Documentary Biography Series

Tranchemontagne

The Soulière Line
Eight generations of one family, from a parish in Brittany to a nursing home in New Jersey. Six of those generations signed their names with a cross — and the records still name every one of them.
8Generations
8Pages
15Founding Mothers
280Years

Tranchemontagne was a soldier's nom de guerre — the sort of swaggering name hundreds of men carried in seventeenth-century France, and a good many brought across the Atlantic. Nicolas Sulière had it when he married on the Île d'Orléans in 1691, and nothing records where he picked it up. It travelled with his descendants for six generations and then, at Saint-André-d'Argenteuil in the 1880s, quietly stopped.

This series follows that family from the first document that names him to the last that names his great-great-great-great-granddaughter: parish registers, notarial minutes, censuses, a marriage licence from Indiana and a report of the Illinois Supreme Court. Where the records are silent, the pages say so.

“A boy fishes beside an ancient woman in Miami. She is in her nineties, he is barely ten. Seventy years later he will tell his daughter about the great-grandmother who taught him to fish — and know nothing else about her. This series is the rest of it.”

The Episodes

PrologueP

Nicolas Sulière dit Tranchemontagne Live

From Quimper to the Île d'Orléans
c. 1664 – 1740  |  Brittany to Saint-Sulpice

He bought two arpents at Saint-Jean in 1697 for ninety-five livres, sold them seven years later without ever building on them, and ended his working life as a day labourer in the town of Québec. The deed of sale traces the title back to a concession granted by Monseigneur de Laval in 1669.
Episode1

Jean Sulière dit Tranchemontagne Live

The First Habitant
c. 1696 – 1766  |  Québec to the Rivière L'Assomption

Four notarial minutes read in full, including a concession of 1718 whose margin names his brother-in-law on the next lot, and a twenty-page inventory of 1757 that calls the roll of every surviving child. Twelve children; eight married; not one of them could sign.
Episode2

Jean Bernardin Sulière Live

The Achigan Concession
1717 – 1798  |  L'Assomption, Quebec

His first wife died fifteen months after the wedding, three weeks after bearing their only child. He remarried, had thirteen more children and buried eight of them small, and in 1771 took three arpents on the rivière de L'Achigan at a rent of one live capon — all oaks reserved for the King's shipbuilding.
Episode3

Jean Bernardin Sulière fils Live

Journalier de l'Isle-Jésus
1744 – 1820  |  L'Assomption to l'Isle-Jésus

Sixteen children in twenty years across four parishes, five of them buried small, including twins entered in the register as anonyme. He worked by the day his whole life, and his burial act names the island he was living on when he died.
Episode4

Jacques Souliere Live

« Ne sachant signer j'ai fait ma marque »
1768 – before 1841  |  Rigaud and Saint-André

Eleven children, five buried small and three of those in a single Montreal spring. The one document in his own voice is a scrap of a deed giving a village lot to his father-in-law. He was last seen alive giving his sixteen-year-old daughter leave to marry; no one wrote down where he died.
Episode5

Janvier Soulière Sr. Live

« Janvier Soulière, journalier »
1806 – 1889  |  Saint-André-d'Argenteuil, Quebec

Nineteen children by two wives, and a third wife at seventy. He buried a six-year-old and a two-year-old in the same week of 1843, and his first wife ten days after she bore their eleventh child. He put his mark to every act of his life — and in August 1883 watched his daughter sign hers.
Episode6

Marie Louise Soulière Live

The Woman Who Was Remembered
1854 – 1945  |  Argenteuil to Chicago

Widowed at twenty-nine with three children under four, she crossed a border, married again, had three more, and was widowed a second time. She died in Chicago at ninety-one — old enough that a small boy who fished beside her in Florida still remembered it seventy years later.
Episode7

Elisabeth Emma Guilbault Live

The Working Woman
1883 – 1970  |  Argenteuil to Chicago to New Jersey

Guilbault, Gilbert, Hamall, Hepp — four surnames in eighty-six years, and she chose most of them. Working at sixteen, divorced at twenty-four and remarried five days later, and still selling dresses at forty-seven. She took her first husband to the Illinois Supreme Court and lost.

The Documented Line

1
Nicolas Sulière dit Tranchemontagnem. 30 April 1691, Saint-Jean, Île d'Orléans — Marie Marguerite Leblanc
Prologue
2
Jean Sulière dit Tranchemontagnem. 14 September 1716, Notre-Dame-de-Québec — Marie Louise Lesage
Episode 1
3
Jean Bernardin Sulièrem. (1) 1743 Marguerite Payment dit Larivière  (2) 1748 Marie Rose Vegiard dit Labonté
Episode 2
4
Jean Bernardin Sulière filsm. 27 January 1766, L'Assomption — Marie Thérèse Migneron dit Rivière
Episode 3
5
Jacques Soulierem. 7 January 1799, Oka — Marie Elisabeth Poulin
Episode 4
6
Janvier Soulière Sr.m. (1) 1828 Esther Lacasse  (2) 1850 Elisabeth Gravel  (3) 1876 Sophie Rousson
Episode 5
7
Marie Louise Soulièrem. (1) 1879 Évangéliste Guilbault  (2) 1886 Pierre Chrysologue Thébault
Episode 6
8
Elisabeth Emma Guilbaultm. (1) 1904 Thomas Henry Hamall  (2) 1907 Alvin Henry Hepp
Episode 7
♀

Founding Mothers

Filles du roi and filles à marier — the women who crossed the Atlantic and shaped the Soulière line

Marie Lorgueil

A fille à marier who arrived in 1650 and became the ancestor of the Gravel line. Elisabeth Gravel, Janvier's second wife, descends from her.

