Three Brothers, Three Sisters
The Challenge
Jean-Baptiste Larocque and Marie Charlotte Séguin dit Ladéroute married at the Lake of Two Mountains in 1744 and had fourteen children. Three of their sons married into one family. Thomas, baptized in 1761, married Marie-Josephe Georgeteau dit Jolicoeur at Oka in October 1786. Joseph, baptized in 1764, married her younger sister — also baptized Marie-Josephe — before September 1788. In 1793 their eldest brother Jean-Baptiste, a widower, married a third sister, Marguerite.
All three couples lived in the seigneurie d'Argenteuil, along the rivière du Nord, as labourers, farmers and, in Jean-Baptiste's case, a chairmaker. Their acts are scattered across the registers of Oka, Rigaud, Saint-Benoît, Saint-André-d'Argenteuil and, at the end, Pointe-Gatineau.
Ordinarily a mother's name settles which of two same-surname men fathered a child. Here it cannot. Both wives were christened Marie-Josephe, and the clerks wrote each of them, at different times, as Marie, Marie Joseph, Marie Josette and Josephte. Their surname appears as Georgeteau, Georgetau, Jorsetho, Jorchetau and Jolicoeur.
- Thomas's wife: Marie (1786), Marie Josette (1798), Josephte (1818), Marie (1839)
- Joseph's wife: Marie Joseph (1788), Marie Josephte (1799, 1805), Marie (1812), Josephte (1815)
Every form of the name turns up in both households. A child cannot be placed with either brother on the mother's name alone.
The brothers' own surname moves through Larocque, la Roque brune, Rokbrune, Rocbrune and Laroque — the forms their great-grandfather Philibert Couillaud's dit name had taken by the third generation. None of them distinguishes one brother from another.
The Breakthrough
The Result
- Joseph, baptized Oka 27 September 1788; married Saint-Benoît 1812
- Jean Noël, baptized Oka 3 March 1798; married Rigaud 1822
- Basile, baptized Oka 12 May 1799
- Marie Madeleine, baptized Rigaud 18 August 1805; married Rigaud 1823
- Jean Marie, present at his father's burial in 1815
- Josephte, married Rigaud 12 January 1818, her father present
Married at Oka in 1793, his second marriage. Buried at Rigaud on 22 December 1818, a chairmaker of the seigneurie d'Argenteuil, "époux de Marguerite Georgeteau," with his sons André, Louis and Antoine present.
Jean Noël's baptism at Oka in March 1798 names his father as Thomas Rocbrune. Both later acts that name him — his own marriage in 1822, with his brother Joseph present, and his sister Madeleine's in 1823, where he stands beside his brother Basile — place him in Joseph's household. Two acts made when he was an adult, each with a brother of his beside him, outweigh the one made when he was seven weeks old.
No act has been found for Joseph's marriage to the younger Georgeteau sister. It took place before the baptism of their first son on 27 September 1788, when she was not yet eighteen. The Oka marriages of 1786–1788 do not include it; her home parish of Sault-au-Récollet is the next to search.
A Thomas Laroque was buried at Pointe-Gatineau on 4 July 1850, recorded as ninety-seven. The act names no wife and no parents. Thomas, baptized in December 1761, would have been eighty-eight. The identification rests on fit, not on anything the act states.
The researcher descends from Joseph, her 4th great-grandfather: Joseph Larocque Rocbrune (1764–1815) → Marie Madeleine Rocbrune (1805), who married Gabriel Guilbault → Évangéliste Guilbault (1845) → Elisabeth Emma Guilbault Gilbert (1883) → Thomas Eugene Hamall (1904) → Thomas Kenny Hamall (1932) → the researcher. Joseph and his brothers were great-grandsons of Philibert Couillaud dit Roquebrune.
This summary presents the findings. The full methodology sets out every act read for the case, the presence ledger that separates the brothers, the treatment of the one dissenting baptism, and what remains open.
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