Marguerite Gaulin (1627–1703)
Why This Page Exists
Genealogy is documentary research before it is story-telling. The story is the form in which the research is presented — not its substance. The two pages serve different purposes: the biography is the narrative; this page is the machinery.
The documentary biography of Marguerite Gaulin tells her life across seventy-five years and two continents. This methodology page documents how that biography was assembled: which sources were used at which evidentiary weight, how source conflicts were resolved against the primary record, what techniques were applied when no record survived, and which questions remain genuinely open and why.
It also names what was not done. Conclusions are sourced to primary records wherever those records survive; secondary references are flagged as such; discrepancies are documented before they are resolved; and language is calibrated, throughout, to distinguish documented fact from probable inference. Where a question cannot yet be answered from the available record, the biography says so, this page says how to try, and neither invents the missing detail.
It also keeps its own errors visible. Two conclusions previously published on this page have since been withdrawn against later evidence, and both are retained below with the reasoning that produced them and the record that retired them. A methodology page on which nothing has ever failed is not a methodology page.
This is the standard of the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG) — the Genealogical Proof Standard, the Reasonably Exhaustive Search requirement, and the discipline of citing every claim to a verifiable source. For a portfolio-grade documentary biography, the rigor matters. This page is where the rigor is visible.
The Research Arc
The Marguerite Gaulin project unfolded across nine successive research sessions, each adding a layer of documentation to what the previous session had established. The arc moved geographically as well as evidentiarily — from compiled secondary references through Quebec primary records, back across the Atlantic to the original French parish registers, forward again into the Beauport baptism network, and finally into a systematic audit of every register act against the database card that indexes it.
By the end of Batch 9, the documentary footprint stood at seventy catalogued documents, forty-seven of them primary-source. Twenty-one discrepancies are tracked: sixteen resolved, five open. The Buisson fief documentary chain stands image-verified end to end, save the 96-livre receipt of 1 June 1667 referenced in earlier research notes.
The Source Hierarchy
Genealogical claims are not all worth the same. A parish register entry made by the curé who witnessed the baptism in 1657 is not the same kind of evidence as a 2010 user-submitted entry on a public family tree, even when both name the same date. The Genealogical Proof Standard requires that conclusions rest on the strongest available evidence, with weaker evidence flagged for what it is. This project applied four tiers.
Primary Sources
Records produced contemporaneously by people whose institutional role required them to record what they witnessed. These carry the highest evidentiary weight.
- Parish register entries (baptism, marriage, burial) — original ink on the register page
- Notarial acts (marriage contracts, inventories, sales, quittances)
- Institutional registers (the Hôtel-Dieu du Précieux-Sang patient rolls)
- Royal censuses (Nouvelle-France 1666, 1667, 1681)
- Sovereign Council judgments
Derivative Primary Sources
Curated transcriptions and indexes of primary sources, produced by scholars or institutions with documented methodologies. Reliable as pointers but not the document itself — when the original register is accessible, we return to the register. Crucially, a card and the act it indexes are one witness, not two: their agreement is not corroboration.
- PRDH-IGD (Programme de recherche en démographie historique)
- Fichier Origine
- Genealogy of French in North America (Beauregard)
- Godbout's Origine des familles canadiennes-françaises (1925) — a special case: verbatim parish-register transcriptions compiled before twentieth-century access restrictions, treated as primary when no register photograph is available
Published Secondary Sources
Compiled biographies and historical works that synthesize primary research. Useful for framing questions and corroborating primary findings, but not themselves evidence. Where they conflict with the primary record, the primary record governs.
- Gagné, Before the King's Daughters: The Filles à Marier, 1634–1662 (2002)
- Lebel & Laforest, Our French-Canadian Ancestors, vol. 3
- Specialized monographs on Beauport, Perche emigration, and seigneurial history
Not Used as Evidence
Crowd-sourced public family trees and unsourced online compilations are useful only for identifying potential records to verify. They have no independent evidentiary value and are not cited in this biography. Their characteristic failure is that an error, once entered, carries no trace of its origin and no means of retraction — which is precisely what makes them unusable as evidence and hazardous as a source of leads.
- Wikitree, Geni, Ancestry public trees, FamilySearch user-submitted lines
- Unsourced blog posts and forum discussions
Defensible Language
Words are not neutral in genealogical writing. The phrase "Marguerite was born in 1627" makes a different claim than "Marguerite was probably born in 1627" or "Marguerite's baptism record places her birth in May 1627." Each carries a different evidentiary weight, and a careful reader should be able to tell, from the language alone, what kind of evidence stands behind any given sentence.
The biography uses the following calibration:
| Phrase | Evidentiary basis |
|---|---|
| "baptized," "married," "buried" | Primary register record cited; date and place specified |
| "the record shows" | Primary record exists and is transcribed in the research log |
| "per [Source]" | Secondary or database source named where primary is unavailable |
| "highly probable" | Strong indirect evidence; multiple independent secondary sources align; no primary conflict |
| "likely" / "appears to" | Preponderance of evidence; some uncertainty remains |
| "inferred from" | Explicit inference from indirect evidence; the inferential step is named |
| "open question" | Discrepancy unresolved; no clear primary record found |
| "withdrawn" | A claim previously published here, retired against later evidence; the earlier reading and the record that retired it both stay visible |
The discipline matters most at the seams — the moments where the documentary record runs thin and inference begins. The crossing of the Atlantic in 1654 is one such moment: no passenger list, no contract, no register entry places Marguerite on any specific ship. The biography says so in those words. It does not invent a name or a port.
Resolving Source Discrepancies
Across the published references, the database compilations, and the primary records, twenty-one substantive discrepancies surfaced during the research. Sixteen resolved against the primary record. Five remain open and are flagged as such in the biography.
