The Canadian — How the Research Was Done

Establish the Quebec Silence — and State What It Covers

The starting point was a systematic search of the PRDH-IGD for Paul Guilbault, son of François Guilbault and Marie Archange Larivière, born January 21, 1798. The baptism is clear and well preserved. What the search revealed beyond it is equally informative: no marriage, no burial, and no child’s baptism or burial listing Paul as father anywhere in the Quebec parish system.

That absence is documented as a positive finding rather than a gap: Paul Guilbault entered the Quebec parish record on January 22, 1798, and did not re-enter it. For comparison, his father François (b. 1760) is recorded through a long working life, sixteen children, and a burial at Joliette in 1843. The parish system worked exactly as expected for the generation above Paul. It did not record Paul again because Paul did not remain in Quebec.

The extent of the negative must be stated with the negative. These searches covered the parish record system. They did not cover the notarial record, which is a separate archive with separate finding aids — and it is in the notarial record that Paul next appears: a joint engagement of 30 December 1819 before the notary Beek, for “Paul Guibeau” and Louis St-Onge, both of L’Assomption (Step Nine). The claim this page makes for the Quebec silence is therefore the narrower one: no Quebec parish record after January 1798.

Confirm Identity and Pedigree Through PRDH — and Recompute the Kinship

Distinguishing this Paul from the other Guilbault men of the era required building his pedigree with enough specificity to separate him from them. The chain was built upward from the baptism, each link confirmed in PRDH-IGD: Paul (b. 1798) → François × Larivière (1786, L’Assomption) → Charles Thomas × Jourdain Bellerose (1750, Québec) → Charles × Deguise Flamand (1727, Québec) → Joseph × Anne Pageau (1694, Charlesbourg) → Pierre Guilbault of Aunis × Louise Sénécal (1667, Québec).

The 1727 marriage is the link node for every kinship claim on these pages. Two of its sons matter: Charles Thomas (b. 8 June 1727), from whom this Paul descends, and Gabriel (b. 6 August 1731), from whom the researcher’s own line descends through Gabriel père (b. 1762). Charles Thomas and Gabriel were brothers; their sons François (b. 1760) and Gabriel père (b. 1762) were first cousins; therefore Paul (b. 1798) is first cousin once removed to Gabriel père and, necessarily, to Gabriel’s brother Paul père (b. 1761).

Locate Paul in the Gauthier Compiled Ancestry

Raymonde Gauthier’s “Ancestry of French Canadians to Oregon Prior to 1842” (2013, oregonpioneers.com) is a compiled secondary source, but a carefully documented one. Gauthier, who held a doctorate in history from Laval, assembled pedigree chains for French-Canadian men who served in the fur trade and later appeared in Oregon records, working from company servant records, Quebec parish registers and published genealogical sources.

Her entry no. 57 records Paul Guilbault in Hudson’s Bay Company service from 1821 to 1840, born 21 January 1798 and baptized the next day at Lavaltrie, and links him to Hilaire Guilbault. Every marriage date and place in the pedigree she supplies was checked against the PRDH and matches; her Lavaltrie birth data matches PRDH individual no. 499642 exactly. That cross-verification is what moves the entry from an unsupported compilation to a secondary source with primary support.

Two cautions travel with it. Her service dates are reported, not sourced to a named servant record, and should be cited as her statement rather than as a company record. And the phrase linking Paul to Hilaire specifies no mechanism — family, post assignment or shared community. The mechanism was eventually documented, but not from Gauthier: see Step Six.

Separate the Two Pauls in the Company Books — by Figures, Not Spelling

The North West Company’s final account books contain two accounts under the name Paul, and the surname is unstable across them: one clerk renders it three ways on a single page. Spelling is noise. The discriminator is the wage figure, and it is stable: 500 wages with a 617.14 balance is the account at F.4/32 p. 389; 350 wages with a 96 balance is this Paul. The holder of the p. 389 account has not been identified; see Who Was Paul Gibeau?

The pairing is fixed by the 1821 settlement register, which lists both men in one alphabetical run with wage and balance columns beside each name, and the same pairs recur in the general ledger and the Athabasca post blotter. Once the figures are fixed, the accounts sort themselves: F.4/32 p. 396 (446 of goods against 350 of wages, closing 96 on the debit side) belongs to this Paul.

Two balance figures appear for this Paul — 96 in the general ledger and 80.8 in the Athabasca blotter. That is not a discrepancy requiring resolution. They are different books, kept at head office and at the post, closed on different bases; treating them as a conflict would manufacture a problem the records do not have. The figure that identifies the man is the wage, and in both it is 350.

HBCA plates are transcribed on this page, not reproduced. The films carry a printed reproduction prohibition; the readings below are transcriptions from images examined in August 2026.

Read the McDonald Journal — and Read Only What It Says

The published primary source is Archibald McDonald’s journal of Governor George Simpson’s 1828 canoe voyage from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific, issued as Peace River: A Canoe Voyage from Hudson’s Bay to Pacific (Ottawa: J. Durie & Son, 1872), edited by Malcolm McLeod. Simpson was the governor; McDonald kept the journal and was a chief trader in 1828 — the 1872 title page styles him Chief Factor, the rank he reached later. The entries are contemporaneous, written during the journey.

Three entries across nine days — 14 September, 15 September and 22 September — record a Guilbault on the portage between McLeod Lake and Fort St. James. All three give the surname alone. No forename appears in any of them.

