Ondits Saurette & Oligny family history
SAURETTE & OLIGNY · THE TIMELINE

Four hundred and forty years, in order

Every dated event this site holds, on one page, in sequence. Two lines running in parallel for two and a half centuries — pinching together at each shared ancestress, and merging for good at Holyoke in 1912. Set the density to suit what you came for — or trace a single thread through the whole four centuries.

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The Oligny line
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c. 1560 Hugues Crevier marries, at the sign of La Tête Noire A baker in Rouen, living in a house that bore the sign of the Black Head — the oldest concrete detail anywhere in this project. read the page
c. 1610Guillaume Pepin dit Tranchemontagne bornSaint-Laurent-de-la-Bavière, diocese of Saintes. At Trois-Rivières from 1634.read the page
12 Feb 1623 Pierre Ardion × Suzanne Soret La Rochelle. He a master mason and stonecutter, she the daughter of a Protestant merchant. read the page
c. 1631 Jeanne Mechin born Possibly La Rochelle. Her parentage is not settled; Gagné names a Jean Méchin only as a maybe. read the page
c. 1633 Mathurine Desbordes born A fille à marier. Parents and home parish unknown even to Gagné. read the page
c. 1638 Marguerite Ardion born La Rochelle, baptized into the Reformed faith — the same Huguenot milieu as Marguerite Doucinet's family a few years earlier, and possibly overlapping circles. read the page
1640 Pierre Doucinet × Florence Cantau La Rochelle, in the Huguenot temple's own register. read the page
31 Dec 1641 Pierre Ardion buried At the Reformed church in La Rochelle, aged forty-seven. read the page
1641 Marguerite Doucinet baptized The Huguenot temple at La Rochelle. Nothing of this appears anywhere in her later Catholic life in New France — no abjuration, no nouvelle convertie, no note at all. read the page
c. 1641 Élisabeth Gobinet born Gonesse, north of Paris. This project read her origin as Bourges for years, until her actual 1658 marriage contract was read directly. read the page
c. 1642Jean Besset dit Brisetout bornCahors, in the southwest of France; parents unrecorded. His dit-name was issued in the barracks, and carried by children who never held a musket.read the page
c. 1645 Jeanne Mechin × Guillaume Pepin dit Tranchemontagne Trois-Rivières. No marriage act or contract has ever been found. He was about twenty years her senior. read the page
16 Jun 1645 Jean Méchin enlists at La Rochelle Before notary Teleuron. Whether he is Jeanne's father is explicitly uncertain in the source. read the page
Sep 1645Guillaume Pepin granted land near the fortBy the governor's authorisation, Trois-Rivières.read the page
Apr 1646Jacques Pepin baptizedTrois-Rivières, the governor of the town standing as his godfather.read the page
6 Nov 1646 Jean Méchin drowns off the Cap à l'Arbre En route to Trois-Rivières; buried at Québec that December. He never reached the town where his possible daughter already lived. read the page
c. 1648 Marie-Louise Lecoutre born Somewhere in France. No parish, no parents, no province — of the four filles du roi here, hers is the origin that appears genuinely lost rather than merely unsearched. read the page
1 Mar 1649Anne Seigneur baptizedSaint-Maclou, Rouen. The record doesn't say what became of her father — only that by nineteen she was on a ship, the same pattern that repeats across the filles du roi.read the page
8 Jul 1650 Suzanne Soret buried The same Protestant church, nine years after her husband. read the page
1651–52Guillaume Pepin serves as syndic of Trois-RivièresLater judge for the seigneurie of Champlain.read the page
c. 1651 Catherine Fourrier born Paris, parish of Saint-Sulpice, faubourg Saint-Germain — or c. 1638, if her own burial act's stated age is right instead. Thirteen years apart, and neither figure retired in favour of the other. read the page
c. 1651 Françoise Duval born Paris. Her own marriage act gives Saint-Séverin and names Jean Duval and Jacqueline Grisel; Gagné gives a different parish and different parents. Both stand; neither is retired. read the page
