter Marthe would marry Pierre Crête thirty-eight years later (D-057). Documents a continuous Crête-Marcou neighbour relationship preceding the children's marriage.
Act of Faith and Homage to Robert Giffard
One week after the 4 August Vachon sale, Jean Crête transported himself to the principal door of the seigneurial castle of Beauport: "one knee on the ground, bare-headed, without sword or spur, after calling out by loud voice three times to Monseigneur de Beauport," he declared his foi et hommage to Robert Giffard. The medieval seigneurial form preserved intact in seventeenth-century New France.
Witnesses and the Guion Provenance Chain
Closes with explicit reference to "l'acquisition faicte par le dit Jean Creste de Mre Claude Guion et de Catherine Collin, sa femme, fils héritier de feu Mre Jean Guion son père" — documenting the Guion provenance. Witnesses: Lauren Dubocq, Nicollas Bélanger. Signed P. Vachon notaire.
Aveu et Dénombrement to Joseph Giffard
Jean Crête's formal confession and inventory to Joseph Giffard for his Buisson rear-fief holding: 6½ perches frontage on the St. Lawrence; 7 arpents under cultivation; 1¼ arpents of prairies; remainder fredoches and high woods.
The Full Buisson Fief Provenance Chain
The chain documented end to end: Robert Giffard granted the Buisson fief (1000 arpents) to Jean Guion on 14 March 1634 before Notary Mathurin Roussel at Mortagne, Perche. Jean Guion and Mathurine Robin held the fief until their deaths; their son Claude Guion (with Catherine Collin) sold the parcel to Jean Crête in August 1666. Adjacent fief: Nicolas Dupont, Sieur de Neuville.
Signatures — Jean Crête's Hand
Witnesses Denis Avisse, huissier royal, and Claude Maugue. Signed: "Jehan Creste" — direct documentary evidence of Jean's literacy, in counterpoint to Marguerite's documented illiteracy in the 1693 marriage contract (D-057).
Surveyor's Division of the Dubuisson Fief
Six months after the aveu et dénombrement, the royal surveyor Jean Guyon recorded the physical marking and demarcation of the parcels within the Dubuisson fief. Named parties: François Guion, François Bellenger, Jean Crête, Guillaume Bauche. Adjacent: Nicolas Dupont and Joseph Giffard.
Parties & Witnesses
Contracted at the house of Pierre Marcou in Beauport. Pierre Crête (youngest son, b. 1671) and Marthe Marcou. Three Crête brothers-in-law witnessing: Brideau, Delauney, Lefebvre. Jean Pepin is named in the act with a kinship term read as "cousin germain"; he was in fact Pierre's nephew, son of Pierre's elder sister Marie, and the reading is carried here as it stands in the act rather than corrected.
Settlement: The Buisson Fief Transfer
Marcou parents settle 150 livres in goods and one brown cow by All Saints' 1694. Jean Crête and Marguerite Gollin promise six arpents of land in the fief du Buisson to Pierre — the same fief Jean had acquired from Guion and Collin in 1666. Marthe receives 800 livres fixed dower and 100 livres préciput.
Signatures & Marguerite's Illiteracy
Signed by Jean Crête, Jean Pepin, Pierre Baune, Elizabeth de Rainville, Jean Chevalier, Noel Maillou, and Paul Vachon notaire. Marguerite Gollin explicitly named among those who "declared not to know how to write or sign" — the closest the documentary record comes to her own hand.
Pepin Estate Arbitration
Opening recital: the Pepin heirs render account to Marie Crête their mother of the late community of goods. Arbitration submitted to preserve peace among the heirs. Six months before her third marriage — a pre-marital settlement of accumulated community property.
Arbitrators Named
Arbitrators named: Paul Denis Sieur de St-Simon (Conseiller du Roy, Prévôt de la Maréchaussée) and Nicolas Dupont de Berniville (Doyen of the Conseil Souverain). Judgment due within fifteen days.
