♂Guillaume Guerin

Guillaume Guerin (about 1719 – before 17 February 1795), known as St. Aubin, was a French colonial settler who lived at the Natchez post^W on the Mississippi in the years around his marriage and later at Pointe Coupée, Louisiana. His marriage contract names his parents as the late Guillaume Guerin, a merchant of Provins, and the late Marianne Damien.

Origins

Guillaume Guerin was the son of Michel Guerin and Marianne Damien. The published abstract of his marriage entry describes Michel Guerin as a native of Provins en Brie, in the diocese of Sens^W, a market town east of Paris now in the department of Seine-et-Marne. The marriage contract of 7 February 1758 calls the father Guillaume Guerin, a merchant of the town of Provins, and says that he and Guillaume’s mother were both already dead. The contract gives Guillaume; the church entry gives Michel, the name this page keeps, with Guillaume as an alternate name. No record of Guillaume’s own birth or baptism has been found; his age at burial places his birth about 1719.

The registers often call him by his by-name, St. Aubin, rather than his surname. A “dit” name of this kind was a second name carried alongside the family name in French colonial usage, and in his case it came to stand in for it: his wife’s burial names her only as the wife of “dit St. Aubin”, and his daughter Julie appears once in the register as “Julie St. Aubin”.

Marriage and Natchez

On 7 February 1758, at Pointe Coupée, he married Marie Anne Olivo (1740–1790), daughter of Pierre Olivo and Magdelaine Cable; Pierre Ducote, Crozat, Duval and Dumas stood as witnesses. He was then about 39 and his bride about 18. The marriage contract, drawn up that day, describes him as an inhabitant of the Natchez post who was then present at Pointe Coupée. Her family was at Pointe Coupée by June 1739, and an elder sister of hers, Catherine, was recorded as a native of Arkansas.

For the first years of the marriage the couple lived at Natchez, upriver from Pointe Coupée, and brought their children down to Pointe Coupée for the register. A son baptized at home died as an infant and was buried in April 1759, when his father was entered as “of Natchez”; a daughter, Marie Magdeleine, was born at Natchez in 1760, and a son, George, was born at the end of 1762 and baptized in November 1763, when his parents were recorded as residents of Natchez. From 1765 the children were baptized at Pointe Coupée with no other residence stated, and the family remained there. Natchez passed from French to British rule under the peace treaty of 1763^W; the records do not say why the family moved.

The couple had at least eight children: six were baptized or buried at Pointe Coupée by 1769, and two more followed, Henriette in 1775 and a son, Guillaume, who married in 1793. Their daughter Julie was born at Pointe Coupée on 18 July 1767, with Pierre Oliveau, who bore her maternal grandfather’s name, as her godfather. She married Joseph Joffrion, son of Joseph Joffrion and Jeanne Rabalais, in 1789, and the marriage entry names her parents as Guillaume Guerin and Marie Anne Olivo, as do the baptisms of two of her children in 1802 and 1810.

Death

Marie Anne Olivo was buried at Pointe Coupée on 6 January 1790, aged about 50, six weeks after her daughter’s wedding. A burial at Pointe Coupée on 17 February 1795 records “Guillaume, dit St. Aubin, age 76 years”, which is taken as his.

Notes

The 1795 burial names the man only by his by-name, without the surname. A Guillaume Guerin stood as godfather at Pointe Coupée in 1796, and a Guillaume Guerin held one tract, three arpents^W in front by forty deep, and three enslaved people in the Pointe Coupée census of 1809. Either the 1795 burial belongs to another man of the same by-name, or the later Guillaume Guerin is a son of the same name who married in 1793. The question is unsettled.

The church abstract attaches the origin at Provins to Michel Guerin, and the marriage contract of 7 February 1758 settles where it belongs: the merchant of Provins is the groom’s late father, and the opening lines of the contract describe the groom as an inhabitant of the Natchez post. The contract calls the father Guillaume; the church abstract, and a Provins act of 1737 that is probably the same couple, call him Michel. This page keeps Michel, with Guillaume as an alternate name.