late 1652Pierre Pepin baptizedTrois-Rivières. His own 1681 marriage act gives his age as about twenty-eight, which fits.read the page
23 May 1653 Paul Benoit signs on at La Flèche To serve Maisonneuve and La Dauversière. He crossed that November aboard the Saint-Nicolas with the Grande Recrue — the same ship that carried Marguerite Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance. read the page
c. 1655Mathurine Desbordes × Pierre GuibergeAumalles, parish of Saint-Étienne de Marans, diocese of La Rochelle. At least two daughters, Jeanne and Marie.read the page
9 Sep 1658 Élisabeth Gobinet × Paul Benoit Contract before notary Bénigne Basset at Ville-Marie, then the marriage at Notre-Dame de Montréal. She was seventeen; six other filles à marier married the same day. Neither bride nor groom could sign. Maisonneuve signs, with Jeanne Mance — not a mark of standing, simply a governor who had recruited the groom himself, in a colony too small for it to be otherwise. read the page
5 May 1659The Guiberge family enlists for CanadaLa Rochelle, acknowledging a debt of 225 livres to Jeanne Mance herself for the passage.read the page
29 Sep 1659Mathurine Desbordes lands at MontréalAboard the Saint-André, a widow with one daughter, twenty-six years old. Her husband and younger daughter never made the crossing.read the page
1659 Marguerite Ardion × Laurent Baudet In France, by contract before notary Teuleron. No Québec act was ever created for this marriage — a real answer rather than a gap. read the page
3 May 1660Mathurine × Pierre BissonnetA miller from Poitou. A son, Jacques, baptized the following spring.read the page
21 Nov 1660Twins Louis and Joseph Pepin baptizedBoth buried shortly afterward.read the page
6 May 1662A second set of twins — Marguerite and Marie-Ursule PepinBaptized at Trois-Rivières, less than two years after the first pair.read the page
28 Dec 1662 Marguerite Doucinet × Philippe Mathieu dit la Barie Notre-Dame de Québec. She was twenty-one, a fille à marier who found her own passage — a year before the crown began paying for the women who followed. read the page
1 Aug 1663Mathurine petitions to annul a bigamous marriageBissonnet had a wife still living in Poitou, and admitted it — claiming he had left her because she was “a witch.“ Three witnesses corroborated. Laval's delegate annulled it within days.read the page
16 Aug 1663Mathurine × Michel dit Mathieu BouvierMontréal, two weeks after the annulment. A master mason from Anjou who had crossed with the Grande Recrue, gone home, and come back.read the page
28 Oct 1663 Marguerite Ardion × Jean Rabouin Québec, having crossed that year a widow with a small son. Neither could sign the contract. Eight children followed; none of them carry this project's line. read the page
24 Jun 1665Suzanne Bouvier baptizedThe sighted act corrects Gagné's own printed 1664.read the page
1665 Marie-Louise Lecoutre crosses to Canada At about seventeen, and about that same year married Nicolas Crevier, Sieur de Bellerive, at Cap-de-la-Madeleine — the one significant joint in her own life still unsighted. read the page
1665Jean Besset crosses with the Carignan-SalièresThe regiment sent to break the Iroquois threat on the Richelieu frontier. His company is not asserted: the compiled lists agree on one, but the nickname has not yet been counted on the 1668 roll.read the page
1666 Both Doucinet sisters at Charlesbourg Marguerite with two small daughters; Isabelle, who came four years later under the royal programme with a 200-livre dowry her sister never had, in the same parish. The 1681 census finds them both still there. read the page
7 Jun 1667André Robidou dit Lespagnol × Jeanne DenotNotre-Dame de Québec — her first marriage. The Robidou daughter carries her line to Philorum; a second marriage, eleven years later, carries it to Marie-Azilda.read the page
3 Jul 1668Anne Seigneur × Jean Besset dit BrisetoutChambly, by contract before notary Adhémar. Neither could sign. Seventy-three years before Jacques Saurette married at the same fort — they weren't late arrivals to the parish both families would share, they were among the people who built it.read the page
