Finding Paul:
Two Contracts, and Two Men of One Name
An earlier version of this page presented five documents as Paul Guilbault père’s. Re-examination has reattributed two of them to a different man — Paul Guilbault “the Canadian,” born 1798, who served in the same department in the same season. Both carry a wage of 350 livres; Paul père’s figure is 500. The mistake was to treat the surname as the identifier when the company’s own clerks treated it as noise.
The withdrawn material is kept below with the reasoning that overturned it. What survives is a stronger case than the one it replaces, because the disambiguation of the two Pauls is now the most useful thing on the page.
The Central Problem
Paul Guilbault père was born in April 1761, married Marie Geneviève Olivier dit Mulot at Varennes on 3 February 1783, and died at St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie on 2 January 1831, aged seventy-three, recorded as cultivateur. Between those dates the Quebec parish system produced a detailed and internally consistent occupation record spanning nearly fifty years: agriculteur, maçon, laboureur, cultivateur, and the unusual dual maçon et laboureur in 1802. A review of every parish entry touching him — baptism, marriage, his children’s records, his children’s marriages, his burial — yields not a single use of the word voyageur.
His brother Gabriel, born the following year to the same parents, was described in one 1798 baptism record as voyageur et maintenant agriculteur. That one phrase sent researchers to the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. Paul had no such signal. For Paul, the HBCA is not supplementary evidence. It is the entire case.
And the entire case turned out to contain a second man of the same name.
| Full Name | Paul Guilbault père |
| Born | 23 April 1761 — PRDH #296685. Birthplace requires confirmation: the compiled record gives Notre-Dame-de-Montréal, while his 1783 marriage entry describes him as of the parish of L’Assomption. See open questions. |
| Parents | Charles Gabriel Guilbault (1731–1784) & Marie Charlotte Morin |
| Marriage | 3 February 1783, Sainte-Anne de Varennes — Marie Geneviève Olivier dit Mulot, daughter of Olivier Mulot and Geneviève Le May (PRDH #334384) |
| Brother | Gabriel Guilbault père (13 June 1762 – 6 April 1833) |
| NWC contracts | Two signed engagements: F.5.1 fo. 115 (19 July 1798) and F.5.3 p. 32 (22 May 1821). F.5.3 p. 33 is the index summary of the second, not a third contract. |
| NWC agents | Roderick McKenzie (1798) · Samuel Black (1821) |
| NWC posts | Great Slave Lake (1798) · Athabasca (1820–21) |
| NWC wages | 450 livres (1798, with one equipment) · 500 livres contracted, settling at 617 livres 14 sols (1820–21) · 500 livres (1821 contract) |
| Franklin credit | “By Lieut Franklin — 100” — F.4/37, his Athabasca account. A credit through the Lieutenant’s account; the expedition inference is discussed in Section 8 and is not proved. |
| Death | 2 January 1831, St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie, aged 73. Occupation: cultivateur (PRDH #2990670) |
Two Archive Series, Two Different Questions
This case requires two distinct HBCA series that answer different questions, and understanding the difference is the prerequisite to reading either correctly.
Pre-printed engagement forms completed by a company agent. Each names the engagé, the agent, the term, the capacity (milieu, devant, gouvernail), the route and wintering post, the wages, the equipment, and the point at which the man becomes free. The engagé signs by mark if he cannot write; witnesses and the agent countersign.
F.5.1 is the 1798 volume; F.5.3 covers 1815–1822. Neither has a searchable name index — finding a man requires paginating the volume. F.5 answers: what were the terms, who engaged him, in what capacity?
Post blotters and company-wide ledgers recording wages, purchases, credits, debits and settlement. F.4/29 is the Lac La Pluie blotter (1820); F.4/37 the Athabasca general blotter (1820–21); F.4/32 the general ledger; F.4/46 and F.4/47 the 1821 settlement registers.
