♂Charles Gautier

Charles Gautier (baptised 2 October 1628 – buried 9 February 1703) was a settler of New France, born at Paris and known by the by-name Boisverdun, who married Catherine Camus at Québec in 1656, at a wedding witnessed by the governor of the colony, Jean de Lauson^W. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Marie Gautier (born 1660).

Paris and the crossing

The Fichier Origine, a register-verified compilation of the origins of the settlers of New France, gives his baptism at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris on 2 October 1628. It names his parents as Philippe Gautier, a master printer, and Marie Pichon, who had married at Saint-Sulpice on 10 June 1618, and it gives his father’s burial at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont on 13 August 1631, when Charles was two. His mother married Charles Sevestre in 1632 according to the same compilation, and Charles came to New France in 1636 as a boy. His brothers and sisters, baptised at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, were Guillaume (about 1622), Claude (1623), Catherine (1626) and Jean (1630); Guillaume and Catherine also settled in the colony.

Marriage

He married Catherine Camus at Québec, in the parish of Notre-Dame, on 1 August 1656. The parish register names him Charles Gautier Boisverdun, single, the son of the late Philippe Gautier and Marie Pichon, so his father had died by then. Boisverdun was a dit name^W, a second surname of the kind many families in New France carried alongside their own; Jetté’s repertoire of Québec family names lists it as a by-name of the Gauthier family from 1656. The bride, also single, came from the parish of Sainte-Solenne at Blois, in France, and was the daughter of Hector Camus and Jacquette Mondy. The witnesses were the governor, Jean de Lauson, and Jean Bourdon^W, and the priest was Joseph Poncet. The governor was the king’s chief officer in the colony, so his name stands out among the witnesses to a settler’s marriage.

Children

The index of the parish registers lists at least six children of the couple baptised between 1657 and 1669, at Québec, at Château-Richer and at Sainte-Famille on the Île d’Orléans. Among them was Marie, born and baptised at Québec on 2 May 1660; that register writes the family name as Gaultier. When Marie married François Quintal at Québec on 17 October 1678, the register named her parents as Charles Gautier and the late Catherine Lecamus: her mother had died by then, while her father is not called “the late”.

Death

The index of the parish registers lists his burial at Sainte-Foy, in the parish of Notre-Dame-de-Foy, on 9 February 1703, giving his age as 75, which agrees with the baptism of 1628. Tanguay’s genealogical dictionary gives the same burial date, but it dates the marriage 2 August 1656, a day later than the indexed register, and, in his father’s entry, gives Charles as born in 1622, six years earlier than the baptism the Fichier Origine records.