23 Jul 1669Jeanne Guiberge × Pierre CabazierNotre-Dame de Montréal. The daughter who survived the crossing; her line runs to Joseph Philorum Oligny.read the page
8 Sep 1670 A marriage contract annulled Notary Becquet draws one up between Françoise Duval and Emmanuel Tavare dit Minault. It was annulled; nothing surviving says why. read the page
14 Oct 1670 Catherine Fourrier × Mathurin Marcadier dit Lahaye Montréal, having stayed at the Maison Saint-Gabriel after arriving. An armorer from Poitou. Neither could sign. read the page
16 Sep 1671 Élisabeth Marcadier baptized — and buried eleven days later read the page
16 Nov 1671A double sibling wedding at Trois-RivièresJacques Pepin × Marie-Jeanne Caillé and Elizabeth Pepin × Jean Arcouet, married off on the same day. Found while chasing an unrelated question. Jeanne Mechin is still living on this act.read the page
16 Nov 1671 Françoise Duval × Pierre Courault Notre-Dame de Québec, third bann dispensed, with the King's Gift of fifty livres. Neither could sign. A son and a daughter from this marriage carry the two lines that meet again in 1912. read the page
by 7 May 1672 Mathurin Marcadier dies Sometime between 9 March and 7 May, leaving Catherine widowed with a second child still unborn. read the page
11 May 1672 Catherine Fourrier × Jean Bousquet Four days after her first husband's latest possible death date, visibly pregnant with his daughter. One bann published, two dispensed — the mechanism that made a four-day turnaround possible. A widow alone at Ville-Marie had one path to security and took it as fast as the Church allowed. read the page
9 Dec 1672 Geneviève Marcadier baptized Seven months after her mother remarried, and months after her own father's death. read the page
1 Jan 1673A son baptized in the chapel of the fortThere being no parish register of its own yet, the act was written into Boucherville's book, twenty miles off, because that was the only one available.read the page
14 Oct 1673Jean Besset granted land at ChamblyDirectly from the seigneur — the Carignan-Salières policy working exactly as designed: disband the regiment, settle the soldiers, turn a military problem into an agricultural border. Sixty-eight years before Jacques Saurette reached the same parish.read the page
25 Dec 1673Louis Courault baptizedQuébec City. His line runs to Marie-Anna Saurette.read the page
28 Sep 1677 Marguerite Ardion's last child baptized Sainte-Famille, Île d'Orléans. She died within the eleven months that followed — bracketed by this baptism and her husband's remarriage the next September. read the page
20 May 1678 Charlotte-Élisabeth Courault baptized — buried that November read the page
1659–79 Eleven Benoit children baptized Notre-Dame de Montréal. Two — Jacques and Yves — vanish from the sacramental record after their own baptisms, no marriage, no burial. Four daughters dead before thirty-three; three sons to sixty-seven, seventy-three, eighty-three. read the page
16 Aug 1678Jacques Surprenant dit Sanssoucy × Jeanne DenotLa Prairie, and written in Latin. Her second marriage, and the one that reaches Marie-Azilda — so one woman's two weddings run to each of the 1887 couple.read the page
1680Marie-Anne Benoit × Jean BourbonHer first marriage. Her second, in 1695, would be opposed in public by the groom's own father.read the page
4 May 1680 Pierre Courault dies suddenly At the Jesuit residence of Notre-Dame-des-Anges; buried the next day at Beauport. Louis was six. Marie had not yet been born. read the page
1680–81 Jeanne Mechin dies Between 30 November 1680 and the census of 1681, at Trois-Rivières — a bracket her son's marriage act the following October slightly tightens. read the page
16 Feb 1681Marie Coulon baptized — a posthumous childBorn nine and a half months after her father's death, and never knew the man whose line she carries to Joseph Philorum Oligny.read the page
16 Apr 1681Suzanne Bouvier × Louis Brien dit DesrochesNotre-Dame de Montréal. Two of her sons will found the lines to Marie-Anna Saurette and to Gideon Rock — the two men she would marry.read the page
12 Aug 1681 Françoise Duval × Antoine Renaud dit Letambour et Larose Himself a widower with six children by a fille du roi. Six more followed; two died in infancy. He was buried in 1693. read the page