The resolution method, in every case, was the same: locate the primary source closest to the event in question, transcribe it carefully, and let it govern. Where two primary sources disagreed (rare, but it happened — the 1666 census misrecorded "François Creste" where the 1660 baptism register named Françoise), the source closer in time to the event being recorded took precedence.
Two entries below are marked withdrawn or reopened. Both were published on this page as resolved and both were retired by evidence that arrived later. They are kept in place, with their original reasoning intact, because a discrepancy register that silently deletes its errors is not an audit trail.
The Twenty-One Discrepancies
Each discrepancy is named, the sources in conflict are identified, the resolution method is documented, and the status is marked. Withdrawn readings stay visible with the evidence that retired them. The full text of each is preserved in the working research log (sheet "Discrepancies," entries DC-01 through DC-21).
DC-01: Marguerite's Baptism Year
Godbout (1925), AD-61: baptized 14 May 1627
DC-02: Marguerite's Burial Month
Beauport register (primary): buried 15 January 1703
DC-03: Mother's Surname — Boulemer vs. Bonnemer
Saint-Martin parish register (Godbout): Marie Boulemer
DC-04: Antoine Crête × Jeanne Legrand Marriage
Saint-Aubin de Tourouvre register (AD-61): married 29 October 1619
DC-05: Identity of Infant Marguerite Buried 1663
1666 census + primary burial register: the younger Marguerite II (six weeks old) was buried in May 1663; the elder Marguerite I survived and married Pierre Gaillou in 1678.
DC-06: Louis Crête's Marital Status
PRDH Couple #5533 and the secondary literature: Louis married Madeleine Briault on 28 May 1685, three months before his death
DC-07: Louis Crête's Age at Death
Saint-Laurent burial register + 1656 baptism: age 29 at death
DC-08: Jean Crête's Age at Death
Beauport burial register: "environ 93"
Tourouvre baptism (1626) + Beauport burial (1717): died at age 90
DC-09: Diocese Designation at Jean Crête's Baptism
1626 primary register, Saint-Aubin de Tourouvre: diocese of Chartres confirmed
DC-10: 1666 Census — "François Creste, 5"
All other sources, including the 1660 baptism register and 1667 census: the 1660-born child was female — Marie Françoise
DC-11: Marguerite's Exact Year of Atlantic Crossing
Fichier Origine: arrived ca. 1652–1654
Primary records: she was present in Beauport for her 13 September 1654 marriage
DC-12: Existence of Pierre Gaulin's Baptism
PRDH Couple #125 and other references: a fifth child, Pierre, born 14 May 1627, who emigrated and died 1677 at Ste-Famille
DC-13: Pierre Gaulin's Twin Status with Marguerite
Primary record: Marguerite's 1627 baptism stands alone in Godbout's transcription
DC-14: Buisson Fief Vendor — Giffard vs. Guion/Collin
Primary Vachon Vol. II p. 21 (D-059): the sellers were Claude Guion and Catherine Collin, his wife, of Île d'Orléans
DC-15: Marguerite Crête I's Husband — Gaillou vs. Gaultin
1706 Chambalon Quittance (D-040): "Pierre Gaultin"
DC-16: The Third Husband's Surname — Jourdain, not Soudain
Nine other sources: Pierre JOURDAIN dit Bellerose
The contract also carries later marginal annotations reading "Chevalier de St Louis" and "Généalogie de la militaire de St Louis." These are additions to the act, not statements within it, and what they signify has not been established; they are recorded as marginalia and no inference is drawn from them here.
DC-17: 1706 Quittance — Who Holds the Second Quarter?
Same document references 1/4 share: implies four total heirs
Hôtel-Dieu register (DC-20): Marie Françoise died 29 November 1702 — before her mother
That reading no longer holds. Marie Françoise Crête died seven weeks before her mother; a person who predeceases the decedent does not inherit. The four-quarter structure is not in doubt, and neither is Pierre's exclusion. What is now open is the identity behind the "Mme Henri Delauney of Beauport" named in October 1706. Two readings remain possible: the name stands for Marie Françoise's children taking by representation, with their father acting for them; or Henri Delaunay had remarried by 1706 and the clerk recorded his then-current wife under the same style. Only the Chambalon minute can settle it. The sum advanced is forty-one livres: the act reads "de quarante vne liures," confirmed against the minute; a figure of fifty-one that had appeared in one derivative summary is withdrawn. See Lead L-35.
DC-18: Jean Lefebvre's Full Name — Jean vs. Jean Baptiste
PRDH Family record for Marie Crête II × Lefebvre: JEAN BAPTISTE Lefebvre
DC-19: BAnQ Catalog Metadata — 1660 vs. 1666 for the Guion/Collin Sale
Body of D-069 and three independent corroborating acts (D-059, D-067, D-068): all confirm 4 August 1666
DC-20: Marie Françoise Crête's Death — 1702, not 1722
Hôtel-Dieu du Précieux-Sang patient register + PRDH #19407: died 29 November 1702
The 1722 reading, together with a burial date of 18 November that appears in no source, is withdrawn; both had been carried in the working log citing PRDH couple record #866, which gives 29 November 1702. The origin of the 1722 date has not been established and is not asserted here. Two consequences follow, and both are carried forward rather than absorbed: DC-17 is reopened above, and the "three Crête women in seven weeks" cluster asserted in the companion Marie Crête biography is restated as a two-death cluster of September and November 1722. A genuine seven-week cluster does exist, but in a different decade: Marie Françoise on 29 November 1702 and her mother on 15 January 1703, in the same smallpox winter, the daughter at the Quebec hospital and the mother at home in Beauport.
DC-21: Louis Crête's Burial Date — 21 or 25 August 1685?
PRDH burial record #35618: 21 August 1685 for both death and burial
Note on additional resolutions. Two further research findings — the documentation of Marie Crête's three successive marriages (Pepin 1670, Brideau ca. 1687, Jourdain dit Bellerose 1706) and the verification that earlier transcriptions of Marie's second husband should read "Brideau" — were captured during the same research arc but tracked in the People Summary and Children sheet of the research log rather than as separate Discrepancy entries. Both are fully sourced in the biography. The discrepancy count above — 21 tracked, 16 resolved, 5 open — reflects the working log's formal discrepancy register.
