♀Perrine Meslé

Perrine Meslé was a woman of Saint-Coulomb, a parish on the Breton coast near Saint-Malo, in France, in the middle of the sixteenth century, and the wife of Gilles Gilbert. She is known from the baptisms of two of their children, Jean in 1551 and Anne in September 1559. She was the twelfth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) twice over, by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Anne Gilbert (baptized 1559).

Family

Gilles Gilbert and his wife Perrine Meslé brought their son Jean to be baptized at Saint-Coulomb early in 1551, on the twenty-fifth day of a month now faded on the page. The priest wrote the act in Latin and named the parents as “Egidii et Perrine Mesle eius uxoris”: Egidius, the Latin form of Gilles, and Perrine Mesle, his wife. One of those who held the child at the font was Pierre Mesle (Petrus Mesle in the register), who shared Perrine’s surname; the register does not say how he was related to her. Their daughter Anne was baptized at Saint-Coulomb in September 1559, written in the register as “Anna Gillebert filia Egidii et Perrine Mesle eius uxoris”, Anna Gillebert, the daughter of Gilles and of Perrine Mesle, his wife.

Lines of descent

Anne is said to have married Jean Ruellan on 20 October 1582. Their daughter Guillemette Ruellan was baptized at Saint-Coulomb in January 1593 and, by the same account, married Jean Maillet there in 1618. Guillemette’s son Pierre Maillet crossed to Canada and married at Montréal in 1662, and two of Pierre’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 Gilles Gilbert and Perrine Meslé by both lines.

Notes

The two baptisms

Both acts are in the Saint-Coulomb register itself. Jean’s stands as the last act of the book for 1550, after an act of 1 January 1551, so it belongs to January or February 1551; the month is too faded to read. Other Gilbert couples were baptizing children at Saint-Coulomb in 1550, among them Guillaume Gilbert and Pierre Gilbert, but the acts for Jean and Anne both name the mother as Perrine Mesle, which ties the two children to this couple. The register writes Mesle without an accent and, in 1559, the surname as Gillebert; this page uses Meslé and Gilbert. No record of Perrine Meslé’s own baptism, marriage or burial is known, nor the names of her parents.

Anne’s marriage

That the Anne Gilbert baptized in 1559 is the Anne Gilbert who married Jean Ruellan rests on the Fichier Origine, a register-checked file of the origins of Québec’s settlers. Its entry for her grandson Pierre Maillet names her parents as Gilles Gilbert and Perrine Mesle, gives her baptism as September 1559, and gives her marriage to Jean Ruellan as 20 October 1582 and her burial as 2 December 1597. The burial of an “Anne Gilbet” in the churchyard of Saint-Coulomb on 2 December 1597 is in the parish register, under her bare name. Guillemette’s marriage in 1618 also comes from the Fichier Origine.

Other children

Online family trees give the couple a third child, a daughter Laurentia, born about 1550, on the strength of the marriage of Michael Lesne and Laurentia Gilbert at Saint-Coulomb on 30 October 1573. That marriage names no parents, and the Saint-Coulomb baptism book for 1550, which runs from April 1550 into early 1551, holds no Laurentia Gilbert. She is not counted here as their daughter. The same trees give Gilles Gilbert the years 1520–1590 and Perrine Meslé 1525–1597, without sources.