20 Oct 1681Pierre Pepin × Louise Le MireNotre-Dame de Québec; she was fifteen and a half. His brother Jean stands as a witness — the record catching the two men whose lines split here.read the page
1681The census catches the household wholeJean at thirty-nine, Anne at thirty-two, five children from two to thirteen. Seven people at Chambly, sixty years before a Saurette set foot there.read the page
24 May 1683Raphael Beauvais × Isabelle TurginNotre-Dame de Montréal. The head of the Beauvais route — a third, more distant path between Philorum and Marie-Azilda, and the one this site grades lowest.read the page
16 May 1684 Laurent Baudet × Marguerite-Louise Crevier Before notary Séverin Ameau. The contract names both mothers in one clause — Marguerite Ardion and Marie-Louise Lecoutre — and Lecoutre appeared in person that same day to arrange her daughter's board, signing her own name to it. The fork that sends two daughters to two different 1912 spouses happens here. read the page
16 May 1684 Marie-Louise Lecoutre signs her own name On the same day, before the same notary as her daughter's marriage contract, she undertakes to house and feed the bride while the groom is away. She signs it herself; the groom did not. For a woman with no recorded parish and no documented crossing, it is the single most direct thing this project has of her. read the page
14 Nov 1684Anne Tétu baptizedLa Prairie. Eighteen years later she marries Pierre Surprenant, and the two of them become the nearest common ancestors Philorum and Marie-Azilda have.read the page
1685Marie Matou × Pierre CardinalHer father Philippe stood as a witness.read the page
23 Nov 1685Jean Pepin × Magdelaine LoyseauBoucherville. His act gives his age as thirty-seven, a year off Gagné's estimate — noted, not reconciled.read the page
1 Jan 1686 Paul Benoit dies Longueuil, buried two days later at Boucherville. Élisabeth was forty-five and would outlive him by twenty-nine years — longer widowed than married. read the page
5 Nov 1687Marguerite Baudet baptizedCap-de-la-Madeleine. Her line runs to Joseph Philorum Oligny.read the page
1687A five-year-old son, Pierre, buriedFrom a compiled source rather than a sighted act — carried as Probable until a burial record says otherwise.read the page
by Oct 1688 Laurent Baudet dies young Between May 1684 and October 1688, when a later contract records Marguerite a widow. Twenty-six at most; his elder daughter was fatherless before she was five. read the page
after 2 Feb 1689 Marie-Louise Lecoutre dies Known only by a floor — the date of her last child's baptism. Two of her daughters became nuns with the Congrégation Notre-Dame; no other family on this site sent daughters into religion. read the page
c. 1690Jean Besset captured by the IroquoisGone from the family's record by late that year; released or escaped by 1695. An earlier compiled account collapsed him with his own son and credited the father with the son's scalping.read the page
5 Dec 1690Marie-Jeanne Robidoux × Gabriel LemieuxLa Prairie. The act names her as the daughter of André Robidou and Jeanne Denot — the joint that closed the Denot route on a sighted act instead of a database.read the page
1691His son scalped at Saint-LambertHe survived it, and lived to 1751.read the page
1692 Élisabeth counts out a hundred livres in coin Fifty-one years old, settling half a debt tied to her dead daughter's marriage and securing a standstill on the rest until her own death. She could not sign the receipt. read the page
1693 She contracts to raise a two-year-old Marianne Gayeur, for twelve years, in exchange for the girl's father surrendering his claim on Paul's estate. read the page
1695Marguerite Matou × Paul LaporteThe other Matou daughter — the split that sends Doucinet's line toward Marie-Anna.read the page
10 Jan 1695Louis Courault × Marguerite MartelNotre-Dame de Québec.read the page
10 Dec 1695 Françoise Duval × François Renaud Her third marriage, to a labourer some twenty-five years her junior. Whether he was kin to her second husband isn't known. read the page