Open Questions — What to Search Next
The five open discrepancies are not failures of the research. They are honest acknowledgments that the documentary record, as it currently survives or as it has been examined, does not yet answer them. For each, the next research action is specified.
Three are Perche questions, set out below. The two opened in Batch 9 — the second quarter-share in the 1706 Quittance (DC-17) and the burial date of Louis Crête (DC-21) — differ from these in an important way: both are answerable from documents already identified and located. They need a reading, not a search. See Leads L-35 and L-36.
1. The Atlantic Crossing, 1652–1654
2. The Possible Pierre Gaulin Baptism, ca. 1620–1632
3. Twin Status of Pierre and Marguerite
Four Methodological Techniques Worth Naming
Four specific techniques produced disproportionate analytical value during this project. Each is worth naming because each can be applied to other research subjects.
1. Reading the Baptism Network
Ten Crête children were baptized between 1656 and 1671. Each register entry names the officiating priest, the godfather, and the godmother. Read individually, the entries record sacramental events. Read across fifteen years as a single corpus, they reveal a social network — who came to officiate, whose family stood as godparents, and how the household's social position changed.
The result was the recognition that the Crête-Giffard relationship was quasi-familial rather than patron-client. Robert Giffard personally emergency-baptized the infant Marie Françoise in 1660; his son Joseph and his granddaughter Françoise Juchereau stood as godparents. By 1666, the Grand Vicar of Bishop Laval was officiating, and the wife of the seigneur of Beauport was godmother to a child who took the seigneur's name. The 1666 acquisition of a parcel within the Dubuisson fief — transacted by Claude Guion and Catherine Collin of Île d'Orléans before Notary Paul Vachon, but ultimately rendering foi et hommage to the Giffard line as overseigneurs of the holding — viewed alongside this baptism record, becomes embedded in an existing close relationship with the seigneurial family rather than a transactional event between strangers.
The seigneurial documentary chain offers a parallel-track confirmation. Six years after the 1666 sacramental apex, Jean Crête transported himself to the principal door of the Beauport seigneurial castle and performed the full ritual of foi et hommage to Robert Giffard — one knee on the ground, bare-headed, no sword or spur, calling out three times to Monseigneur (D-067). Seven years later, with Robert dead and Joseph Giffard succeeded, Jean Crête rendered his aveu et dénombrement (D-069) detailing the parcel to the second generation of the Giffard line. The relationship documented through the baptismal register and the relationship documented through the seigneurial register are the same relationship, viewed from two different bureaucratic angles. Each strengthens the other.
The technique — reading a network across many register entries as if it were one document — transfers to any family with multiple baptisms in the same parish across several years.
2. Working with Negative Evidence
Several conclusions in this biography rest on the absence of records that should exist if a contrary claim were true.
Louise Crête, baptized 1670, does not appear in the 1681 census of the household. No burial record has been located, but the absence of any later mention establishes that she died before age ten. The absence is the evidence.
No son named "François Creste" appears in any Crête register entry before or after the 1666 census. The single recorded "François" in the 1666 enumeration, against the silence of every other source, becomes evidence not of a missing son but of a census-taker's recording error.
The technique also works in reverse. When a primary record arrives, it can convert what had been negative-evidence inference into a documented fact. Marguerite's illiteracy had been a working inference for years — supported by the absence of her signature on the surviving notarial acts where Jean signed in his own hand. The November 1693 marriage contract of son Pierre to Marthe Marcou (D-057, Notary Paul Vachon, certified copy by Duprac) closed the question directly. The third page of the contract names Marguerite Gollin explicitly among those who "declared not to know how to write or sign." Inference became record.
The contrast was confirmed directly by the 1673 aveu et dénombrement (D-069), the third page of which carries Jean Crête's signature in his own hand: "Jehan Creste." The literacy contrast within a single household becomes, in primary-source terms, gender-asymmetric: Jean signed his name; Marguerite did not. This is the documentary footprint of seventeenth-century habitant education in microcosm. Both pieces of evidence, the absent signature and the present one, now do BCG-grade work.
3. Triangulating Across Three Censuses
The 1666 royal census of New France is well-known. Less commonly examined together with it are the 1667 and 1681 enumerations of the same households. For the Crête family, all three exist.
Read across the fifteen years they span, the three censuses document not just continuity but trajectory: fifteen arpents under cultivation in 1667 became forty in 1681; six cattle became thirteen; and the household gained two firearms and added a servant. They also document a small consistency problem worth noting in its own right: the census-taker mis-recorded Marguerite's surname differently each time — Golin in 1666, Gosselin in 1667, Gaudin in 1681. The instability extended beyond the censuses: Notary Romain Becquet's sale to Denis Roberge of 14 April 1676 (D-061) renders the surname "Gosselin" in a notarial setting where stability would have been expected. Four distinct primary-source spellings across fifteen years — Golin, Gosselin (twice, in 1667 and 1676), Gaudin — with no surviving Crête-line act in which Marguerite herself rendered the spelling. The surname was the household's least stable variable across primary sources.
The technique is the lesson: never read a single census in isolation. A second enumeration of the same household is the cheapest cross-check available in seventeenth-century New France research.
4. Auditing the Index Against the Act
The fourth technique was the last to be applied and the most corrective. Every parish register act in the corpus was placed side by side with the database card that indexes it, and the two were compared field by field — names, dates, ages, places, participants.
The premise is that a card and the act it indexes are one witness, not two. Their agreement proves nothing, because the card is derived from the act; only their disagreement carries information. Read that way, the exercise is not a verification but a diagnostic: every divergence is either a transcription error in the index, a misreading in the working log, or a genuine ambiguity in the original hand — and each of those three requires a different response.