Three men could be meant, and nothing in the entries chooses between them: Paul “the Canadian,” on Gauthier’s service dates; Hilaire Guilbault, documented in western service though from 1838; and Joseph Guilbault, born 21 October 1792, this Paul’s elder brother, who has neither a marriage nor a death recorded in the PRDH. What the entries do establish survives the reframing, attached to a Guilbault rather than to a named man: independent charge of four Indigenous carriers, provisioning separate from the fort, and a completed round trip with all loads delivered.

Step Nine narrows the field without closing it: Paul’s own account places him in New Caledonia and Western Caledonia from 1821 to 1826, the district of this portage. He is the best-placed of the three. The entries still give no forename, and this page supplies none.

Nancy Marguerite Anderson’s post of 21 October 2017 identified and contextualized these entries and directed attention to pages 23 and 29 of the published journal. Her post is secondary; the 1872 journal is the citable record.

Establish the Hilaire Connection — from the Register, Not the Index

Hilaire Guilbault (b. 23 June 1818, Verchères; PRDH individual no. 2462814) is the son of Joseph Guilbault (b. 15 December 1786, St-Paul-de-Lavaltrie) and Rosalie Lescault. Joseph is the son of Paul Guilbault père (b. 1761).

Counting from the 1727 node: Paul (b. 1798) and Joseph (b. 1786) are second cousins — their fathers, François and Paul père, were first cousins. Hilaire is Joseph’s son. Paul and Hilaire are therefore second cousins once removed, and Gabriel (b. 1731) is Hilaire’s great-grandfather.

Apply Negative Evidence Standards — and Then Keep Searching

The BCG Genealogical Proof Standard requires negative evidence to be documented with the same care as positive evidence, and a negative search is citable only when its extent is stated. The initial inventory for this case was: no Quebec parish marriage; no Quebec parish burial; no child’s baptism naming Paul as father; no Oregon land claim then located; no Catholic register entry then identified. Each was recorded as a specific finding against a named body of records rather than as a gap.

The case study was first published with the Oregon destination as probable rather than confirmed, and the open-investigation framing named its next targets: the HBCA B.188 series, Oregon Donation Land Claims, the St. Paul Mission registers, and the Early Oregonians Database. That framing proved right, and the Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest delivered.

Search the Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest

The Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest, transcribed and annotated by Harriet Duncan Munnick, cover the Fort Vancouver and French Prairie mission registers from the late 1830s. Vancouver Volume I — the same volume consulted in parallel research on the Quintal and Marie Anne Nipissing case — was searched for Guilbault entries.

The index returned Paul Guilbault across more than fifteen pages between 1838 and 1843. The first entry, M-18, is his marriage at Fort Vancouver on 29 December 1838 to Caty Sakaïan, Walla Walla by nation, with James Douglas and William Fraser Tolmie as witnesses and three pre-nuptial children recognized. Baptisms of his children follow across five years, and he appears repeatedly as godfather and as burial witness.

Munnick’s biographical annotation supplied the bridge between the interior and Fort Vancouver. Its substance, in summary rather than in her words: Paul Guilbault was a Hudson’s Bay Company boatman from the L’Assomption district; in 1831 he was sent from Fort Walla Walla to John Work’s Snake Country brigade; Caty Walla Walla bore him six children and died in 1848; he was close to Thomas Tawakon, an Iroquois engagé, and married Tawakon’s widow in November 1848; he died within about a year, possibly in the gold fields and unrecorded, and his widow remarried.

Two cautions apply to that summary. Munnick’s volumes are in copyright and her annotations are her own composition: the facts are taken and cited, the wording is not reproduced. And her count of six children is her compiled statement — the registers identify four by name, and this page reports the difference rather than harmonizing it.

Follow the Account Across the Merger — by Arithmetic, Not by Name

The 1821 settlement register shows Paul’s engagement transferred to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The company’s Abstracts of Servants’ Accounts (HBCA B.239/g) enter each servant once a year with the balance carried in, wages, goods drawn and the balance carried out. Those four figures make an account traceable without relying on the clerk’s spelling: if a year opens at exactly the figure on which the previous year closed, it is the same account.

Followed from g/1 to g/6, it is. The 1821–22 entry opens owing 192 livres — twice the 96 of the North West Company account. The doubling is not a coincidence to be explained away; it is a currency. The North West Company kept its books in its own livre, worth half a livre of Quebec currency, and its own claim against the Franklin expedition (HBCA F.4/56) states both rates. The Hudson’s Bay Company books restated every transferred man in Quebec livres, so every balance doubled, and the doubling holds on the same pages for each transferred man whose figures can be checked. Each later year opens at the previous close — 577.16, 1230.10, then £41 18s 8d when the books change to sterling, £26 18s 8d, £17 12s 1d — and in 1824 the clerk begins writing the parish: L’Assomption.

The same conversion closes the circle back to Quebec. The engagement of 30 December 1819 before Beek — “Paul Guibeau” and Louis St-Onge, both “de l’Assomption,” milieux, three winters, 700 livres — was written in Quebec currency. Seven hundred Quebec livres is 350 company livres, the wage that identifies this Paul’s account. The act gives no age and no father, so it is attached to him by parish, date and wage together, not by a filiation; it is the earliest record of his working life and it is a Quebec document.

What the chain does not do is name the man in a single document. It joins a 1798 baptism, an 1819 contract, an 1820–21 North West Company account and six Hudson’s Bay Company years into one line of evidence, each joint tested on its own terms.