1695A father opposes his son's wedding, at the grand massJean the son tried to marry the widow Marie-Anne Benoit; his own father objected publicly, in front of the congregation. Dollier de Casson overruled him. The wedding went ahead — moved out of the parish, at six in the morning. The bride was Élisabeth Gobinet's own daughter: two families standing in one room arguing, thirty-seven years before their descendants met again without knowing it.read the page
12 Aug 1697Guillaume Pepin diesBuried the same day, having outlived Jeanne by roughly seventeen years.read the page
1698Barbe Bourbon × Pierre BrosseauLa Prairie.read the page
15 Sep 1698 Marguerite Doucinet dies Notre-Dame de Montréal, buried the same day — a hundred and sixty miles from where this project had her for years. Two sons-in-law stood witness, Pierre Cardinal and Jacques Lenoir, neither able to sign. read the page
22 Oct 1698Mathurine Desbordes diesAt the Montréal hospital, about sixty-five.read the page
9 Nov 1699Marie Coulon × Jean Maillot dit La RocheNotre-Dame de Montréal.read the page
16 Jan 1702 Pierre Bousquet × Marie Banlier Varennes. The act names him “fils de feu Jean Bousquet et de Catherine Fourrier“ — father dead, mother living. And she was there: the witness list includes ladite Fourrier, thirty years after her own wedding. read the page
27 Nov 1702Pierre Surprenant × Anne TétuLa Prairie. The nearest common ancestors of the 1887 couple — six generations above Philorum, five above Marie-Azilda. Nothing in either ancestry comes closer.read the page
1703Michel Bouvier dies at LachineA fall from scaffolding, building a house for Jacques LeBer, Sieur de Senneville.read the page
1703–04Marie Baudet × Jean MasséLa Prairie. The act carries no date of its own — written as a certificate, not a register entry — but Drouin's index brackets it between two neighbouring dated acts.read the page
c. 1704Jacques Saurette bornDiocese of Le Mans. The parish itself resists a confident reading on the act — “la paroisse de Monceau[?]“ — with Moncé-en-Belin the leading candidate. The strongest unresolved lead in the whole Saurette register.read the page
1705 Jean Pepin × Jacqueline Billy Champlain. Jacques's son, not Guillaume's — a compiled tree once welded him to a namesake brother and invented a man who never existed. read the page
11 May 1705Suzanne Cabazier × Charles RainvilleNotre-Dame de Montréal.read the page
5 Jan 1707Jean Besset diesBuried the next day at Chambly.read the page
1 Apr 1709Marguerite Baudet × Noël PaquetChambly.read the page
20 Jul 1711Pierre Brien × Elizabeth Des RochesRivière-des-Prairies. The branch that runs to Gideon Rock.read the page
20 Nov 1712 Catherine Fourrier × François Martin dit Langevin Montréal, her third marriage. A master mason from Anjou, already widowed with nine children. He died within the year. She outlived three husbands. read the page
1713 Jacques Pepin the younger × Elisabeth Dufresne Pointe-aux-Trembles. A real man on a different branch — logged because a compiled source merged him with his own brother. read the page
28 Sep 1713Michel Surprenant baptized — the joint that caps the findingLa Prairie. The weakest link in the whole fourth-cousin route. It survives only as a nineteenth-century clerk's transcription, spine-tabbed COPIE, and the La Prairie originals for that year are largely lost. Seven joints on the route are sighted; this one is not.read the page
1714 “Se voyant dans un âge caduque“ Seeing herself grown too old to keep her own house, Élisabeth gathers every child and grandchild at Longueuil and arranges her own care — a yearly pension against her land, and the right to live with whichever child she chooses, each taking a turn. read the page
2 Apr 1715 Élisabeth Gobinet dies Longueuil, seventy-six by the burial act's count. Her sons Laurent and Étienne stood at the graveside, neither able to sign for her any more than she had ever signed for herself. read the page
1717Daniel Cardinal × Marie-Madeleine GibeauNotre-Dame de Villemarie, with a dispensation of three banns. He was twenty-five; she was nineteen.read the page
22 May 1718Magdeleine Pepin × Jean-Baptiste Lanouay dit La DébaucheContrecœur. The surname Pepin begins its disappearance on this side.read the page