The audit caught a godparent surname (Godin read as Golin), two burial-date conflicts, a display artifact in which a database's English interface rendered a daughter's given name as "Married," and — most consequentially — a twenty-year error in a death date that had entered the working log attributed to a database record which says otherwise, and from there reached published conclusions on three pages of this site. It also closed the Soudain/Jourdain question by putting the contract reading next to the husband's own signature.
The cost of the technique is tedium; the return is that errors surface before a reviewer finds them. The lesson generalizes: the moment to audit an index against its source is after the conclusions are drafted, when there is something for a discrepancy to break.
Six Cases in Evidence Analysis
The Genealogical Proof Standard requires more than the assembly of sources — it requires the analysis and correlation of those sources into reasoned conclusions. The six cases that follow walk through specific claims in this biography step by step, showing how the evidence was weighed, how conflicts were resolved, and how each conclusion was reached. One of the six has since been partially withdrawn; it is kept in place, because a case that failed is more instructive than a case that never did.
Marguerite Gaulin's Parentage
Marguerite Gaulin (1627–1703) was the daughter of Vincent Gaulin and Marie Boulemer of Saint-Martin-du-Vieux-Bellême, Perche.
Sources Considered
- 14 May 1627 — Saint-Martin-du-Vieux-Bellême baptism register, transcribed verbatim by Godbout (1925) and supplied as an image with Fichier Origine #241711: names Vincent Gaulin (Gollin) and Marie Boulemer as parents
- 13 September 1654 — Notre-Dame de Québec marriage register: names Vincent Gaulin and Marie Bonnemer as parents of the bride, with Vincent unmarked and Marie explicitly "défunte"
- Fichier Origine #241711 and GFNA #2351: derivative-primary indexes citing the same parentage
- Lebel & Laforest and Gagné: secondary works citing the same parentage
Analysis and Correlation
Two independent primary sources name the same parental couple, twenty-seven years and an ocean apart: the Saint-Martin baptism of 1627 and the Notre-Dame de Québec marriage act of 1654. The surname appears with two orthographic variants — Boulemer in the Saint-Martin register, Bonnemer in the Quebec register — which Godbout's index explicitly cross-references as the same individual. That the parentage is recorded identically on both sides of the crossing, by clerks with no access to each other's registers, is what makes the identification secure.
Conflict Resolution
No primary or secondary source names different parents. The orthographic variance between Boulemer and Bonnemer is documented as DC-03 and resolved against the primary Saint-Martin register, with both forms acknowledged as referring to the same woman.
Marguerite Gaulin's identification as daughter of Vincent Gaulin and Marie Boulemer is established by two independent primary sources recorded on separate continents, corroborated by index and secondary sources, with no conflicting evidence. The conclusion meets the Genealogical Proof Standard.
The Two Marguerite Crêtes
The Marguerite Crête who married Pierre Gaillou in 1678 and died at Batiscan in 1734 was Marguerite I (b. 1659), not Marguerite II (b. 1663). The infant Marguerite Crête buried in May 1663 was Marguerite II.
Sources Considered
- 27 March 1659 — birth of Marguerite Crête (the elder); baptized 20 April at Giffard's house, Beauport
- 30 March 1663 — birth of Marguerite Crête (the younger); baptized 1 April at Beauport
- May 1663 — burial of "petite fille agée d'un mois et demy, fille de Jean Creste, habitant de Beauport"
- 1666 royal census — lists "Marguerite Cresté, 7" alive in the Jean Crête household
- 6 November 1678 — marriage record: Marguerite Crête × Pierre Gaillou
- 4 October 1706 Chambalon Quittance (D-040) — names Marguerite Crête as Mme Gaillou of Batiscan, procuratrice
- 12 October 1734 — burial of Marguerite Crête at Batiscan (Saint-François-Xavier)
Inferential Chain
The 1663 burial age — one and a half months — matches Marguerite II's 30 March 1663 birth, not Marguerite I's 1659 birth. The 1666 census shows a seven-year-old Marguerite alive in the household three years after the 1663 burial: the age is exactly consistent with Marguerite I (b. 1659, age 7 in 1666) and impossible for Marguerite II (who would have been 3 if alive). The 1678 marriage to Pierre Gaillou and the 1734 Batiscan burial both require a living adult Marguerite; her age at death in 1734 (approximately 75) is consistent with the 1659 birth.
Conflict Resolution
Earlier secondary sources had the case inverted, claiming the elder Marguerite died as infant and the younger married Gaillou. This was DC-05, resolved by the burial age and the 1666 census against the secondary literature. The exact day of the 1663 burial — 16 or 18 May — remains a minor open reading under DC-21 and does not bear on the identification.
The inferential chain from burial age + census enumeration + adult life records is consistent only with Marguerite I as the survivor and Marguerite II as the 1663 infant burial. No alternative interpretation is consistent with all four primary records. The conclusion meets the Genealogical Proof Standard.
Marguerite Gaulin's Illiteracy
Marguerite Gaulin was illiterate; Jean Crête was literate. The household exhibits the gender-asymmetric literacy pattern characteristic of seventeenth-century habitant Quebec.
Inferential Phase (before 1693)
Across multiple notarial acts in which Jean Crête signed in his own hand — the 1658 sale to Chevalier (D-058), the 1666 acts (D-059, D-067), the 1671 sale to Mourier (D-060), the 1685 partage (D-062), the 1689 donation (D-064) — Marguerite's signature is absent. She is named in the body of the act but does not sign. The pattern was suggestive but not conclusive: absence of a signature could indicate illiteracy, indisposition, absence from the act, or other factors.
Documentary Phase (1693 onward)
The 2 November 1693 marriage contract of son Pierre to Marthe Marcou (D-057), drafted by Notary Paul Vachon and certified-copied by Duprac, names Marguerite Gollin explicitly among those who "declared not to know how to write or sign." The previously inferential conclusion became a direct documentary finding.
