♂Elie Garnier

Elie Garnier is named, with his wife Marie Breau, as the father of Michelle Garnier (about 1629–1720), a woman of Marans, near La Rochelle, who emigrated to Montréal in 1659; that parentage rests on a register of French emigrants to Québec, which marks it as uncertain. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Michelle Garnier. His parents are not known, and no record of his birth, marriage or death has been found. The register, the Fichier Origine, names Elie Garnier and Marie Breau as Michelle’s parents but notes that the link is uncertain because no record of Michelle’s marriage survives. What the records do show is that Michelle had two sisters, Marie and Louise Garnier: a marriage contract of 1671 names Michelle’s husband, Simon Cardinal, and Louise’s husband, Pierre Goguet, as uncles of Marie’s daughter “because of” their wives. The baptism registers of Marans for February to mid-August 1630 were searched without finding a child of Elie Garnier and Marie Breau, and a regional index of marriages in the Aunis has no marriage for the couple. The couple do appear together in the parish register of Marans. On 9 March 1628 a daughter, Marie Garnier, was baptised there as the daughter of Elie Garnier and Marie Breau, with Nicollas Courtis and Marie Le Blancq as godparents. The Fichier Origine identifies her with the Marie Garnier who married Olivier Charbonneau and sailed to Montréal in 1659, the sister Marie of the 1671 contract, though it also notes another Marie Garnier baptised at Marans in 1625, a daughter of Jean Garnier and Marie Renaudeau. Family trees give Marie’s surname as either Breau or Brault, but they cite no records; the 1628 register writes Breau.