24 May 1719Marie-Madeleine Maillot Laroche × François DavignonChambly.read the page
27 Mar 1721 A granddaughter stands godmother, and the two families touch Marie-Josèphe Besset, Anne's own granddaughter, at Catherine Laporte's baptism in Chambly — twenty years before Catherine married Jacques Saurette. The earliest documented contact between these families anywhere: 166 years before the 1887 marriage, 191 before Holyoke. Closed to Proven when the duplicate greffe copy was finally read. read the page
1723Jean-Baptiste Oligny bornSaint-Mathurin-Léobazel, Corrèze, in the diocese of Tulle. The immigrant. The French parish registers have never been searched for this project.read the page
10 Jan 1724François Coulon Courraud × Marie-Anne BurelVarennes — the surname already drifted from Courault to Coulon.read the page
27 Oct 1725 Françoise Duval buried Upper town of Québec, about seventy-four, having outlived three husbands. read the page
22 Oct 1726 Catherine Fourrier buried Repentigny. The act gives her age as eighty-eight — thirteen years off Gagné's account, and left as an open conflict. Two sons stood at the graveside; one of them, Jean, shares his dead father's name exactly. read the page
29 Oct 1726Jean-Baptiste Bousquet × Marguerite PrevostRepentigny — eight days after his grandmother's burial, in the same parish. His father Pierre and brother Charles both stood witness.read the page
25 Feb 1727Séraphin Brien × Marie Ursule RegasRepentigny. The branch that runs to Marie-Anna Saurette.read the page
15 Nov 1728Marie-Thérèse Massé × Denis LaporteChambly.read the page
16 Jan 1729Marie-Marguerite Bousquet baptizedVarennes, her grandfather Pierre standing godfather.read the page
1729Joseph Beauvais × Jeanne DumaisLa Prairie. His first marriage — and the reason the second one, five years later, is a trap worth naming.read the page
18 May 1730Anne Paquet bornLa Prairie. Her own baptism names both parents.read the page
17 Nov 1731Charles Bousquet × Marie-Judith LebrodeurVarennes.read the page
1733Marie-Anne Brosseau × François LafailleLa Prairie.read the page
4 Jul 1733Anne Seigneur buried — and a child buried with herSt-Louis du Fort, Chambly, at eighty-four, named on the act only as “épouse du Bonhomme Jean Bessette“ though he had been dead twenty-six years. The same act records “un enfant avec elle, nommé Pierre — nom de père et de mère inconnue.“ Who he was, and why he shares her act, isn't established by anything this project holds.read the page
11 Jan 1734Joseph Beauvais × Marguerite LemieuxLa Prairie, styled veuf de Jeanne Dumais. The Beauvais descent runs through this second wife and not the first — a distinction the record only makes because both acts were pulled.read the page
1735 Charles Pepin × Laure-Catherine Rivard St-Pierre-les-Becquets. read the page
1738Joseph Pepin dit Laforce × Marguerite SéguinChambly. His father named on the same act as plain Pierre Pepin — the exact generation a dit-name arrives, caught in writing.read the page
12 Jan 1739Pierre Brien × Marie Magdeleine LozonRivière-des-Prairies.read the page
17 Apr 1740Jean-Baptiste Cazarant × Marie-Josette VigeantVerchères. Lanouay has become Cazarant — not a spelling variant, a complete substitution. The dit-name La Débauche is what holds the identification.read the page
7 Jan 1741Jacques Saurette × Catherine LaporteChambly, a Récollet acting as curé. Among the witnesses is a man recorded only as “Saint Jean Soldat.“ Family tradition holds Jacques was a soldier himself with the Compagnies franches; no service record has ever been sighted, and it stays Possible.read the page
24 Oct 1741Jean-Baptiste Saurette bornSt-Mathias-sur-Richelieu, nine months after his parents' January wedding. No baptismal act of his own has been sighted — the date follows from the marriage timing and the family sheet's count of him as the first child.read the page
1742Marie-Françoise Moitié born at Fort Saint-FrédéricA garrison on Lake Champlain where officers stood godparents to a corporal's children, because there was nobody else.read the page
14 Feb 1743François Cardinal × Marie-Marguerite PerasLa Prairie. The sighted act reads 1743; PRDH dates the same couple 1746. Neither has been chosen over the other — the act governs, the discrepancy stays logged.read the page