Contrast Documented Directly
The 25 April 1673 aveu et dénombrement (D-069), page three, carries Jean Crête's signature in his own hand: "Jehan Creste." Jean's literacy is direct documentary fact in the same archival corpus as Marguerite's illiteracy — the two findings reinforce each other and together document the gender-asymmetric education pattern of the household.
Methodological Significance
This is a case where negative evidence functioned as a working hypothesis later confirmed by direct evidence. The discipline matters: had the 1693 contract never surfaced, the conclusion would have remained inferential and the biography's claim about Marguerite's illiteracy would have been written in calibrated probability terms. With the 1693 record in hand, the claim becomes documented fact.
Both findings — Marguerite's illiteracy and Jean's literacy — are established by direct primary-source evidence. The earlier inferential phase exemplifies disciplined use of negative evidence: a hypothesis held appropriately, then confirmed when a direct record surfaced.
The Crête-Giffard Quasi-Familial Relationship
The Crête-Giffard relationship was quasi-familial in character — a relationship of close personal bond and seigneurial intimacy — rather than ordinary patron-client or arms-length seigneurial commerce.
The Documentary Network (Eight Independent Acts)
- 13 September 1654 — Jean Crête and Marguerite Gaulin married in the manor house of Sieur Robert Giffard (Beauport)
- 20 April 1659 — Marguerite I baptized "chez Mr Giffard"; Father Paul Ragueneau officiating
- 1 August 1660 — Marie Françoise Crête emergency-baptized at home by Robert Giffard personally when in danger of death; solemn ceremonies supplied later with Joseph Giffard (Robert's son) as godfather and Françoise Juchereau (Robert's granddaughter) as godmother
- 2 May 1666 — Joseph Crête baptized; officiant Charles de Lauson de Charny (Grand Vicar of Bishop Laval); godfather Nicolas Juchereau Sieur de Saint-Denis (Robert's son-in-law); godmother Michelle Thérèse Nau, wife of Joseph Giffard, seigneur of Beauport; child named Joseph for the seigneur
- 11 August 1666 — Jean Crête performs foi et hommage to Robert Giffard at the principal door of the seigneurial castle (D-067); the medieval ritual preserved intact
- 25 April 1673 — aveu et dénombrement rendered to Joseph Giffard (D-069) after Robert's death and Joseph's succession
- 5 November 1673 — Surveyor Jean Guyon's division (D-068) physically marks the boundary parcels
- 1705 and 1712 — Continued seigneurial relationship through Nicolas Dupont (adjacent seigneur 1673; Pepin arbitrator 1705; Crête-Lefebvre rent tutor 1712), demonstrating that the seigneurial network around the Crête family continued past the Giffard line itself
The Correlative Argument
No single document above establishes a quasi-familial bond. Each one, read alone, could be explained by ordinary patron-client behavior — the marriage at the manor house, the baptisms with the seigneurial family at the font, the 1666 land transaction (now known to have been with Guion/Collin rather than Giffard directly), and the seigneurial obligations rendered formally. But when read across two registers and fifty-eight years, the documents do something different than each alone could do.
The 1660 emergency baptism, in particular, exceeds patron-client behavior. Robert Giffard personally administered the sacrament to a habitant's daughter in danger of death — an act of pastoral and personal intimacy, not a routine seigneurial gesture. The naming of the 1666 son Joseph, after the seigneur, with the seigneur's wife as godmother, signals more than acknowledgment of overlordship. The continuity of the seigneurial relationship across generations demonstrates a relational network that outlasted any single party.
The Counterargument and Its Limits
An alternative reading would hold that Robert Giffard simply baptized many habitant children in danger of death, that the Joseph naming was conventional, and that the seigneurial obligations were standard practice. The current research does not, however, document Robert Giffard personally administering emergency baptism to any other habitant household's children, nor does it document any other habitant-class Beauport baptism with both the seigneur's wife as godmother and the child named for the seigneur. The 1660 act and the 1666 baptism are documentary peculiarities specific to the Crête household.
Honesty requires naming the weakness in that argument: the absence of comparable records may reflect the limits of the search rather than the limits of the practice. No systematic survey of Beauport habitant baptisms 1650–1670 has been undertaken. The conclusion is therefore held as strong but revisable, and the counterfactual section below states exactly what would revise it.
The quasi-familial reading is established by correlation across eight independent acts spanning two documentary registers (sacramental and seigneurial) and fifty-eight years (1654–1712). The patron-client alternative does not account for the documentary peculiarities specific to the Crête household. The conclusion meets the Genealogical Proof Standard while remaining open to revision should comparable documentation surface for other Beauport habitants of similar economic standing.
The Four-Heir Structure of Marguerite Gaulin's 1706 Succession
The 1706 Chambalon Quittance documents four heirs at one-quarter each to Marguerite Gaulin's succession; the surviving son Pierre had already received his share through the 1693 Buisson fief transfer.
The Apparent Tension
The 1706 Quittance (D-040) names three daughters explicitly: Marguerite Crête (Mme Gaillou, of Batiscan, procuratrice), Marie Françoise Crête (Mme Delauney), and Marie Crête (Mme Jourdain). The same document references "le quart" — one-quarter share — which implies four total heirs. The arithmetic does not close on the three named persons.
Correlation with Other Documents
The 2 November 1693 marriage contract of Pierre Crête (D-057) names three Crête sons-in-law as beaux-frères of the groom: Jean Brideau (Marie's second husband), Henry Delauney, and Jean Lefebvre. The PRDH Family record confirms Jean Baptiste Lefebvre as the husband of Marie Crête II (b. 1668, m. 22 October 1685 Beauport). The 1706 Quittance text explicitly identifies Jean Lefebvre as the beau-frère advancing the funds from which Marguerite Crête received her quarter share.