The entry point is the HBCA name index — and it is incomplete. A filter on guilb returns seven entries from 3,791; a parallel search on gib returns six more the first misses. F.4 answers: where did he go, what did he buy, what was he paid, was the account settled?
The Hudson’s Bay Company Archives plates carry a printed prohibition on reproduction. Documents held in that archive are transcribed here rather than displayed, with full references so any reader may order the images from the Archives of Manitoba directly. Index screenshots — database output rather than photographs of the records — are retained.
Two Men Called Paul Guilbault
This is now the central methodological finding of the case, and it was originally the thing that made the case look stronger than it was.
Two men named Paul Guilbault served the North West Company in the Athabasca department in 1820–21. One is the subject of this study, born 1761. The other is Paul Guilbault “the Canadian,” baptized at St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie on 22 January 1798 — a first cousin once removed, from a branch that had lived beside this one at L’Assomption for two generations. He later went to the Pacific Northwest and died in Oregon about 1849.
A fifty-nine-year-old and a twenty-two-year-old, same surname, same trade, same district, same season. Family recruitment into the fur trade is a documented pattern, and this is a clean instance of it — which is also why the company’s clerks had two men of one name to keep apart.
Why Spelling Cannot Tell Them Apart
The surname is pronounced in Quebec French with the medial l and the terminal t both silent. A clerk writing what he hears produces approximations, and the same clerk produces different ones. The F.4/37 index renders this one family three ways on a single page — Gibeault, Gilbian, Guilbian. Spelling in these volumes is noise.
The 1821 settlement register does the work the spellings cannot. F.4/46 carries Gibeau Paul — 500 — Athabasca — credit 617.14; the same register carries Guilbau Paul — 350 — Athabasca — debit 96. Each figure matches an independent account elsewhere in the archive.
Paul père is the 500 and the 617.14. The other Paul is the 350 and the 96. Any document in these volumes can be assigned by its figures, and by nothing else.
One caution on the registers themselves. F.4/46 and F.4/47 are a duplicate pair — the same list, same order, same figures, differing only in pagination. Seeing both Pauls “on the same page in two volumes” is one document seen twice, and must not be described as two witnesses. The disambiguation does not weaken for that, because it rests on each man’s figures matching separate accounts.
F.4/32 p. 396 The page is headed Guilbeau and carries debits of 180.2, 15 and 250.18 — 446 — against By Wages 350 and a balance of 96 brought down on the debit side. Those are the other Paul’s figures. The 446 livres of merchandise has no place in this study.
F.4/37 p. 106 shows a debit account, with a transfer from Fort William and a large pemmican purchase. It carries By Wages 350 and a balance of 80.8. It is the other Paul’s account, and its route — Fort William, Fort Chipewyan, Slave Lake, Fort Providence — belongs to his career, not to this one.
A consequence worth stating plainly: the other Paul carries a balance of 96 in the general ledger and 80.8 in the Athabasca blotter. These are not in conflict. They are balances struck in different books at different points in the year, and anyone comparing them without this note will read a contradiction that is not there.
The First Engagement: 19 July 1798
HBCA F.5.1 is the 1798 volume of North West Company servants’ contracts. Paul’s engagement is at folio 115, and the volume also holds a blank pre-printed form bearing his name at folio 81. An archivist’s slip records that folio 114 is missing.
Having declared that he could not write, he made his ordinary mark: Paul × Gibeau.
This contract renders him Gibeau, and the Gibeau family of Lachine and La Prairie is unrelated to the Guilbaults. The identification rests on the given name, the date, and the department — not on anything internal to the document. It is a good identification. It is not a certain one, and the page says so.
Roderick McKenzie as Agent
Roderick McKenzie (c.1761–1844), cousin of Alexander Mackenzie, was among the senior partners of the North West Company and closely involved in the Athabasca department through the 1790s. His name on the contract is not an administrative accident: Paul was engaged by a named partner at the operational heart of the company’s most demanding district.