5 Nov 1743Marie-Marguerite Bousquet × Claude PhanefSt-Denis-sur-Richelieu, at fourteen. She died at twenty-seven. The surname drifts Phanef → Fanet → Faneuf across three generations — one family, not three.read the page
1743Marie-Josephe Benoit × Jacques Gauthier dit St-GermainGobinet's granddaughter, Benoit Livernois on her own baptism. By her daughter's 1763 act the Benoit is gone and she is plain “Marie Joseph Livernois.”read the page
1745 Alexis Pepin baptized read the page
18 Apr 1746François Davignon × Françoise MasséPointe-Olivier. Their daughter Marie-Agathe carries two ancestresses at once — Duval through her father, Ardion through her mother. Two women who crossed by different routes a century earlier, meeting in one person.read the page
1748Anne Coulon × François JourdainVarennes.read the page
17 Feb 1749Pierre Joseph Rainville × Marie-Angélique BetournéLa Prairie.read the page
19 May 1749Joseph Surprenant × Marie-Geneviève LamarreLa Prairie. Pierre and Anne's other son, and the head of the arm that runs down to Marie-Azilda.read the page
27 Jul 1750Anne Paquet × Jean-Baptiste BessetteChambly.read the page
27 Feb 1751Archange Surprenant baptizedLa Prairie. Michel's daughter — the woman this site carried for years under the wrong surname entirely, and whose recovered name made the 1887 kinship visible at all.read the page
1 Oct 1753Marie-Angélique Laporte × Jean-Baptiste Robert dit LafontaineChambly. Once dated only “c. 1760“ and graded Probable; now sighted directly — a joint shared with Marguerite Ardion's own chain.read the page
12 Nov 1753Marie-Charlotte Bousquet × Jean ArchambaultSt-Denis-sur-Richelieu. Her father stood witness with three of her brothers. An earlier version of this site closed this joint with the wrong Charles Bousquet entirely — corrected in public.read the page
6 Dec 1755“L'engagement d'une servante“ — not a betrothalHer father hires Marie-Françoise out at thirteen as a domestic servant for two and a half years, unpaid, to be compensated in clothing: six shirts, six kerchiefs, two petticoats, two pairs of stockings, one pair of French shoes. For years this family told it as a marriage bond to a lieutenant killed in the war. An English transcription rendered “engagement“ as “Bond,“ and a later account invented the fiancé's death to explain a gap the record never needed explained.read the page
18 Feb 1759Jean-Baptiste Oligny × Marie-Françoise MoitiéFort Saint-Frédéric, the contract drawn by the fort's chaplain since no notary was within reach. Only a PRDH abstract has been sighted, never the contract itself — and no parish act of the marriage survives at all.read the page
18 Feb 1759Two men named Jean, in one clauseThe fort chaplain's contract names the groom's parents — Jean Olignis, laboureur, and Jeannette Balle. It is the only document in existence that mentions either of them. It also enters father and son under the same given name, which is why every page on this site distinguishes them by force.read the page
15 Jan 1761Joseph Laforce × Théotiste OrionNicolet. The act names her parents as acadiens — an Acadian entry into this family entirely separate from the l'Acadie parish route elsewhere in these registers. Logged, not pursued.read the page
15 Jun 1761Marie-Louise Brien Desroches × Jean-Baptiste GabourySt-Ours, her father Séraphin standing witness.read the page
1763Marie-Catherine Gauthier × Jean-Baptiste Saurette dit LaroseChambly. Ninety-one years later, two of their own descendants would need a bishop's dispensation to marry each other.read the page
1765Marie Fanet × Guillaume LabergeSt-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, already motherless.read the page
6 Jan 1766Joseph Oligny dit Lauvergnat bornSt-Charles-sur-Richelieu. He never knew a version of his own name that didn't carry his father's error — the parish's mistaken guess at an accent from the Auvergne, when the family was from the Limousin, a region over.read the page
11 Nov 1766Jean-Baptiste Bessette bornChambly.read the page
11 Aug 1769Hyppolite Laforce the elder baptizedNicolet. For years this project read him and his son as one man.read the page
