Guillaume Saurette Jr.

Firstborn of a hard household

Guillaume was the eldest child of Guillaume Saurette Sr. and Apolline Archambault, born a mere ten months after their 1827 marriage. His baptismal act was located in September 2026 and it moves the date by a day: he was born on 13 November 1827 and baptized the next day, at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. Until then this page gave his birth as the 14th — which was the day he was carried to the church, not the day he arrived. See Corrections. One census return still drifts as far off as 1820, a larger gap than the usual year-or-two census error, and the act now settles it against them all.

Baptismal act B.111, Guillaume Soret, born 13 November and baptized 14 November 1827, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, sighted · family descendancy record and 1854 marriage act (implicit fils majeur status), which had carried the date before the act was found · Register 03 · graded Proven, raised from Probable when the act was sighted

A marriage that needed a bishop's permission

Guillaume married Elmire Jourdain-Lafrance on 27 February 1854 at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. The act itself records something the family didn't need to be told at the time but is worth spelling out now: a dispensation du troisième au quatrième degré de consanguinité, granted by the Bishop of Saint-Hyacinthe — the “third to fourth” itself a signal that the two sides aren't the same distance from the shared ancestor. Elmire's mother, Céleste Saurette dite Larose Lapierre, was already a Saurette before she married Elmire's father — and tracing both family trees back confirms why the dispensation reads exactly as it does. Jean-Baptiste Saurette and Marie-Catherine Gauthier dite Saint-Germain, married a century earlier at Chambly in 1763, are Guillaume's great-grandparents on one side and Elmire's great-great-grandparents on the other: Guillaume descends from them in three steps, through their son Joseph and then Guillaume Saurette Sr.; Elmire in four, through their other son Jean-Baptiste, then his own son (also Jean-Baptiste, who married Marie-Josephte Casavant in 1810), then Céleste. Second cousins once removed, marrying back into the family's own root two generations after it had scattered. See the shrinking marriage pool for how common this became.

Marriage act, 27 Feb 1854, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville · PRDH couple #293884 (the 1854 marriage) and #113510 (the 1810 Beloeil marriage, independently naming the groom's own father as a second Jean-Baptiste Larose Soret, confirming the extra generation on Elmire's side) · graded Proven

Elmire was a child when she first signed her name

Seven years before that wedding, Elmire had already signed a marriage act — someone else's. On 9 November 1847 her aunt Julienne Saurette married Joseph Marcil at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. Nine hands signed that page, and two of them were Elmire's and her mother Céleste's. Elmire was a child when she wrote hers — eleven or thirteen, depending on which of two disagreeing records gives her year of birth. It is the earliest example of her handwriting this project holds, and the only primary evidence that bears on her age at all. It does not settle 1834 against 1836. It does dispose of the 1881 census, which would have made her six that November, and no six-year-old wrote that hand.

Marriage act, Joseph Marcil × Julienne Saurette, 9 November 1847, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, sighted · Register 03 §3.1 · graded Proven as to the signature; Elmire's year of birth is a separate claim, is graded Probable, and remains unsettled between 1834 and 1836 — this site states no year for it

Céleste spelled it her own way for fifty years

Céleste signed four times across fifty years, and all four acts have been read in the original. The earliest is the one nobody had gone looking for: her sister Sophie's wedding on 4 September 1827, where she signs among eight hands, two days after her fourteenth birthday. Then her own marriage in November 1830, where the act says she signed alone; her sister Julienne's in 1847; and her granddaughter's in 1877. Every time she wrote it the same way — sorette, lower case, without the au. The clerks of that parish spelled the family name Saurette, Soret and Sorette by turns, and on the 1847 page the priest had written it out four lines above her. She signed underneath in her own spelling anyway. Marie-Anna Saurette's great-grandmother is one of the very few people in this account whose own preferred form of her own name survives at all — and it is not the form the registers use.

Marriage acts, 4 September 1827, 9 November 1830, 9 November 1847 and 24 September 1877, all St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, all sighted · baptismal act, Céleste Saurette, 2 September 1813, same parish, sighted · Register 03 §3.91, §3.9 · graded Proven as to all four signatures, their dates, and her age at the first. Her burial act recites an age that back-calculates about a month later; age recitals at burial are approximate and the baptismal act governs. See Corrections.

Two weddings, back to back, and only one signature between them

Céleste’s wedding was not the only one in that church on 9 November 1830. It was the second of two, written into the register one after the other, and the pair of them together say more than either does alone.

The first, M.21, married Marguerite Soret — Guillaume Sr.’s own sister, an orphan marrying with the consent of parents et tuteurs. Guillaume and his brother Charles stood as witnesses, named in the act as frères de l’épouse. Nobody signed it at all — the clerk records the witnesses «qui ainsi que les époux n’ont su signer».