Pierre's Already-Received Share
The 1693 marriage contract documents that Jean and Marguerite granted Pierre six arpents of the Buisson fief at his marriage — "l'avancement d'hoirie" in customary law: an inter vivos donation that counted against his eventual succession share. This explains why he does not appear in the 1706 Quittance: he had already received his portion thirteen years earlier.
Where the Arithmetic Stopped Closing
This case formerly concluded that all five Crête survivors at Marguerite's death were accounted for: four daughters at one-quarter each, one son already advanced in 1693. The register of the Hôtel-Dieu has since established that Marie Françoise died 29 November 1702, seven weeks before her mother (DC-20). A person who predeceases the decedent does not inherit. One of the four named quarters therefore cannot belong to the person this case assigned it to, and that identification is withdrawn.
The failure is worth examining rather than deleting. Every step of the original reasoning was sound in its own terms: the fraction was read correctly, the sons-in-law were correctly identified, the customary-law treatment of Pierre's advancement was correct. What failed was an unexamined assumption — that a daughter named in a 1706 act was alive in 1706 — which no one thought to test because the act itself gave no reason to doubt it. Structural inferences are only as sound as the dates of their terms.
The four-quarter structure stands: D-040 states the fraction explicitly, and Pierre's exclusion is soundly explained by the 1693 transfer as avancement d'hoirie. What does not stand is the assignment of the second quarter to Marie Françoise. Either her children took by representation with Henri Delaunay acting for them, or Henri had remarried and the clerk named his current wife. DC-17 is reopened; Lead L-35 specifies the reading that would settle it.
The Buisson Fief, 1634–1712 (Seventy-Eight Years)
The Buisson fief has a complete primary-source documentary chain from its 1634 origin at Mortagne, Perche, through Pierre Crête's 1712 rent receipt — image-verified end to end, save the 96-livre receipt of 1 June 1667 referenced in earlier research notes.
The Chain
- 14 March 1634 — Robert Giffard grants the Buisson fief (1000 arpents) to Jean Guion before Notary Mathurin Roussel at Mortagne, Perche, France [cited in D-069]
- By 1666 — Jean Guion and Mathurine Robin both deceased [D-067, D-069]
- 4 August 1666 — Claude Guion (son and heir) and Catherine Collin sell the parcel to Jean Crête before Notary Paul Vachon (D-059)
- 11 August 1666 — Jean Crête performs foi et hommage to Robert Giffard at the seigneurial castle (D-067)
- 1 June 1667 — 96-livre receipt referenced in earlier research notes [unretrieved — L-33]
- April 1668 — Robert Giffard dies; Joseph Giffard succeeds [historical record]
- 25 April 1673 — Jean Crête's aveu et dénombrement to Joseph Giffard (D-069)
- 5 November 1673 — Surveyor Jean Guyon records the physical division (D-068)
- 29 July 1693 — A separate Chambalon sale by Sieur des Méloizes to Pierre Crête, Jean Baptiste Lefebvre, and Jean Baugis [referenced in D-070; underlying contract not yet retrieved — L-34]
- 2 November 1693 — Jean and Marguerite grant Pierre Crête six arpents of the Buisson fief at his marriage (D-057)
- 31 July 1712 (with 18 January 1716 endorsement) — Nicolas Dupont, as tutor of the des Méloizes minor heirs, acknowledges receipt of rent from Pierre Crête for the 1693 land (D-070)
What the Chain Demonstrates
This is a documentary chain across two continents (Perche to New France) and seventy-eight years, with eleven nodes named, of which nine are image-verified primary sources presently in the research log. The chain is structurally complete: every transfer of right has its instrument, every renewal of seigneurial obligation has its act, and every change of personnel (Robert → Joseph Giffard; Jean → Pierre Crête; Sieur des Méloizes → minor heirs under Nicolas Dupont) is documented at its juncture.
Reasonably Exhaustive Search
The BCG requirement of reasonably exhaustive search is met for the Buisson fief documentary chain. The two unretrieved elements (the 96-livre receipt and the 29 July 1693 joint sale) are named, their archival series identified, and the search continues. The biography's claims about the Buisson fief stand on a primary-source foundation that the typical New France habitant family record does not possess.
The Buisson fief chain demonstrates Reasonably Exhaustive Search, Complete Source Citations, Analysis and Correlation across documents, and Resolution of the Giffard-vs-Guion/Collin vendor question. It is a portfolio-grade example of multi-document genealogical reasoning.
Source Weighing — Selected Claims
For four key claims in the biography, the sources contributing to the conclusion are weighed explicitly. The evidentiary weight reflects both the tier of the source and the proximity to the event being recorded. Where sources conflict, the resolution rests on the highest-weight evidence aligned with the analytical record.
Claim 1: Marguerite Gaulin was the daughter of Vincent Gaulin and Marie Boulemer.
| Source | Tier | Date | Weight | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saint-Martin baptism act (Fichier Origine image; Godbout 1925 transcription) | Primary | 1627 | Highest | Vincent + Marie Boulemer named |
| Notre-Dame de Québec marriage register | Primary | 1654 | Highest | Vincent + Marie Bonnemer named (variant spelling); Marie marked défunte |
| Fichier Origine #241711; GFNA #2351 | Derivative-Primary (index) | Modern | Supporting | Confirms primary citations |
| Lebel/Laforest; Gagné | Secondary (published) | 1979, 2002 | Corroborating | Aligns with primary |
| Conclusion | Established — two independent primary sources on two continents, no conflict | |||
Claim 2: Marguerite Gaulin was born in May 1627 (DC-01).