Six-part series • 9th ggm

Marie Chapelier

A literate seventeenth-century widow whose four-year court battle over a family donation reveals how much legal capacity colonial women actually held.

Case study • 9th ggm

Françoise Baiselat Bizelan

A fille du roi who married three Carignan-Salières soldiers and bore twelve children. When she died in childbirth in 1694, seven legal documents across twelve years untangled three estates.

Case study • 9th ggm

Elisabeth Roy

A fille du roi from Senlis who married three times on the Île d'Orléans — one of only thirty-five to do so. She lost two sons on the same day and lived to nearly seventy. Connected to this line through the Leblanc dit Jolicoeur family, whose land adjoined Nicolas Sulière's two arpents at Saint-Jean.

Founding Mother • 9th ggm

Anne Ledet

A fille à marier who held a Jesuit land concession in her own name before she married. Her first marriage was dissolved when a wife was found living in France. With Gilles Pinel she raised eleven children at Sillery and Neuville.

Founding Mother • 10th ggm

Marie Riton

She professed Protestant faith at La Rochelle in 1645, then crossed the Atlantic and reinvented herself. She married the mason Léonard Leblanc at Beauport in 1650 and raised seven children, every one of whom survived infancy.

Founding Mother • 10th ggm

Marie Guillaume

A fille du roi who married Laurent Migneron, connecting to this line through the Migneron family.

In progress • 8th ggm

Marie Teste (Testu)

A fille à marier of the colony's early years. She married Antoine Pepin dit Lachance, connecting to this line through the Migneron family.

In progress • 8th ggm

Jeanne Barbier

Connected through the Blain dit Habelin, L'Écuyer, Décarie and Gravel families — part of Elisabeth Gravel's maternal ancestry.

In progress • 8th ggm

Denise Marie (Marier)

Connected through Jean Baptiste and Marie A. Quenneville — part of the Elisabeth Gravel branch.

In progress • 8th ggm

Marie Marguerite Provost

Connected through Jacques Venne to the Veine line, reaching this family through Elisabeth Gravel's ancestry.

In progress • 8th ggm

Jeanne Chevalier

One of the earliest filles du roi, connected to this line through the Pepin dit Lachance family.

In progress • 9th ggm

Marie Targer

Connected through the Isabelle Royer and Jean Royer lines.

In progress • 9th ggm

Jeanne Mercier

Connected through Martin and Claude Poulin — part of the Marie Elisabeth Poulin ancestry.

In progress • 9th ggm

Jeanne Bitouset

Connected through the Jeanne Barrette line. One of the earlier arrivals in New France.

In progress • 9th ggm
♂

Founding Fathers

Soldiers, engagés and habitants — the men who built New France alongside them

Nicolas Sylvestre dit Champagne

Orphaned at ten in Pont-sur-Seine, a soldier at Québec by August 1667, then sixty years farming at Neuville. Sixteen children, two grown sons buried in one year, and six notarial acts across twenty-eight years, not one of which he could sign. Father of Marie Barbe Sylvestre.

Documentary biography • 8th ggf

Jean Bernardin Lesage dit Lepiedmontois

One of the rarest immigrants in New France — an Italian from Racconigi in Piedmont who served in the Troupes de la Marine and married Marie Barbe Sylvestre at Neuville in 1686. Twelve children, and a dit name that carried his origins for three centuries. Grandfather of Marie Louise Lesage, who married Jean Sulière in 1716.

Documentary biography • 7th ggf

Pierre Marsan dit Lapierre

Of the Carignan-Salières Regiment, in the company of Captain Jacques de Chambly — older than most, and entrusted with command. He married the fille du roi Françoise Baiselat Bizelan and fathered Jeanne Marsan. Connected through the Cadieux, Blais and Poulin families.

Documentary biography • 9th ggf

Related Research

The Cousin Who Wasn't A family tree named a signer of the Declaration as our cousin through the Cary surname. Following each Cary to its origin split one name into three unrelated families. The Guilbault Line The connected series tracing the Guilbault family from Pierre Guilbault in 1647 to Évangéliste, who married Marie Louise Soulière in 1879 and died four years later. The Girl Who Vanished A little girl with ringlet curls clutches a teddy bear — and she isn't who the family thought she was. Photo analysis and census records recover Frances Hamel. Finding an Italian Ancestor in French-Canadian Research When a dit name reveals a Piedmontese soldier hiding in plain sight. How to identify non-French ancestors in the records of New France. The Owen Hamall Case Study The Irish line from County Monaghan that joined this one when Elisabeth Emma Guilbault married Thomas Henry Hamall in 1904. Quimper Pottery: A Genealogist's Discovery Why a collector's eye kept returning to Breton faïence — and what the workshops of Quimper, founded in 1708, did and did not have to do with the man who left that town before they existed.

Every Ancestor Deserves to Be Remembered

Documentary biographies like these turn genealogical research into something a family will actually read — sourced, corrected, and honest about what the records do not say.

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