F.5.1 moves Paul Guilbault’s documented service back from 1820 to 1798. He was not a man who went into the interior once, late in life. He was thirty-seven when he first signed, and the Quebec parish records covering that same summer call him nothing but a tradesman. The invisibility was complete from the beginning.
The Athabasca Account, 1820–21
This is the account that is his, and the arithmetic on the page is what proves it. It also corrects a figure this study carried for a long time.
By Lieut Franklin — 100
1821 By Wages 500. To Balance 617.14. Footing 669.14 / 669.14. Then 1821 By Balance 617.14. Settled.
69.14 + 100 + 500 = 669.14. And 16 + 36 + 617.14 = 669.14. If 617.14 were the wage, the page would not foot.
This page gives “Wages 1821: 617 livres 14 sols.” He contracted at 500 and settled at 617.14. The difference is not pedantry: the Franklin credit is visibly what lifted him above his wage, which is a more interesting fact than the one it replaces, and the corrected figure matches the F.5.3 contract at cinq cents livres and the 1821 settlement register exactly.
The Lac La Pluie Debit
The 16 livres charged “at Lac La Pluie” is a small transfer into the Athabasca account from the Lac La Pluie post — evidence that he passed through, in the year his brother is also documented there. It is not, on its own, evidence about which men travelled together.
The Last Engagement: 22 May 1821
F.5.3 covers 1815–1822 — the North West Company’s last years and the months after the merger agreement of 26 March 1821, which is why a contract dated May 1821 can appear on company paper at all. Paul was approaching sixty.
Not knowing how to write he made his mark: Paul × Gebeault. Countersigned Sam Black; witnesses William McGillivray Jr and James Hill. A closing clause exempts him from carrying at the portages.
Page 33, the index summary of the same contract: Paul Gibeault — 1 Year — Mid Man & Pickeurs — 1 Year — 500# — 1 pass paper — for 1822.
Pages 32 and 33 are one contract and its index summary, not two documents. With F.5.1 that gives two signed engagements across this career, not three.
The Portage Exemption
A man of nearly sixty, engaged as a middleman, written out of portage carrying by name. It is a specific accommodation for age or condition, recorded in the company’s own contract, and it is the most human detail in the file. It is also not unique in this family: the 1820 engagement of a Joseph Guilbeau at Colville House carries a parallel clause excusing him from travelling to a named post. Two Guilbault engagements, two men excused from something by name.
What Happened to This Contract
The for 1822 notation makes this a forward engagement rather than a record of the season past — which is what makes his appearance in the Quebec register that October a genuine problem to be explained.
An earlier reading held that the contract was probably never worked: it engages him to winter at Lake Athabasca, yet in October 1821 he is at St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie for his daughter Rose’s marriage, as laboureur.
The F.4/46 title leaf settles it the other way. That volume announces itself as a list of persons whose engagements for service have been transferred to the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay — and Paul is in it. His engagement was not a dead letter cancelled by the merger; it was carried into the reorganised company, which is exactly what the index summary’s for 1822 says.
That makes the October 1821 appearance in Quebec more urgent to reconcile, not less. The test is whether that marriage entry records Paul as present or merely names him as the bride’s father — a distinction this research file applies as a standing check, because a filiation clause naming a man is not evidence he was in the parish.
Samuel Black and William McGillivray Jr.
Samuel Black (1780–1841) was among the more formidable partners of the North West Company and worked the Athabasca, the company’s most demanding department. William McGillivray Jr. belonged to the family that controlled the NWC in its final years. Their names on a middleman’s engagement two months after the merger agreement is consistent with the orderly transfer of labour obligations into the restructured company — which is what F.4/46 records.
The Settlement Register
The 1821 balances volume is the document that tells the two Pauls apart, and its title leaf explains what kind of list it is.
In the G run: Gibeau Paul — 500 — Atha — Cr 617.14, and, further down the same sequence, Guilbau Paul — 350 — Atha — Dr 96. F.4/47 carries the same names in the same order with the same figures, differing only in pagination.
