♂Pierre Godin

Pierre Godin (baptized 17 May 1630 – died before 1686) was a carpenter from Châtillon-sur-Seine who came out to Montreal with the recruits of 1653, spent more than twenty years on the island, and in 1676 took his family to Acadia. He was probably the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Gabriel Godin (1661–1730).

Early life

Pierre was probably the boy baptized at Saint-Vorles in Châtillon-sur-Seine, in what is now the Côte-d’Or, on 17 May 1630, a son of Claude Godin and Marie Bardin. By 1653 he was a journeyman carpenter, and that year he signed on with Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve^W and Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière^W, for wages of 100 livres a year, as one of the hundred-odd men raised in France to reinforce the settlement at Montreal. The ship reached Québec on 22 September 1653, and the recruits came up the river to Montreal on 16 November. He was known as Pierre Godin dit Châtillon.

Montreal

At Montreal he married Jeanne Rousselière, a young woman from Saintonge^W who had come out with the same recruits. The marriage contract was signed before the notary Lambert Closse on 27 September 1654, and the wedding followed at Notre-Dame, by most accounts on 13 October 1654. In November 1655 Pierre bought a house from André Dumets with an arpent of land; the house is said to have stood in what is now the middle of Place Jacques-Cartier. He also served as a soldier in the ninth squad of the Montreal militia.

The couple had nine children, by the compiled genealogies, born between 1655 and 1672. Their eldest son, Laurent, born in 1655, is said to have had Maisonneuve himself, the founder and governor of Montreal, for his godfather. About 1665 the family moved to the Québec region; the census of 1666 found them there, Pierre aged 34 and Jeanne 30, with five children. In September 1666 Pierre gave his wife power of attorney and went back to Montreal, and the family was together there again by October 1669, when another child was born.

Sault Saint-Louis

By 1672 the family lived at the Sault Saint-Louis, by the rapids above Montreal. That August a neighbor, Pierre Boutaux dit La Ramée, a former soldier, complained to the island’s judge, Charles d’Ailleboust, that Pierre and his son Laurent had beaten him with sticks of green wood as thick as an ax handle, and that Laurent had pushed a blade fixed to a pole through the gaps in the stakes of his cabin, calling on his father to kill the scoundrel and throw him in the river. The quarrel had begun over the Godin children, whom La Ramée accused of taking his corn and his bread.

Pierre, aged 40, Jeanne, 38, and Laurent, 17, all denied it under oath, and their son Gabriel, nine or ten, said he had spent the whole day on the lake. On 30 August the clerk, standing in for the absent prosecutor, wrote that the charge stood unpunished for want of proof, and asked for more witnesses to be heard. Pierre signed his statements in his own hand.

In May 1675 a canoe carrying the missionary, M. Le Bailly, overturned and his canoeman, Georges Allain, was drowned, and the accident led the Seminary to build a chapel at Lachine itself. A history of Lake Saint-Louis records that the chapel was built by Pierre Godin dit Châtillon, whose land lay close to the rapids.

Acadia

After more than twenty years at Montreal, Pierre and Jeanne sold all they owned in June 1676 and took the family to Acadia, to the Saint John River. Two of their daughters had married at Montreal before they left. Pierre is said to have been working at Beaubassin^W in 1678, lodging with Roger Caissy, and to have given evidence in the Campagna trial on 8 September 1684. He died before the census of 1686, which found Jeanne at Port-Royal, a widow of 60, with three of the children, Gabriel aged 25, Pierre 20 and Anne 13, and no property at all.

The family

Their eldest son, Laurent Godin dit Châtillon (born 1655), went to Acadia with the family and is said to have settled with his wife at Pointe Beauséjour, near Beaubassin, taking the name sieur de Beauséjour from that land, where Fort Beauséjour^W was built half a century later. In his last years he went back to the island of Montreal, where he married again at Pointe-Claire on 26 June 1719 and worked as a miller; he was buried at Rivière-des-Prairies on 1 May 1737.

Notes

Sources for his life

His baptism at Saint-Vorles in Châtillon-sur-Seine, his parents, his marriage and the dates of the crossing are from the Fichier Origine, a database of the European origins of the settlers of New France, which gives the baptism date and his death at Port-Royal before the census of 1686. His trade, his engagement, the marriage contract (Lambert Closse, 27 September 1654) and the wedding, the house of 1655, the militia squad, the census of 1666, the power of attorney, the birth of 1669, the chapel and the sales of 7 and 11 June 1676 come from Roland-J. Auger’s La grande recrue de 1653 (pp. 69-70), which cites the notarial acts and the census returns printed by Benjamin Sulte; Auger takes the chapel from Girouard’s Lake St. Louis, Old and New (p. 47), after the historian Étienne-Michel Faillon. The court papers of August 1672 are printed in full by Auger (pp. 128-133); the judge was Charles d’Ailleboust, sieur des Muceaux, bailiff of the island of Montreal.

The nine children, Laurent’s godfather, the site of the house, the stay at Beaubassin and the Campagna trial are from Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 4, pp. 1632-1634). Arsenault places the family at Charlesbourg, near Québec, from 1665 to 1669. Laurent’s life is from the same pages; Arsenault puts him at Pointe Beauséjour with a wife and one child in 1678.

His age

The Fichier Origine baptism of 17 May 1630 does not fit his stated ages very well: he was 34 at the census of 1666 and 40 in August 1672, which point to about 1632, and Arsenault gives “né en 1632”.

The engagement and the wedding

Auger dates his engagement to 23 March 1653, before the notary Lafousse; the Fichier Origine gives a contract before Lafousse at La Flèche on 30 April 1653. Auger gives the wedding as 13 October 1654 in his entry for Pierre, but 3 October 1654 in his note on Jeanne; the Fichier Origine has 13 October.

The line of descent

The descent from Gabriel Godin runs through Jean-Baptiste Godin dit Lincour, whom Stephen A. White’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes places in Gabriel’s family; Arsenault’s list of Gabriel’s children does not name him. The line to Floyd Amatus Delahorne is therefore probable rather than proved.