♂Guillaume Hardy

Guillaume Hardy lived at Angers, in Anjou^W, in the second half of the sixteenth century, and was the father of Jean Hardye, a master goldsmith of that city. He was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) twice over: her twelfth great-grandfather by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Jean Hardye.

Life

Guillaume’s birth and parents are not known. The earliest record of him is the baptism of his daughter Catherine in the parish of Sainte-Croix at Angers on 18 November 1572. The priest wrote down the father’s name and left the mother’s blank.

By the late 1580s his son Jean was a master goldsmith of Angers, married to Perrine Séjourné, and had a child baptized at Sainte-Croix each year from 1586. On 16 November 1588 Guillaume stood as one of the two godfathers of their third son, who was given his name. The act calls him “Guillaume Hardie grand père dudit enfant”, the child’s grandfather, and it is the act that names him as Jean’s father. It styles both father and son honneste homme, a courtesy the same registers give to the merchants and master goldsmiths of the city, but it does not give Guillaume’s trade.

Neither act names Guillaume’s wife. At the baptism of Jean’s son Pierre on 2 December 1587, a grandmother of the child, Christofflette Dupont, stood as godmother, but the act does not say whether she was Jean’s mother or Perrine’s, so it leaves open whether she was Guillaume’s wife. When and where Guillaume died is not known; the burial registers of Sainte-Croix hold no entry for him between 1588 and 1614.

Lines of descent

Guillaume’s son Jean Hardye was the father of René Hardy, a merchant and master goldsmith of the parish of La Trinité in Angers, whose daughter Marie-Anne Hardy married Pierre Maillet at Notre-Dame de Montréal on 23 October 1662. Marie-Anne Hardy and Pierre Maillet had two sons whose lines both reach the family. Rene Malet’s line leads to Augustus A. Tougas dit Laviolette, and his younger brother Pierre Maillet’s to Ellenore S. Renaud dit Deslauriers. Augustus and Ellenore married at Vincennes on 6 July 1801, and their son Augustin Tougas Lovellette (1809–1866) carries both lines, so Guillaume Hardy holds two places in the family tree.

Notes

The 1572 act spells the name Hardy and the 1588 act Hardie. Catherine’s baptism gives only her father’s name; that he was the same Guillaume Hardy as Jean’s father rests on the name and the parish.