♂Simon Savard

Simon Savard (22 May 1623 – before 12 January 1665) was a master wheelwright of Montreuil, east of Paris, who crossed to New France in 1662 with two of his daughters and was dead within three years. He was probably the ninth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Françoise-Madeleine Savard (1650–1704).

Montreuil

Simon was most likely baptized at Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul in Montreuil on 22 May 1623, a son of Simon Savard, a wheelwright, and Marguerite Vinante. His mother died in 1629, when he was about six, and his father married again, to Diane Certel. Simon followed his father’s trade and became a master wheelwright, a maker of wheels and carts.

On 15 June 1644, at twenty-one, he married Marie Hordouille in the same parish church at Montreuil. The couple had nine children, the youngest born in 1661, and at least five of them grew up to marry in Canada.

New France

In 1662 Simon sailed for New France with his daughters Denise and Françoise-Madeleine, then about fifteen and eleven; his wife is said to have followed the next year with their four youngest children. He did not live long in the colony. By 12 January 1665, when Marie Hordouille’s marriage contract with Jean Réaume was drawn up before the notary Paul Vachon at Québec, she was his widow; Françoise-Madeleine married the sailor Robert Jeanne at Québec two weeks later.

Notes

Sources for his life

His baptism at Montreuil (Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul) on 22 May 1623, his parents, his father’s trade of wheelwright (charron) and second marriage, about 1629, to Diane Certel, his own trade of master wheelwright (maître charron), his marriage to Marie Hordouille at Montreuil on 15 June 1644, his crossing in 1662 with his daughters Denise and Françoise, and his death before 12 January 1665 come from the Fichier Origine, the register of the French origins of the settlers of New France. The same register gives the baptisms of his children Denise (19 November 1646), Françoise-Madeleine (14 September 1650), Simon (10 March 1655), Jean (7 October 1657) and Marie (20 February 1661), and the marriages of Denise to François-Abraham Fiset (1664), Marie to Jean Lefebvre (1675), Simon to Françoise Tellier (1681) and Jean to Marguerite Tremblay (1687). The Fichier Origine gives no place of death.

The contract of Jean Réaume and Marie Hurdouille (12 January 1665) is listed among Paul Vachon’s acts in the Inventaire des greffes des notaires du régime français published by the Archives de Québec (1942, p. 14), and Pierre-Georges Roy’s inventory of the marriage contracts of the French régime (vol. 3, p. 236) lists it as the contract of “Hurdouil, Marie, veuve de Simon Savard” with Jean Rhéaume. The Savard genealogy in the Recueil de généalogies (vol. 10) calls him a native of Montreuil-sous-Bois, near Paris. His wife’s crossing in 1663 with the four youngest children rests on her profile on WikiTree, a shared family tree.

His name

His father appears as Simon Savart in the Fichier Origine; his daughter is Françoise Savart in the census of 1681 and Savarre in the notarial inventory.

The line to Floyd Amatus Delahorne

The descent from his daughter Françoise-Madeleine runs through her daughter Andrée Angélique Jeanne and Jean-Baptiste Godin, whom Stephen A. White’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes (p. 747) places among the children of Andrée and Gabriel Godin. Bona Arsenault’s list of their children does not name him, so the line is probable rather than proved.