| Source | Tier | Date | Weight | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saint-Martin baptism act (image via Fichier Origine; Godbout transcription verbatim) | Primary | 1627 | Highest | Reads "Le quatorzième de may aud[it] an 1627" |
| Beauport burial register, 1703 | Primary | 1703 | High | Age "environ soixante et quinze ans" — exactly consistent with May 1627 |
| Fichier Origine #241711 | Derivative-Primary | Modern | High | Cites the same date and parentage |
| Lebel & Laforest | Secondary | 1979 | Superseded | States "ca. 1625" — superseded by primary |
| Conclusion | Resolved — baptism act gives 14 May 1627; the 1703 burial age independently corroborates | |||
Claim 3: The 1666 Buisson fief parcel was sold by Claude Guion and Catherine Collin, not by the Giffard family (DC-14).
| Source | Tier | Date | Weight | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vachon Vol. II p. 21 (D-059) | Primary (notarial citation) | 1666 | Highest | Names Guion/Collin as vendors directly |
| Act of Faith and Homage (D-067) | Primary | 1666 | Highest | Cites "acquisition faicte... de Mre Claude Guion et de Catherine Collin" |
| Aveu et Dénombrement (D-069) | Primary | 1673 | Highest | Restates the Guion provenance with full chain back to Jean Guion 1634 |
| Earlier working narrative | Inferential | — | Superseded | Had attributed sale to Joseph Giffard — incorrect |
| Conclusion | Resolved — three independent primary acts confirm Guion/Collin as vendors; earlier inference corrected against the primary record | |||
Claim 4: Marie Crête's third husband was Pierre Jourdain dit Bellerose, not Pierre Soudain (DC-16).
| Source | Tier | Date | Weight | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1707 surveyor's partition — the husband's own signature | Primary (autograph) | 1707 | Highest | Signs "Pierre Jourdain" |
| 1712 lots-et-ventes receipt — second autograph | Primary (autograph) | 1712 | Highest | Jourdain again, five years later |
| Notre-Dame de Québec marriage register | Primary | 1706 | Highest | Jourdain |
| 1722 burial act of Marie Crête | Primary | 1722 | High | Names her wife of "the said Bellerose," attaching the dit name |
| PRDH #67784, #37271; Lebel & Laforest | Derivative-Primary; Secondary | Modern; 1979 | Corroborating | Jourdain throughout |
| 1705 Chambalon contract, one reading | Primary (contested calligraphy) | 1705 | Superseded | Read by some as "Soudain" — a lowercase J resembling an S |
| Conclusion | Resolved — two autographs of the man's own name outweigh a single contested reading of a clerk's hand | |||
Counterfactual Reasoning — What Would Falsify These Conclusions
A BCG-grade conclusion is not only one that the evidence supports — it is also one that has been tested against the question of what alternative evidence could overturn it. For the three most consequential conclusions in this biography, the falsification conditions are named explicitly.
Counterfactual 1: The Jourdain Reading (DC-16)
- A re-examination of the Chambalon protocol establishing that the contract's hand is unambiguously S and not J, together with a second contemporaneous act naming a distinct Pierre Soudain married to Marie Crête
- Evidence that the 1707 partition and 1712 receipt signatures belong to a different man — a second Pierre Jourdain at Quebec in the same decade, married to a different woman
Nine sources read Jourdain against one that has been read as Soudain, and two of the nine are the husband's own autographs on property records five years apart. A signature is the strongest evidence of a man's own name that a seventeenth-century record can supply, and it is the class of evidence least vulnerable to a later copyist's misreading. The contested contract reading is explicable as a calligraphic ambiguity in a hand where the lowercase J and S converge.
Lead L-29 is closed. Parchemin re-examination of the 1705 contract remains desirable for completeness but is no longer load-bearing on the identification.
Counterfactual 2: The Two Marguerite Crêtes (DC-05)
- A primary record after 1663 explicitly naming a Marguerite Crête born 1663 in adult life — would invert the conclusion
- A burial record for Marguerite I before 1678 — would require a third Marguerite to explain the 1678 marriage to Gaillou
- A 1666 census reading showing a 3-year-old Marguerite instead of a 7-year-old — would force a re-reading of the census
The 1666 census entry for "Marguerite Cresté, 7" is unambiguous. The 1663 burial of "petite fille agée d'un mois et demy" matches a 30 March 1663 birth exactly — Marguerite II. The 1734 Batiscan burial of Marguerite Crête (Mme Gaillou) at approximately age 75 is consistent with the 1659 birth and not with 1663. The four independent primary records align on Marguerite I as survivor, Marguerite II as infant burial.
No alternative interpretation is consistent with all four primary records. Overturning it would require a substantial documentary find that contradicts existing primary evidence — not merely additional context.
Counterfactual 3: The Crête-Giffard Quasi-Familial Reading
- Discovery that Robert Giffard personally emergency-baptized multiple habitant children of similar economic standing — would suggest the 1660 act was routine seigneurial pastoral behavior rather than a peculiarity
- Discovery that Joseph Giffard's wife stood as godmother to many habitant children of similar economic standing — would weaken the 1666 baptism's exceptional reading
- A record of Crête conflict with Giffard, or of rapid distancing in the 1670s after the 1668 death of Robert — would suggest the relationship was contingent rather than enduring
The current research has not located evidence of Robert Giffard performing emergency baptism for any other habitant household, nor any other Beauport baptism with both the seigneur's wife as godmother and the child named for the seigneur. The 1673 aveu et dénombrement demonstrates the relationship continued into the second Giffard generation. The Nicolas Dupont continuity through 1712 shows the social network extending beyond the Giffard line itself. The eight independent documents reinforce one another; none alone establishes the conclusion, but their correlation does.
The honest limit: no systematic survey of Beauport habitant baptisms 1650–1670 has been undertaken, so the peculiarity of these acts is asserted against an unsurveyed field. This is the weakest joint in the argument and is named as such.
The conclusion is appropriately strong for current evidence but remains open to revision should comparable documentation surface for other Beauport habitants of similar economic standing. This is the appropriate epistemic posture for network arguments.
Research Planning — What Remains and Where to Search
A Reasonably Exhaustive Search is not the same thing as a finished search. For each open question and pending lead, the next research action is specified, the archival series identified, and the priority assigned. This is the discipline of named-next-step research planning: every open question has a search.