Signatures Page
Signed by Marie Crête, by son Jean Pepin (now of age), and on behalf of the minor Pepin children. Notary Florent de la Cetière. Witnesses Nicolas Gilles and others.
Parties & Witnesses
Marie Crête's third marriage. The header and body of the contract render the groom's surname as Soudain; the 1706 parish register, his own signatures on the 1707 partition and 1712 receipt, and every later act render it Jourdain. Both name the same man: son of a marchand bourgeois of Paris, parish of St-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, and of Catherine Dupuis. Marginal annotations added later read "Chevalier de St Louis." Witnessed by Jean Crête (the bride's father), the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Nicolas Dupont, and Paul Denis de St-Simon.
Property Settlement
Communauté de biens under the Coutume de Paris. The groom brings 800 livres — 400 in cash, 400 in furniture, the latter remaining his propre. Marie's Brideau children named: Hilaire (12½), Marie Françoise (10), Louise Catherine (8).
Douaire & Préciput
Douaire préfix of 400 livres for the future bride. Préciput of 200 livres reciprocal and equal. Renunciation clauses; protection from prior community debts.
Mutual Donation & Signatures
Mutual donation au survivant of all furniture and conquêts, valued at 400 livres, null if children survive the present marriage. Standard secondes noces clause for the Coutume de Paris.
Chambalon Quittance
Marguerite Crête, wife of Pierre Gaillou of Batiscan, acting by power of attorney drawn before François Trottain at Batiscan on 27 September 1706, acknowledges receipt from Jean Lefebvre her brother-in-law of forty-one livres, advanced on her one-quarter share in the succession of her late mother. Signatures: Mirambeau, D. Rageot, Chambalon. The clerk renders the husband's surname as Gaultin where PRDH gives Gaillou.
Notarial Volume Title
Title page of the bound notarial register holding the 1706 quittance — "Quebec. Notarial Records Apr 12, 1702–Feb 21, 1707." BAnQ archival context, confirming the act's place within Chambalon's greffe.
Receipt to Pierre Crête
Nicolas Dupont, Sieur de Neuville, Conseiller du Roy au Conseil Souverain, as tutor of the minor children of the late Sieur des Méloizes, receives rent from Pierre Crête for land acquired by joint contract on 29 July 1693 by Pierre Crête, Jean Lefebvre, and Jean Baugis.
The Crête-Lefebvre-Baugis Partnership
Continues the receipt provisions before royal notary Louis Chambalon. Documents Pierre Crête's joint land partnership with his brother-in-law Jean Baptiste Lefebvre dit Duchassenal and a third partner Jean Baugis — a family economic cooperation extending from 1693 through at least 1716.
Nicolas Dupont Across Forty Years
Closes with a subsequent endorsement of 18 January 1716. The same Nicolas Dupont who was Jean Crête's adjacent seigneur in 1673 (D-069) and an arbitrator in the 1705 Pepin estate dispute (D-041) appears here as tutor of the Méloizes minors — thirty-nine years of continuous presence in the Crête family record.
Database Reference Index
The Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH-IGD), maintained by the Université de Montréal, indexes the parish registers of Quebec into individual, couple, and event-level records. Those records are cited here by number rather than reproduced.
The reason is evidentiary, not merely practical. A PRDH record is derived from the same parish act shown elsewhere on this page; the two are one witness, and their agreement proves nothing. What the number does is make the act retrievable by another researcher, and a number does that as well as a facsimile. Where a record and its underlying register disagree, the register governs, and the divergence is noted below.