Both Pauls are here, both in the Athabasca, with figures matching their separate accounts elsewhere in the archive. The disambiguation rests on the company’s own register with a department column and a wage column — which is far better than any argument from spelling, and it is the reason this study can now say which document belongs to which man.
It also confirms that Paul père’s engagement was transferred to the HBC at the merger, and therefore that his 1821 contract took effect.
Franklin’s Published Record
The entry By Lieut Franklin — 100 demanded independent checking. The question is whether a published record places Lieutenant John Franklin in the Athabasca at the right moment, and whether his documented recruitment and payment practices match what a ledger credit of that kind would record.
Franklin requisitioned men through the companies and paid them in goods on company account. That produces exactly the entry seen here: a credit reading By Lieut Franklin — 100, the Lieutenant discharging to the company what he owed for a man. And a man engaged in June, outfitted, then discharged before the party went north would leave precisely one trace — a hundred livres credited to his account and no name on the roster.
It is a fit, not a proof. Franklin names none of the Canadians he engaged or discharged. Direct evidence would be a named payment in the Admiralty financial records, and if this reading is right the name to look for belongs to a discharged man rather than an expedition member — which is a different search from the one usually run.
And there is a complication from the accounts rather than the book. Fort Providence is where the Copper Indian guides were to meet the party — and Fort Providence is the post named in the other Paul’s ledger, along with Fort William, Chipewyan and Slave Lake in order. The man carrying the Franklin credit is this Paul; the man whose charges trace the corridor is the younger one. Two readings are open, and the documents do not choose between them. The duller reading — that Fort Providence is simply an established northern post where any servant might be charged for tobacco — is the safer one, and nothing yet forces the other.
| HBCA F.4/37, Paul Gibeault | Athabasca account 1820–21. Credit entry: “By Lieut Franklin — 100.” Wages 500; settled at 617.14. |
| Franklin, Narrative, pp. 148–149 | Requisition of eight men from each company at Fort Chipewyan; two NWC men volunteer on 3 June 1820. |
| Franklin, Narrative, p. 165 | Payment method: an equipment of goods given to each man engaged at that place, on company account. |
| Franklin, Narrative, p. 166 | Seven discharged before the northward journey, three of them Canadians — consistent with a short engagement settled through the company books. |
| ADM 1/2414 National Archives, UK |
Franklin’s contingent account. A named payment would be direct evidence. Search for a discharged man, not an expedition member. Not yet examined. |
| SPRI MS 248 Cambridge |
Franklin’s field notebooks; Fort Chipewyan wages list, May–July 1820. Not yet examined. |
The Occupation Arc
Placed alongside the Quebec parish series, the contracts and accounts reveal an occupational biography the standard record system was architecturally unable to capture. Gabriel was recorded as a voyageur once, and that one word opened the archive. Paul was never recorded as one, in any Quebec source, across half a century.
1798 [F.5.1 fo. 115: Paul Gibeau signs at Lac la Pluie under Roderick McKenzie — milieu, 450 livres, one equipment, wintering at Great Slave Lake. The Quebec records for the same year call him a tradesman and nothing else.]
–
1821 [F.4/37 and F.4/46: Athabasca. Balance forward 69.14; “By Lieut Franklin — 100”; wages 500; settled at 617.14. F.5.3 signed 22 May 1821 for the 1822 season, and the engagement transferred to the HBC at the merger.]
1828 Two notarial life annuities before Notary Leblanc: 228 livres to Joseph Lorion for ten minots of wheat a year; 200 livres to Pierre Lorion for four. Interior wages converted into secured grain income.
The word that never appears is the methodological signature of this case. Paul signed his first engagement in 1798 and his last in 1821 — twenty-three years apart, both by mark — wintered at Great Slave Lake and in the Athabasca, earned wages that funded his retirement, and died as cultivateur, which is exactly what the parish had always called him.