The second, M.22, is Céleste’s, and its closing clause is three words long: «qui a signé seule» — who signed alone. Same afternoon, same priest, same page. In the first act not one person in the room could write; in the second, one could, and the register says so in the fewest words it had.

The first act also settles a death this project could not date. Marguerite is fille mineure de feu Joseph Soret dit Larose and of défunte Marguerite Labonté, so both of Guillaume Sr.’s parents were dead by November 1830 — and his mother, who appears alive on an act of 1827, died somewhere in those three years. She is Marotte on one act, Labonté on another and Marot-Labonté in the répertoire: one woman, three forms, and a search on any one of them finds two-thirds of her.

Marriage acts M.21 and M.22, 9 November 1830, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, consecutive entries on one opening, both sighted · Register 03 §3.89 · graded Proven as to the two ceremonies, the witnesses, the signatures and the two deaths being before that date. Marguerite Soret is Guillaume Sr.’s sister and an ancestress of nobody here; she is named because of where she stood.

The woman who married both of Elmire’s grandfathers

Céleste’s wedding in November 1830 was the second time that autumn these two families were joined. The first time is the stranger of the two, and until September 2026 this site had never heard of the woman it turns on.

Elmire’s paternal grandfather was Antoine Jourdain dit Lafrance. A widower at thirty-two, he married again on 25 July 1814 at St-Charles-sur-Richelieu: Françoise Banlier dit Laperle, twenty-seven, both her own parents already dead, given away by a brother-in-law standing in for her father. Elmire’s maternal grandfather was Jean-Baptiste Soret dit Larose — Céleste’s father, and also a widower.

Antoine died. And on 21 September 1830, at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, his widow married Jean-Baptiste Soret dit Larose. Seven weeks later to the day — forty-nine days — Antoine’s son married Jean-Baptiste’s daughter in the same parish. That second wedding is Céleste’s, the one she signed.

So Françoise Banlier stands between both of Elmire Jourdain’s grandfathers, having married each of them in turn. And the bride and groom of that November wedding had been stepchildren of the same woman for seven weeks when they walked up the aisle.

She is not an ancestress of anyone on this site, and the distinction is the whole point of making it carefully. Jean-Baptiste Jourdain was Charlotte Blanchard’s son; Céleste was Josephte Casavant’s. Françoise Banlier bore neither of them and transmits nothing down any line this project follows. She is a stepmother twice over, and she is on this page for where she stood, not for what she passed on. Whether any of it bore on the dispensation Céleste’s own marriage act records is a question for that act, and the act has not been asked it.

One thread follows her across both weddings. Christophe Leduc witnessed each of them — in 1814 as beau-frère tenant lieu de père, standing where her dead father would have stood, and again in 1830, sixteen years later. She herself died between September 1830 and March 1835, the date fixed from both ends by sighted acts: her own remarriage, and Jean-Baptiste’s third wedding, where he is entered as her widower.

Marriage act, Antoine Jourdain dit Lafrance × Françoise Banlier, 25 July 1814, St-Charles-sur-Richelieu, act M.6 · marriage act, Jean-Baptiste Soret dit Larose × Françoise Banlier, 21 September 1830, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, act M.16 · marriage act, Jean-Baptiste Jourdain × Céleste, 9 November 1830, same parish, act M.22 · marriage act, Jean-Baptiste Sorette × Josephte Lemonde, 2 March 1835, same parish, act M.18 · all four sighted · Register 03 §3.86 · graded Proven as to both of her marriages, her death bracket and her position between the two grandfathers. She appears in no descent on this site, and none is claimed for her.

Twelve children, three losses

Guillaume and Elmire had twelve children between 1855 and 1879, Elmire's childbearing years running from twenty to forty-four. Three did not survive childhood: Jean-Baptiste Amédée, dead at two in 1859; Marie-Antoinette, dead at ten in 1876; and Évelina, dead at eleven weeks that same year. Their sixth child, Alméric, carries the direct line forward.

Family descendancy record · graded Proven

Four generations, and one signature block

The 1877 act is the fullest of the four. On 24 September their daughter Rose-Anne married Joseph Beaudry, and five hands signed below it: the groom's, then Rozana, Dorila and Amanda Saurette — three of Guillaume and Elmire's twelve children — and Céleste, for the third time of her four. Guillaume himself is not among them, and the section below says why. Both of the bride's grandfathers stood as witnesses: Guillaume Sr., styled on the act grand-père de l'épouse, and Jean-Baptiste Jourdain, Céleste's husband and Elmire's father. Four generations of one family, named in a single document.