| Record | Subject | Content and divergence from the register |
|---|---|---|
| Individual #36251 | Marie Marguerite Gaulin | Baptism 14 May 1627, Saint-Martin-du-Vieux-Bellême; death and burial 15 January 1703, Beauport. Renders the mother's surname as Bonnemer where the Saint-Martin act reads Boulemer. |
| Individual #40753 | Jean Crête | Baptism November 1626, Tourouvre; death 4 March 1717, burial 5 March, Beauport. |
| Individual #19407 | Marie Françoise Crête | Born 20 July 1660, baptized 1 August; death and burial 29 November 1702 at Québec (Hôtel-Dieu); married Henri Delaunay 6 November 1679 at Beauport. |
| Individual #40959 | Madeleine Briault | Born 2 April 1665, Notre-Dame-de-Cogne, La Rochelle; baptized 12 April. Parents Jean Briaud and Andrée Cherbonneau. Louis Crête's widow; remarried Nicolas Langar 14 May 1686 at Québec. |
| Couple #866 | Jean Crête × Marie Marguerite Gaulin | Marriage 13 September 1654, Québec. All ten children with baptism, marriage, and burial dates. Gives Marie Françoise's death as 29 November 1702 and the infant Marguerite II's burial as 16 May 1663, where this archive reads 18 May. |
| Couple #72 | Antoine Crête × Jeanne Legrand | Jean Crête's parents. France-only family. Gives the marriage as 29 October 1620; the Tourouvre register (D-035) reads 1619 and governs. |
| Couple #125 | Vincent Gaulin × Marie Bonnemer | Marguerite's parents, of Saint-Martin-du-Vieux-Bellême. Marriage given only as avant 1627. Lists the three emigrant children — Pierre, Marie Marguerite, and François — with Pierre and Marguerite both at 14 May 1627, the basis of the unresolved twin question. |
| Couple #5533 | Louis Crête × Madeleine Briault | Marriage 28 May 1685, recorded as taking place in France. This is the record of the marriage: no French register image has been retrieved for the act. |
| Burial #35618 | Louis Crête | Saint-Laurent, Île d'Orléans, August 1685. Carries 21 August for both death and burial; the register reads the twenty-fifth for the burial and gives no date of death. |
| Burial #68946 | Marguerite Crête II (infant) | Notre-Dame de Québec, May 1663. |
| Burial #77697 | Marguerite Gaulin | Beauport (Nativité-de-Notre-Dame), 15 January 1703. Age 075; spouse Jean Creste; witnesses Bonaventure Leblond and Boullard, priest. |
| Burial #77925 | Jean Crête | Beauport (Nativité-de-Notre-Dame), 5 March 1717. Age 093; witnesses Pierre Creste, Jean Lefevre, Boullard, priest. |
| Baptisms | The ten Crête children | #57636 Marie · #57726 Marguerite I · #57802 Marie Françoise · #57925 Marguerite II · #57972 Jean II · #58088 Joseph · #58213 Marie II · #58451 Louise · #58606 Pierre. Louis (1656) is indexed without a number recorded here. Each is cited in the caption of the register act it indexes, in Section II. |
Fichier Origine records #241711 (Marguerite Gaulin), #241710 (François Gaulin), and #241071 (Jean Crête) supply the Perche register extracts reproduced in Section I, together with that project's own transcriptions. Genealogy of French in North America (Beauregard) couple references #260, #2862, and #2351 were consulted as finding aids.
Contextual & Cartographic
Maps, photographs, and place-context images that frame the geographical and architectural setting of the documentary record. These are not themselves evidentiary, but they situate the records in their physical world.
Janssonius Map of Perche
"Perchensis Comitatus — La Perche compte." Hand-coloured map of the former province, the geographic context for both Saint-Martin-du-Vieux-Bellême and Tourouvre. A seventeenth-century work in the public domain.
Saint-Martin Parish Church
The baptismal church where Marguerite Gaulin was baptized 14 May 1627. The Gothic structure stands largely as it did in the seventeenth century. Photograph via Wikimedia Commons; photographer and licence to be confirmed.
Perche Countryside
The rolling farmland of the Perche — the world Marguerite left behind in her mid-twenties. Photographer and licence to be confirmed.