What This Methodology Does and Does Not Prove
1. Negative evidence, systematically documented
A complete review of Paul Guilbault père’s records was conducted: baptism, marriage, his children’s parish records, his children’s marriages, his burial. Five occupation designations appear across them. Voyageur appears in none. The negative result is not an absence of evidence; it is a positive finding requiring explanation, and the explanation is the structural invisibility of the fur trade to the Quebec parish system.
A second documented negative is worth recording alongside it. A search of the surviving F.5 servants’ contract volumes returns no engagement for any Gabriel Guilbault. Gabriel appears in five F.4 account volumes and no contract volume; Paul has two signed contracts and comparatively little account presence. The two brothers left opposite documentary footprints in the same archive.
2. Correlating evidence, and its limits
No single document proves the identification alone. The consistent elements are: the given name Paul; a phonetic variant of the surname; the capacity milieu in both contracts twenty-three years apart; incapacity to write, signed by mark in both; the route Lac La Pluie to Athabasca in both contracts and the blotter; and, decisively, the wage figure of 500 tying the 1821 contract to the Athabasca account and to the settlement register.
What can no longer be claimed is that no other Paul of this surname appears in these volumes. One does, in the same department in the same season. He is identified, and he is a first cousin once removed. Any future document bearing this surname must be assigned by its figures before it is assigned to a man.
3. Gaps, honestly stated
Between the 1798 contract and the 1820 account books lies a gap of twenty-two years. Whether Paul made further engagements in that period is unknown; the F.5 volumes between F.5.1 and F.5.3 have not been paginated for his name. Folio 114 of F.5.1 is recorded as missing and cannot be recovered. His own general ledger account has very probably been identified at F.4/32 p. 389 and has never been read.
4. Post-return corroboration
Paul reappears in the Quebec record in October 1821, months after his account was settled, as laboureur. The 1827 and 1828 notarial annuities — 428 livres of capital deployed as secured grain income — are consistent in scale with the settlement figure of 617.14 and provide independent post-return corroboration. He returned with earnings sufficient to convert into a retirement income lasting until his death in January 1831.
Two signed North West Company engagements, an Athabasca account that foots, and the company’s own 1821 settlement register establish Paul Guilbault père’s fur trade service across twenty-three years, with two named agents — Roderick McKenzie in 1798 and Samuel Black in 1821 — and William McGillivray Jr. witnessing the last of them two months after the merger agreement.
Quebec parish records covering the same fifty years never once use the word voyageur. Without the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives the career does not exist — and with them, it exists only once the two men of one name are told apart by their figures.
What This Methodology Does Not Yet Answer
- F.4/32 page 389 — his own ledger account, unread. Returned by the name index under the “gib” prefix and distinct from p. 396. Since p. 396 carries the other Paul’s 350 and 96, p. 389 is very probably Paul père’s and should hold his 500 and his 617.14. If it does, it is an attestation of those figures independent of the settlement registers — which, being a duplicate pair, cannot corroborate one another. This is the highest-value outstanding document in the case. Requested from the Archives of Manitoba.
- The 1798–1820 gap. The F.5 volumes between F.5.1 and F.5.3 have not been searched for his name; nor have post journals or returns from those years.
- Was he present at Rose’s marriage in October 1821? The 1821 contract engaged him for the 1822 season and the merger transferred rather than cancelled it. Whether the marriage entry records him as present or merely names him as the bride’s father decides whether the engagement was worked.
- The pemmican line. The entry read on the other Paul’s account as a large pemmican purchase is read elsewhere in this file as tobacco and sundries charged at Fort Providence. Re-examination required before either reading is published anywhere.
- His birthplace. The compiled record gives Notre-Dame-de-Montréal; his 1783 marriage entry describes him as of the parish of L’Assomption, where his parents were settled. The baptism register itself should be consulted.
- The Franklin credit. Verification against ADM 1/2414 at the National Archives, or Franklin’s field notebooks at the Scott Polar Research Institute. The name to search for is a discharged man rather than a member of the party.