Marriage act, Joseph Beaudry × Rose-Anne Saurette, 24 September 1877, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, sighted · 1881 Census of Canada, Guillaume Saurette household, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville · Register 03 rev. 108 · graded Proven as to the five signatures, the witnesses and Rose-Anne's parentage; Dorila and Amanda are named as her sisters in the family's 1881 census household, and the identification of the signature Rozana with the bride herself is the natural reading, offered rather than asserted

Nobody in this house was learning to write

This page used to tell the story the other way round, and the acts do not support it. Read in order, they do not show literacy arriving. They show it running through a household — present in some people and absent in others who slept under the same roof, in the same decade, on the same income.

Guillaume himself could not write his name. That is not an inference from a blank space; two acts say it in terms. In October 1884 he stands as witness at his brother Jean-Baptiste's wedding and the clerk records the witnesses «qui ont déclaré ne savoir signer». In June 1888, at his own daughter's wedding, the same words, and this time the act names his wife Elmire so there is no question which Guillaume it is. His father Guillaume Sr. could not sign either — proven on a baptismal act of November 1833 that records the father, named in it as Guillaume Soret, among those who did not know how.

And almost everyone else in the family could. His three half-siblings by his father's third wife, Julie Poirier — Amédée, Julie and Alfred, born in the 1840s and 50s — all sign. Every one of his own daughters signs: Rozana, Dorila, Amanda, Alexina, Emma. His wife Elmire had been signing since she was a child in 1847, and her mother Céleste since 1827. His brother Jean-Baptiste signed a marriage act on 30 September 1884; twenty-seven days later Guillaume was recorded as unable to sign at that same brother's next wedding.

So the break does not fall between one generation and the next. It falls inside a single sibship — between the children of Guillaume Sr.'s first wife and the children of his third — and then stops, because Guillaume's own daughters can all write. And it is not poverty: one of the acts records his father as a rentier, a man living off his property.

Why one boy born in 1827 never learned and his half-brothers born twenty years later did is not recorded anywhere this project holds. A parish school arriving, a death, an illness, a father's decision, the ordinary accident of which child was needed on the farm — the acts do not say, and this page is not going to choose for them.

What it is not. It is not men against women. Louis Blanchard Écuyer signed in 1830; Alexis Marquette, A. Bélanger and Hypolite Albert signed in 1847; Joseph Beaudry the groom signed in 1877; Guillaume's own brothers signed. And nobody signed with an X — the acts do not record marks, they record n'ont su signer, they did not know how.

One consequence worth pausing on. The 1877 signature block on this page — three daughters, and their grandmother Céleste — reads differently now. The bride's father was standing there and is not among the hands. He had given his consent to the marriage and could not put his name to it.

Marriage acts, all sighted: 27 October 1884 (M.8) and 19 June 1888 (M.2), each recording Guillaume Jr. among those who declared they did not know how to sign · 11 November 1884 and two further acts with him present and absent from the signature block · baptismal act, 4 November 1833, for Guillaume Sr. · marriage acts of 30 September 1884 (Jean-Baptiste signing), 1847, 1877 and 1827 · Register 03 §3.90 and §3.91 · graded Proven as to who could and could not sign, and as to the rentier. Why the break falls where it does is not documented, and nothing is asserted about it.

Outliving his wife, and his old parish

By the 1901 census Guillaume and Elmire were living under Alméric's own roof at St-Jean-Baptiste — the same year Alméric's family still counted Marie-Anna among them, not yet gone to Massachusetts. Elmire died 7 March 1909 at Ste-Brigide d'Iberville. By the 1911 census Guillaume had moved there too, recorded as a boarder in the house next to his son Philippe, away at last from St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, the parish where he had been born, married, and raised twelve children.

This page used to call that 1911 move the first time in his life the record placed him anywhere else. It didn't, and the correction runs thirty-eight years earlier. Guillaume and Elmire were in the United States in the spring of 1873, and their tenth child was born there: their daughter Emma, named on her own 1898 marriage act at St-Romuald de Farnham as “fille majeure de Guillaume Saurette, bourgeois, et d'Elmire Saurette, de St-Jean-Baptiste” — which she signed herself — and recorded three years later, in the 1901 census of Ville Farnham, as born 1 April, in the États-Unis, the only person under that roof not born in Quebec. It was a sojourn and not an emigration: Régina was born at Rouville in December 1870 and Évelina in July 1876, and the whole absence fits between them. They went, and they came back. See Corrections.

1901 and 1911 Census of Canada · marriage act, Emma Saurette × Hormisdas Lusignan, 11 Aug 1898, St-Romuald de Farnham, sighted · 1901 Census of Canada, Ville Farnham, household 7 · Register 03 §3.80 · graded Proven as to the two censuses, as to Emma's parentage, and as to the United States birth; the town of that birth is a separate claim and is graded Probable–Strong — see Corrections

Guillaume died 10 March 1921 in Montréal, far in both distance and years from the Rouville parish that had held every earlier generation of this family, and was buried at Cimetière de l'Est. He was ninety-three — the oldest-lived man in this direct line, having buried a wife, at least three children, and outlasted the century he was born into by more than two decades.