♂Gabriel Godin

Gabriel Godin (baptized 1 July 1661 – 22 August 1730) was a Montreal-born carpenter’s son who went with his parents to Acadia as a boy, came back to Québec to marry, and spent his life as a settler on the Saint John River. He was probably the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Jean-Baptiste Godin (about 1706 – before 1763).

Early life

Gabriel was baptized at Notre-Dame in Montreal on 1 July 1661, a son of Pierre Godin and Jeanne Rousselière; the register left out the date of his birth. His father, Pierre Godin dit Châtillon, was a carpenter from Châtillon-sur-Seine, in what is now the Côte-d’Or, who had signed on in 1653 with the recruits raised in France for Montreal. The family spent some years at Québec, where the census of 1666 found them, and were back in Montreal by 1669.

In June 1676 his parents sold all they owned in Montreal and took the family to Acadia, to the Saint John River. By the census of 1686 at Port-Royal his father was dead, and the household was his mother, a widow of 60, with three of her children, Gabriel aged 25, Pierre 20 and Anne 13, and no property at all. Gabriel and his brother Pierre then went back to the Québec region, where both of them married.

Marriage

In March 1690 a marriage contract was drawn up between Andrée Angélique Jeanne, a sailor’s daughter of Québec, and Pierre Lefebvre, before the notary Gilles Rageot. That match came to nothing. On 19 July 1690 a second contract was drawn up for her, before the notary François Genaple, this time with Gabriel Godin, and the wedding is said to have followed at Québec five days later, on 24 July 1690.

The Saint John River

The couple went to Acadia. In 1691 Gabriel is said to have received a concession on the Saint John River from the new governor of Acadia, Joseph Robineau de Villebon^W, in the Nashwaak country near present-day Fredericton, and to have taken from it the title of sieur de Bellefontaine. They raised a large family there; by the compiled genealogies their children were born between 1690 and about 1718, and the sons went by the names Godin, Bellefontaine, Beauséjour, Bellefeuille and Boisjoli. Gabriel is said to have died on the Saint John River on 22 August 1730. Andrée was a widow on the river at the census of 1739 and is said to have died that year.

The family

Their son Joseph, called Bellefontaine dit Beauséjour, born in 1695, is said to have been named major of the militia of the Saint John River by order of the governor, Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière^W, on 10 April 1749.

Notes

Sources for his life

His baptism at Montreal (Notre-Dame) on 1 July 1661 is in the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH), the Université de Montréal’s database of the Québec parish registers; WikiTree notes that the register gives no date of birth. His father’s origin at Châtillon-sur-Seine, his trade and his place in the recruits of 1653 come from the Fichier Origine and from Roland-J. Auger’s La grande recrue de 1653 (pp. 69-70), which also gives, from the notarial acts and the census returns printed by Benjamin Sulte, the family’s years at Québec and Montreal, the sale of their goods in June 1676, the move to the Saint John River and the household of 1686 at Port-Royal “sans aucun bien”. Auger adds that the two brothers came back to the Québec region to marry.

The two marriage contracts, with Pierre Lefebvre (Gilles Rageot, 7 March 1690) and with Gabriel Godin (François Genaple, 19 July 1690), are listed in Pierre-Georges Roy’s inventory of the marriage contracts of the French régime, and the second also in Antoine Roy’s inventory of Genaple’s acts. WikiTree states that the first contract was never followed by a marriage. The wedding at Québec on 24 July 1690 is given by Tanguay’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes and by Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 4, p. 1634). The grant from Villebon, the title of sieur de Bellefontaine, the names of the sons, the children’s births from 1690 to about 1718 and the widow’s presence at the census of 1739 are from Arsenault (vol. 4, pp. 1634-1636). Joseph’s militia command is from Arsenault (p. 1636).

His names

Stephen A. White’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes heads the family “Gabriel Godin dit Châtillon”, after his father; Arsenault calls him Gabriel Godin dit Bellefontaine.

His death

The date of 22 August 1730 and the Saint John River as the place come from WikiTree, which cites no record of his death or burial. Arsenault (p. 1636) and Cormier’s compilation of the Bourg family both give 22 August 1730 as the date of the wedding at Grand-Pré of his son Pierre (Pierre-Joseph) Godin to Marie-Josephe Bourg, so the death date may have been carried over from that marriage. His wife was a widow by 1739.

The link to Jean-Baptiste Godin

White (p. 747) places Jean-Baptiste Godin dit Lincour, born about 1706, in this family. Arsenault’s list of the couple’s children does not name him; it has a Jean, born about 1712, whom Arsenault marries to Françoise Dugas. The descent from Jean-Baptiste to Marie Josephe Godin rests in turn on White’s interpretation of the name Lincour, so the line from Gabriel to Floyd Amatus Delahorne is probable rather than proved.