♂Jean Baudet

Jean Baudet (about 1650 – 1714) was a settler of New France from the parish of Blanzais, in the diocese of Poitiers, who married Marie Grandin of Orléans at Québec in 1670 and raised a family along the St. Lawrence above Québec. He was most likely the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Louise Baudet (1679–1760).

Origins

Jean Baudet was the son of Sébastien Baudet and Marie Baudonier, of the parish of Blanzais (now Blanzay), in Poitou^W. He was born about 1650 and is said to have been in the colony already in 1666, a youth of eighteen. He is described as a habitant^W, a settler farming his own land.

Marriage and family

A marriage contract between Jean Baudet and Marie Grandin was drawn up before the notary Becquet on 7 September 1670, and they married at Québec, in the parish of Notre-Dame, on 23 September. He was then living at Champigny. His bride is counted among the filles du roi^W, the young women whose passage the French crown paid so that the colony’s settlers could marry, and is said to have come out from France that same year.

Their first children were baptized just west of Québec: Marie Louise at Sillery in September 1671, Simone Anne there in December 1673, and Jean Charles at L’Ancienne-Lorette in August 1676, by the Jesuit Pierre Chaumonot^W, missionary to the Hurons settled there.

By 1681 the family had moved up the St. Lawrence to the seigneurie^W of Lotbinière, where the census of that year counted Jean, aged thirty-one, and Marie, thirty, with five children, the youngest, Jeanne, fifteen days old. Jean Baptiste, born on 2 September 1683, was baptized at Pointe-Lévy, on the south shore opposite Québec. At least eight children are known in all. Simone Anne married Michel Pinot at Cap-Santé in 1689, Louise married Jacques Marcotte, probably before 1698, and two younger sons, Michel and Jacques, married at Sainte-Croix, near Lotbinière, in 1719 and 1720.

Death

Jean Baudet is said to have died in the spring of 1714, between 25 March, when he made his last contract, and 28 May, when Marie Grandin, as his widow, ratified a sale before the notary Louis Chambalon. An inventory of his goods was drawn up on 13 July.

Notes

Birth and arrival

The census of 1681 gives his age as thirty-one. A census of 1666, as quoted in an online family tree, gives him as eighteen, which would put his birth about 1648. The parish registers of Blanzay held by the departmental archives of the Vienne begin in 1688, decades after his birth. Yves Landry’s study of the filles du roi, Les Filles du roi au XVIIe siècle, describes him as a habitant, born about 1650, who could not sign his name; his wife could not sign either.

The marriage

The Québec register, as indexed, dates the marriage 23 September 1670. It names the groom as single and a native of the parish of Blanzais in the diocese of Poitiers, his parents as Sébastien Baudet and Marie Baudonier, and the bride’s parents as the late Michel Grandin and Marie Lejeune; the witnesses were Jacques Gaudry, Nicolas Valin, Michel Maillou and Jean Beriau. Cyprien Tanguay’s^W dictionary of French-Canadian families dates the marriage 28 September and spells his mother’s surname Baudonnier. The contract of 7 September 1670 before the notary Becquet is entered in Pierre-Georges Roy’s inventory of marriage contracts, volume 1, page 88, which gives the groom’s surname as Beaudet. Landry’s study also lists the contract, and credits the couple with nine children.

His death

No burial entry for him is known. The dates of his last contract, 25 March 1714, of his widow’s ratification before Louis Chambalon, 28 May 1714, and of the inventory of his goods, 13 July 1714, before the notary Dehornay de Laneuville, come from a family history of the Baudets and René Jetté’s dictionary of Québec families, as quoted in an online family tree. Landry’s study gives a wider span: he died between 21 July 1712 and 28 May 1714.

Their daughter Louise

No act names the parents of Louise Baudet, wife of Jacques Marcotte, so her place in this family rests on the compiled genealogies. The couple had two daughters called Louise. The elder, Marie Louise, baptized at Sillery in 1671, married Jacques Houde, according to Tanguay. The younger, Louise, aged two in the census of 1681, is the one René Jetté’s dictionary marries to Jacques Marcotte before 1698; Tanguay had married her to Jean-Baptiste Bisson in 1699, a marriage Jetté gives to her sister Jeanne Françoise. The burial of Jacques Marcotte’s wife at Cap-Santé in 1760 gives her age as eighty-four, which would put her birth about 1676, between the two.