♀Anne Gilbert

Anne Gilbert (baptised September 1559 – buried 2 December 1597) was a woman of Saint-Coulomb, a parish on the Breton coast near Saint-Malo, in France, and the wife of Jean Ruellan. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) twice over, by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Guillemette Ruellan (baptized 1593).

Family

She was baptized at Saint-Coulomb in September 1559, entered in the Latin register as Anna Gillebert, the daughter of Gilles Gilbert and his wife Perrine Meslé. On 20 October 1582 she and Jean Ruellan received the nuptial blessing in the church of Saint-Coulomb; the act notes that it was her first marriage and his second.

Jean Ruellan and his wife Anne Gilbert brought their daughter Guillemette to be baptized at Saint-Coulomb on 16 January 1593. The priest wrote the act in Latin and named her parents plainly, “filia Johannis ac Anne Gilbert”: the daughter of Jean and of Anne Gilbert. Her godfather was Guillaume Ruallan, who bore the family’s own surname; the register does not say how he was related to her. Their son Jean was baptized at Saint-Coulomb on 2 August 1596; the act names his parents as Jean and Anne Gilbert, and his godfather as Nicolas Frotte (written Nicollaus Frotte in the register). “Anne Gilbet” was buried in the churchyard of Saint-Coulomb on 2 December 1597, and her husband five weeks later. No other child of the couple is known.

Lines of descent

According to the Fichier Origine, a register-checked file of the origins of Québec’s settlers, Guillemette married Jean Maillet at Saint-Coulomb in 1618. Their son Pierre Maillet crossed to Canada and married at Montréal in 1662, and two of Pierre’s sons, Rene Malet and Pierre Maillet, began two lines that met again at Vincennes in 1801, when Augustus A. Tougas dit Laviolette (1776–1849), from the first line, married Ellenore S. Renaud dit Deslauriers (1782–1822), from the second. Their son Augustin Tougas Lovellette (1809–1866) descends from Jean Ruellan and Anne Gilbert by both lines.

Notes

Guillemette’s baptism was read on the Saint-Coulomb register itself, which spells the surname Ruallan; the tree uses Ruellan. The act stands at the end of the book for 1592, because the parish’s books of those years ran from about April to the following January. The Fichier Origine also names Guillemette’s parents as Jean Ruellan and Anne Gilbert. Her baptism, the marriage and both burials were read on the Saint-Coulomb register as well. The burial entries give no age and name no kin; the Fichier Origine identifies them as Anne’s and Jean’s.