L-35 — The Chambalon Minute of 4 October 1706 (DC-17)
One reading in this act requires direct re-examination: the identity of the "Mme Henri Delauney of Beauport" named as a quarter-share heir, given that Marie Françoise died seven weeks before her mother. The sum advanced is settled at forty-one livres against the minute.
DC-11 — Marguerite's Atlantic Crossing Year, 1652–1654
The single most consequential gap in the biography — the act that turned a Perche girl into a New France colonist remains undocumented in its details (year, port, ship, fellow passengers).
DC-12 — The Possible Pierre Gaulin Baptism, ca. 1620–1632
Pierre Gaulin's adult Quebec life is documented; his baptism does not appear in Godbout's 1925 transcription of the Saint-Martin register. Whether absent, omitted, or lost remains undetermined.
DC-13 — Pierre Gaulin's Twin Status with Marguerite
Conditional on DC-12. If Pierre existed, his twin status with Marguerite (14 May 1627) is testable. Absence of any record cannot disprove twin birth, but its presence with a 14 May 1627 date would settle the question.
L-26 — Image Acquisition for the Eight Parchemin Citations
D-058 through D-065 are currently CITATION VERIFIED from the Parchemin database. Primary images are needed for BCG portfolio review.
L-30 — Trottain Procuration of 27 September 1706
Named directly in the 1706 Chambalon Quittance (D-040). Provides the chain of authority for Marguerite Crête I's appearance at Quebec by procuration.
L-36 — Saint-Laurent Burial Register, August 1685 (DC-21)
Confirm the burial date of Louis Crête: the register reads 25 August, PRDH #35618 carries 21 August for both death and burial.
L-37 — The La Rochelle Marriage of Louis Crête, 28 May 1685 (DC-06)
The marriage is recorded in PRDH Couple #5533 as taking place in France; the Saint-Sauveur attribution comes from the secondary literature. No register image has been retrieved.
L-33 — 96-Livre Receipt of 1 June 1667
One of two remaining unretrieved elements of the Buisson fief documentary chain. Referenced in earlier research notes; not yet primary-verified.
L-34 — 29 July 1693 Chambalon Joint Sale
Underlying contract referenced in D-070: Sieur des Méloizes sold to Pierre Crête, Jean Baptiste Lefebvre, and Jean Baugis. Three months before Pierre's 2 November 1693 marriage.
L-31 — Marriage Record of Marguerite I × Pierre Gaillou, 6 November 1678
Verify primary surname spelling: GAILLOU (PRDH canonical) versus GAULTIN (1706 Chambalon variant). PRDH couple record #866 gives the place as lieu indéterminé, so the parish is itself unestablished.
L-27 — Identify "Jean Gaulin of Saint-Bernard, Charlesbourg"
Named in 1685 Vachon quittance (D-063) alongside Jean Crête, Marguerite Gaulin, and Marie Rocheron. Likely Marguerite's nephew or another Gaulin sibling-line relative.
L-32 — Collin / Gollin / Gaulin Surname-Root Check
Catherine Collin (1666 Buisson fief co-vendor) and Marguerite Gollin / Gaulin share a surname root. Possible distant kinship.
L-28 — The 1673 Aveu et Dénombrement
Closed via D-069 (image-verified). The 1673 aveu now anchors the Buisson fief documentary chain back to the 1634 Mortagne origin. The remaining 96-livre receipt of 1 June 1667 is split out as L-33.
L-29 — Pierre Soudain dit Bellerose Verification
Closed in Batch 9. The identification resolved to Pierre Jourdain dit Bellerose on the husband's own signed autographs of 1707 and 1712, together with eight further sources reading Jourdain (DC-16). Parchemin re-examination of the 1705 contract remains desirable for completeness but is no longer load-bearing.
The Documentary Footprint
The complete record of sources consulted, individuals documented, and questions tracked is preserved in the working research log maintained alongside this biography. The headline figures, at the end of Batch 9:
Fifty-seven of these sources are reproduced as images in a complete visual archive, maintained separately and available to colleagues on request. The remainder are citation-verified without images — chiefly the eight Parchemin-cited notarial acts tracked above as L-26.
Of the research leads still pending, the highest-priority items are the five open discrepancies above; the re-reading of the 1706 Chambalon minute that would settle the second quarter-share and the disputed sum (L-35); image acquisition for the eight Parchemin-cited notarial documents (D-058 through D-065 — Vachon, Becquet, and Duprac greffes, 1658–1707); the procuration of 27 September 1706 before Notary François Trottain at Batiscan; the 96-livre receipt of 1 June 1667 (L-33); the 29 July 1693 Chambalon joint sale referenced in D-070; and the La Rochelle register for Louis Crête's 1685 marriage (L-37). None of the pending leads call into question the central documented arc of Marguerite Gaulin's life.
Closing Reflection
A documentary biography is not the same thing as a biography. It is a biography that shows its sources, names its uncertainties, and submits its claims to a discipline of verification. The story of Marguerite Gaulin survives in the records that survive. Where they speak, the biography speaks with them. Where they are silent, the biography is silent or admits the silence.
The reader who has followed this far understands what the biography asks them to trust and what it asks them only to consider. The Atlantic crossing of 1654 is documented in its outcome — she was in Beauport by September — but its details (port, ship, date, fellow passengers) are not. The marriage in Sieur Giffard's manor house is documented exhaustively, down to the priest's name. The ten children are documented from baptism to death wherever the registers survive. The relationship to Robert Giffard is documented not through a single record but through a network of baptisms, fief transactions, and witnessing relationships that no one of these documents would carry alone.
For the descendant who wants the story, the biography is the answer. For the genealogist who wants the verification, this page is. Together, they are what a Storyline Genealogy project is meant to deliver: research worked to a professional standard, presented as a life.