52 Ancestors: #46 Pierre Séguin, a literate man

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has issued herself and her readers a challenge for 2014. It’s called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”, and as Amy explains, the challenge is to “have one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It could be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem — anything that focuses on one ancestor”.

For the 46th week of this challenge, I chose Pierre Séguin (1682-1760).

Pierre is my paternal 7x great-grandfather and is number 630 in my ancestor list. I find it interesting that I not only descend from Pierre through my father, but that I also descend from his elder sister Françoise (1674-1751) and his younger brother Simon (1684-1758) through my mother.

The fifth of eleven children, Pierre was the son of French immigrants François Séguin dit Ladéroute and his wife Jeanne Petit. He was born on 24 August 1682 in Boucherville (across Montreal on the south shore of the St. Lawrence) and baptized the next day. [1]

On 4 February 1704, Pierre married Barbe Filion, a widow, in Boucherville. [2] Two days earlier, they had entered into a marriage contract in the notarial study of Marien Tailhandier. [3]

Séguin - Filion marriage record (1704) [4]

Pierre probably had some education, because he knew how to write his name. Notice his signature (Pierre Seguin) located in the lower right corner of his marriage record in the above image.

Pierre and Barbe were the parents of nine children born between 1704 and 1720: Marie-Françoise, Marie-Elisabeth, Pierre, Antoine-Joseph, Geneviève, Barbe (my ancestor), Antoine, Marie-Jeanne and Véronique. [5]

The Séguin family lived in St-François on Ile Jésus (the island just above the island of Montreal) from 1704 to about 1730 (except for a spell in St-Sulpice in 1711), then in nearby Lachenaie from about 1734 to 1750, when Pierre’s wife Barbe died.

Pierre’s date and place of death are unknown, but was presumably on or about 9 November 1760, because he was buried there on this date in Mascouche. [6]

Whoever was the informant at his burial was a bit ambitious in giving Pierre’s age. The record states that he was 102 years old, but he was actually twenty-four years younger, being only 78 years old. [7]

Sources:

1. St-Enfant-Jésus (Pointe-aux-Trembles, Quebec), parish register, 1674-1700, p. 40, no entry no. (1682), Pierre Seguin [sic] baptism, 25 August 1682; St-Enfant-Jésus parish; digital image, “Le LAFRANCE”, Généalogie Québec (http://www.genealogiequebec.com : accessed 10 November 2014).

2. Ste-Famille (Boucherville, Quebec), parish register, 1696-1717, p. 26, no entry no. (1704), Pierre Seguin – Barbe Filion [sic] marriage, 4 February 1704; Ste-Famille parish; digital image, “Le LAFRANCE”, Généalogie Québec (http://www.genealogiequebec.com : accessed 10 November 2014).

3. René Jetté, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1983), 1041.

4. Ste-Famille, parish register, 1696-1717, p. 26, Pierre Seguin – Barbe Filion [sic] marriage, 4 February 1704.

5. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 1041.

6. St-Henri (Mascouche, Quebec), parish register, 1750-1780, p. 25, no entry no. (1760), Pierre Séguin burial, 9 November 1760; St-Henri parish; digital image, “Le LAFRANCE”, Généalogie Québec (http://www.genealogiequebec.com : accessed 9 November 2014).

7. St-Henri, parish register, 1785-1799, p. 25, Pierre Séguin burial, 9 November 2014.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.