♂Guillaume Tougas dit Laviolette Jr.

Guillaume Tougas dit Laviolette (29 September 1699 – about 6 December 1756) was a Canadian-born settler of the Montréal region who lived at Longueuil and then at Boucherville, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence. He married twice, and seven of the twelve children of his second marriage died in infancy. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Joseph Seraphin Tougas dit Laviolette (1743–1793).

Early life

He was born at Montréal on 29 September 1699 and baptized the same day at Notre-Dame-de-Montréal, the eldest child of Guillaume Tougas dit Laviolette (1674–1708) and Marie Brazeau (1663–1735). His father was an immigrant from Fatouville, in the diocese of Lisieux in Normandy; Cyprien Tanguay’s genealogical dictionary calls him a soldier of Louvigny’s company, and records that he had married Marie Brazeau, the widow of Sylvain Guerin, at Montréal in November 1698. A compilation of Norman settlers in Canada counts six children of that marriage. The father was buried at Montréal on 23 September 1708, when his eldest son was about nine. Marie Brazeau lived on at Montréal until 1735, and her life is the subject of a book-length study published in Québec by Éditions du Septentrion.

The records spell the surname in several ways: Tanguay writes Tougard, and the register of his second marriage writes Tougat.

Marriages and family

On 4 November 1727 he married Marie Reine Viau (1708–1734), also called Lespérance, at Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue in Longueuil. The marriage had three daughters, all baptized at Notre-Dame-de-Montréal, where the baptism records name him as their father. Tanguay’s dictionary gives Marie-Françoise as born in August 1728 and records her marriage to Adrien Fournier at Boucherville on 16 October 1747; it gives Charlotte’s birth as 19 January 1731, and Thérèse-Amable’s as 15 February 1733, with her burial in February 1734. Tanguay also records Reine Viau’s burial at Montréal on 6 May 1734.

On 25 November 1739, at Sainte-Famille in Boucherville, he married Marie-Anne Quintal (1720–1792), the daughter of François Quintal and Marie Guertin. The register describes him as a widower of the parish of Longueuil, names his late wife as Reine Viau, and notes that two banns were read in his own parish and the third was dispensed. The couple settled at Boucherville, where twelve children were baptized between 1740 and 1757. The losses were close together: a son Augustin born in February 1742 was buried that June; daughters born in 1747, 1748 and 1749 each died within about five months; two daughters named Marie, born in January and December 1754, lived three days and about six months; and a second Augustin, born in January 1756, was buried thirteen days later. Five children survived infancy, among them Joseph Seraphin, baptized in 1743 with a member of the noble Boucher family, Ignace Boucher de Lisle-Bonne, as his godfather.

Death

He was buried at Boucherville on 6 December 1756; the register gives the burial, not the date of death. His youngest child, Apolline, was born on 4 March 1757, three months after his burial, and baptized the next day; the register calls her father “deceased”. On 2 May 1757 the register of Boucherville records the remarriage of “Marie Anne Quintal, widow of Guillaume Tougast”, to François Chicot, a widower. That October their eldest daughter, Marie Anne, married Antoine Delafontaine of Québec, whose father sat on the Conseil Supérieur, the colony’s highest court. Joseph Seraphin later went west to Vincennes, on the Wabash, where the family line continued.