Marie Grandin

Like the two Marie Prévosts who were sent by the king, there were also two Marie Grandins among the entire contingent of Filles du Roi, one arriving three years earlier in 1667. The Marie Grandin from whom we descend was four years older and lived six years longer than the other Marie Grandin.

Our Marie Grandin was born about 1651 in the parish of Saint-Eubert in Orléans, Orléanais in the centre of France. She was the daughter of Michel Grandin and Marie Le Jeune. After her father’s death and at about age 19, she inadvertently joined the matriarchy of our Côté family when she was recruited as a Fille du Roi. The decision must have been inevitable. Yes, it was a vastly uncertain future, but the choices if she remained in France were fairly clear — a marriage, perhaps, in which she would have little choice in the option to refuse, or spinsterhood in a religious convent. Either way, the bleak reality was that she would be accepting the same uncertainties destined to her parents and many generations before them.

Joining the king’s program surely was a great opportunity at 19, bolstered by the thought of unimaginable freedoms and financial help to set the stage for life in a new world. She received her trousseau and left for Canada on May 22 with goods as her dowry she stated were worth an estimated 300 livres. Her ship, Saint Jean-Baptiste, is believed to have arrived at port in Québec City on the 31st of July, although some sources state that it was a few weeks later in August. Regardless, it was the same voyage that brought our ancestors Aubert and Lamain.

Jean Beaudet (sometimes Baudet) was born about 1650 in Blanzay, Poitou in France, the son of Sébastien Beaudet and Marie Baudonnier. As evidence that adult responsibilities came early in the 17th century, at just 14 years of age, Jean appeared in official records as a farmer and eel fisherman, having arrived in Canada May 25, 1664 aboard the vessel Noir d'Amsterdam. He also appears in the 1666 census as the indentured servant of Nicolas Gaudry at the Côté Saint-François et Saint-Jean in Québec City when he was 16 or 17 years old.

Undoubtedly Marie met Jean at the supervised meetings held by the Ursuline nuns in Québec City. Unless history neglected to say that the Filles du Roi broke social protocols and threw their fates entirely to the wind by roaming outside of the convent, it was the only way that they possibly could meet their husbands and begin the next stage of their lives.

On September 23, 1670, 19-year-old Marie Grandin married 20-year-old Jean Beaudet at Québec City, and upon consummation of their vows, they received the king’s gift of 50 livres or its equivalent. Neither spouse was able to sign the marriage contract drawn on September 7 by notary Romain Becquet. Jean and Marie first settled at his small, rented farm at Sillery where possibly three of their first children were born. It appears that during this time they entered into and completed an agreement to purchase their approximately 27 acres from the seigneury who owned it.

Jean Beaudet appears to have been an ambitious man and worked hard to provide for Marie and the children. In October 1677 he was successful in getting a concession for his own seigneury at Lotbinière, a virtually uninhabited area on the south side of the Saint Laurent, roughly 35 kilometres by boat west of Québec City. Here he and Marie would downgrade farming in favour of eel trading with Montreal-based merchants. They would also build their dream home, even though the area was still targeted by the Iroquois for impromptu raids and the killing of French settlers. No doubt Marie was now living the adventure of her life.

Records that attempt to trace the family show that more children arrived in L’Ancienne-Lorette near Jean's first farm. What's unclear is whether the family had actually relocated or if this was simply a secure place for Marie to give birth. It's also possible that the children were born at their new home in Lotbinière and that L’Ancienne-Lorette was merely the administrative address of Québec City during its early stages of evolution. The official 1681 census notes their growing family, now at six, but by 1692, nearly 22 years after their marriage, Marie and Jean had increased the size of their family to 10. Now having grown the family to the size that qualified for additional government support, they would have likely started receiving the king's reward of 300 additional livres per year.

The Grandin-Beaudet marriage is a beautiful story, really. None of the records reflect child mortality among their offspring, and in fact all 10 children appear to have married and created their own subsequent branches.

We have more unique lineages to our Filles ancestors through Marie Grandin than with any other. But it was only their first child, Marie-Louise Beaudet, and no others, whose branches connect her iconic mother with our family a total of six times: with Clarice Bergeron through three subsequent families, and with Lazare Côté through three more. No other genes of the Filles du Roi exist in such a large measure in the children of Lazare and Clarice. [Note: Both Lazare Côté and Clarice Bergeron migrated from precisely this area, Lotbinière, in Québec.]

Viewing the six lineages that flow from Marie Grandin might alert readers to the common cultural practice in early Québec of parallel marriages across family units who probably lived in close proximity. For example, two or more siblings in one family often chose mates among the siblings in a nearby, unrelated family. With such large families, the result might be that several new families were founded, all sharing the same grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, grasping the genealogical picture can be hard because roughly 20 first names recurred tens of thousands of times across New France. A plausible scenario is that siblings named Françoise, Jean, Marie, and Pierre in one family could marry siblings Pierre, Marie, Jean, and Françoise respectively in another family — and then give their children and grandchildren all the same names. This practice during the 17th and 18th centuries forever complicated the task of reading and digesting the records.

Marie Grandin died July 14, 1715 at the hospital Hôtel-Dieu de Québec at age 64. The exact date of her husband Jean Beaudet’s death is uncertain, but it’s thought to be July 8, 1714, also in his 64th year and roughly a year before his wife’s passing. Peter Gagné states in his book that “notary Laneuville drew up a postmortem inventory of his estate” on July 13, 1714, but nothing more is mentioned to suggest what significance might have been attached to this. We do know that it was commonly done in those years to legally settle the division of assets, usually among children, upon the death of a parent.

A child of Marie Grandin was the ancestor of a notable writer of historical fiction whose name was Elise Dallemagne-Cookson. One of her works titled Marie Grandin: Sent by the King, although intentionally fictional, is a believable re-creation of Grandmother Grandin’s life in Canada based on onerous research. Newer resources reveal that her depiction of Marie's arrival on the ship L'Hélène de Flessingue was probably incorrect and that she actually arrived on St. Jean Baptiste. It's a minor point, of course.

In the bibliography, Dallemagne-Cookson lists 57 reputable academic publications used as reference for her story. Unfortunately since her death in 2005 it became impossible to ask if any of the political events she wrote about involving Marie Grandin and Jean Beaudet were factual or fictional embellishments of the established facts, especially where she describes the Grand Council gathering of 1701. It was here that settlers of New France finally made peace with the Iroqouis. If Dallemagne-Cookson's research actually uncovered an involvement by Marie and Jean in the peacemaking process, (now called the "Great Peace of Montreal") then we have even more to be proud of.

The book also reveals that Marie Grandin developed a close friendship with Michelle Ouinville, also one of our Filles du Roi ancestors, who had arrived two years earlier. One of the most likely assertions of Dallemagne-Cookson's book is that Marie Grandin and Michelle Ouinville and their respective families were the first to occupy the Québec municipality of Lotbinière. Today there are more than 4,000 people in Lotbinière, but of greater significance is that dozens and dozens of our ancestors who followed over the next 300 years were from Lotbinière, and not surprisingly that includes both Grandmother Clarice Bergeron and Grandfather Lazare Côté.

The six separate lineages leading to Lazare and Clarice Côté arise only from Marie Grandin’s first child, Marie-Louise Beaudet, but the book’s author descends from Marie Grandin's tenth and final child, Jacques Beaudet.