♀Guillemette Ruellan

Guillemette Ruellan was a Breton of Saint-Coulomb, a coastal parish of the diocese of Dol^W near Saint-Malo, the wife of Jean Maillet and the mother of Pierre Maillet, who settled at Montréal and married there in 1662. She is an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) twice over: her tenth great-grandmother by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Pierre Maillet (baptized 1629).

Life

What is known of her life comes from the parish registers of Saint-Coulomb. She was baptized there on 16 January 1593, the daughter of Jean Ruellan and Anne Gilbert, with a Guillaume Ruellan as her godfather. Her brother Jean was baptized there on 2 August 1596. According to the Fichier Origine, she married Jean Maillet on 8 November 1618. The registers tell nothing more about her parents. The couple’s baptisms at Saint-Coulomb run from 1620 to 1629: three daughters and three sons, the youngest Pierre, baptized on 1 July 1629.

Jean Maillet was buried at Saint-Coulomb on 2 July 1641, and Guillemette Ruellan was buried there on 5 January 1642, leaving Pierre an orphan of twelve. Pierre later crossed to Canada and settled at Montréal, where on 23 October 1662 he married Marie-Anne Hardy at Notre-Dame. The register of that marriage names him as the son of Jean Maillet and Guillemette Ruellan of the parish of Saint-Coulomb, diocese of Dol, which confirms the parents.

Lines of descent

Pierre Maillet’s sons Rene Malet and Pierre Maillet began two lines that met again at Vincennes in 1801, when Augustus A. Tougas dit Laviolette (1776–1849), from the first line, married Ellenore S. Renaud dit Deslauriers (1782–1822), from the second. Their son Augustin Tougas Lovellette (1809–1866) descends from Jean Maillet and Guillemette Ruellan by both lines.

Notes

Her baptism is entered in the Saint-Coulomb register itself, a Latin entry that writes her name Guillemette Ruallan. The dates of her marriage and of Pierre’s baptism rest on the Fichier Origine alone. Her burial is a bare register entry, with no age or kin; the Fichier Origine identifies it with her. The baptisms of the five older children (26 January 1620, 3 October 1621, 28 August 1623, 4 February 1625 and 4 April 1627) are entered in the Saint-Coulomb register itself, which writes the parents as “Jan Malle” and Guillemette “Ruallay”. The Fichier Origine calls the youngest of the five Guillaume; the register gives Gilles. The Fichier Origine also names her parents as Jean Ruellan and Anne Gilbert, as the register does. Tanguay’s dictionary of French-Canadian families gives Pierre’s mother as “Guillaume Ruellan”, a man’s name; the 1662 marriage register writes Guillemette.