Complete Primary Source Documentation
Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg)
- HBCA, F.5/1, NWC Servants’ Contracts, 1798, fo. 115 — engagement of Paul Gibeau, 19 July 1798; agent Rod. McKenzie; milieu; Lac la Pluie to the Postes d’Athabasca; wintering au Grand Lac; 450 livres with one equipment; free at Montreal; signed by mark. Archivist’s slip: fo. 114 missing.
- HBCA, F.5/1, fo. 81 — blank pre-printed engagement form bearing only the name Paul Gibeau; printed text stipulates avec double Equipement.
- HBCA, F.4/37, NWC Athabasca General Blotter, 1820–21 — Paul Gibeault account: balance forward 69.14; sundries at Lac La Pluie 16; small charges 36; By Lieut Franklin 100; 1821 wages 500; balance 617.14; footing 669.14; settled.
- HBCA, F.5/3, NWC Servants’ Contracts, 1815–1822, p. 32 — engagement of Paul Gebeault, 22 May 1821; agent S. Black; milieu et de piêcheur; wintering au Lac d’Athabasca; cinq cents livres; portage exemption; signed by mark; witnesses William McGillivray Jr. and James Hill. Page 33 is the index summary of the same contract.
- HBCA, F.4/46, NWC Account Book 1820–1821, title leaf and pp. 8–9 — register of engagements transferred to the HBC; Gibeau Paul 500 / Cr 617.14; Guilbau Paul 350 / Dr 96.
- HBCA, F.4/47, North West Balances 1821, p. 7 — the same list copied; not an independent witness.
- HBCA NWC Account Books Name Index; HBCA Servants’ Contracts Index — two separate databases.
Documents belonging to Paul Guilbault “the Canadian” — formerly cited here in error
- HBCA, F.4/32, NWC General Ledger, p. 396 — Paul Guilbeau; debits 446; wages 350; balance 96.
- HBCA, F.4/37 — Paul Guilbeau account; Fort William transfer 179.10; charges at Chipewyan, Slave Lake and Fort Providence; wages 350; balance 80.8.
Franklin corroboration
- John Franklin, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22 (London: John Murray, 1823), ch. IV, pp. 142–166.
- ADM 1/2414, The National Archives, Kew — Franklin’s contingent account. Not yet examined.
- SPRI MS 248, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge — field notebooks. Not yet examined.
Quebec vital records — the negative evidence
- PRDH-IGD #296685 — baptism, Paul Guilbault, 23 April 1761. Parents Charles Gabriel Guilbault and Marie Charlotte Morin.
- PRDH-IGD #334384 — marriage, Paul Guilbault and Marie Geneviève Olivier dit Mulot, 3 February 1783, Sainte-Anne de Varennes.
- PRDH-IGD #2990670 — burial, Paul Guilbault, 4 January 1831, St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie, aged 73, cultivateur.
- Children’s parish records, 1783–1811 — complete series. Occupation designations across them: agriculteur, maçon, laboureur, cultivateur, and maçon et laboureur once. Voyageur in none.
Notarial records (BAnQ)
- CN605,S24, 22 July 1820, Notary Barthélémy Joliette — tutelle account for the five orphaned children of Louis Guilbault; estate 1,442 livres.
- CN605,S25, 24 April 1827, Notary Jean-Olivier Leblanc — life annuity, Joseph Lorion: 228 livres for ten minots of wheat a year, secured on Kildare Township. Discharge 14 July 1832.
- CN605,S25, 4 June 1828, same notary — life annuity, Pierre Lorion: 200 livres for four minots a year.
This methodology accompanies The Invisible Voyageur case study. For the companion study of his brother Gabriel in the same archive — and for the third man of this surname, Paul “the Canadian,” whose documents were for a time attributed here — see below.
Case Study: The Invisible Voyageur → The Voyageur Years: Gabriel → Gabriel’s Full Methodology → The Canadian: Paul Guilbault of Lavaltrie →