22 Jan 1770Marie-Agathe Davignon × Louis GabouriauChambly.read the page
18 Feb 1770Marie-Josephte Rainville × Ignace RoySt-Constant.read the page
1771Marie-Agnès Lafaille × Joseph BoireLa Prairie.read the page
9 Aug 1771Marie Louise Oligny baptized — the couple sighted together at lastChambly. “Née hier du légitime mariage de Jean-Baptiste Oligny dit Lauvergnat et de Françoise Moitié“ — the first original document anyone on this project has actually seen naming the two of them as married parents, twelve years in. Whether she is a known child or a genuinely new one isn't settled.read the page
26 Sep/Oct/Nov 1771Joseph Saurette bornSt-Joseph, Chambly. The act was found in 2026 and the month on it cannot be read. It has been read as 9bre, November, and as 7bre, September — and the register’s own act numbering points at 8bre, October, which neither reading proposed. The day, the year and the parents are settled; the month is not.read the page
1772Joseph Brien × Marie-Anne ChartierPointe-aux-Trembles.read the page
2 Mar 1772François Daniel Cardinal × Marie-Archange SurprenantSt-Constant. The act names him “fils de François Cardinal” — the sentence that proved two Cardinals were father and son, after this project had twice read past it and merged them into one man. It calls the bride Prégénaud, which is the clerk mangling Surprenant; her own baptism and a 1781 act both name her plainly.read the page
1772A Jean-Baptiste Bessette orphaned at sixRaised under a maternal uncle standing as tuteur — the family's habit of losing fathers young, repeating almost mechanically down this line.read the page
25 Jun 1774Marie-Catherine Gauthier diesBuried the next day at Chambly, not yet thirty.read the page
1 Nov 1774Catherine Laporte buriedChambly.read the page
23 Nov 1774An estate inventoried in a habitant's own kitchenJacques — recorded here as “Chorel dit Larose“ — sits down with a notary from Beloeil to inventory everything he and Catherine held in common. He, his son Michel, and both appointed estimators all sign with marks. Only the notary and two merchant witnesses could write.read the page
27 Nov 1774Three sons renounce their inheritanceFor 100 livres each, framed in the act's own language as a mark of their tendresse, respect, soumission toward their father.read the page
13 Feb 1775Jean-Baptiste Saurette × Marie-Catherine DejadonChambly, his second marriage. She died in 1782.read the page
3 Aug 1778Jacques Jourdain × Hélène DegresSt-Charles-sur-Richelieu, she already widowed once.read the page
15 Feb 1781Euphrasie Cardinal baptizedSt-Philippe. One generation further down the arm that reaches Philorum.read the page
11 Feb 1782Jacques Saurette × Marie-Josèphe Pellerin dit ChrétienChambly. He was seventy-seven or seventy-eight. No children; she died two and a half years later.read the page
16 Jun 1783Jean-Baptiste Saurette × Marie-Archange Renaud dit RainaudBeloeil, his third. Fourteen children documented across the three marriages, several dying in infancy — a pattern that runs through this family and repeats in his own son's generation.read the page
13 Oct 1783Jean-Baptiste Bessette × Marie-Josephe DumasChambly.read the page
1784Marie-Charlotte Robert × Joseph Morierread the page
24 Dec 1785Jean-Baptiste Saurette dies at forty-fourSt-Mathias-sur-Richelieu. Three sources give the 24th; one compiled sheet gives the 29th. Without a sighted burial act, the 24th holds and the 29th stays worth revisiting.read the page
21 Jul 1786Jérôme Bessette the elder bornl'Acadie. Father of the Jérôme who fathered Marie-Azilda, and so her own grandfather — not to be confused with his son of the same name. Two men, one name, thirty-six years apart.read the page
Jan 1787François Cazarans marriesSt-Charles-sur-Richelieu. The act is dated only to the month — whether the day is missing from the register or simply wasn't carried across hasn't been checked.read the page
22 Oct 1787Marie-Josèphe Laberge × Joseph SuprenantSt-Philippe.read the page
9 Oct 1790Jacques Saurette diesBuried the next day at l'Acadie — the same parish where, seven years later, his great-grandson Isaac Oligny would be born. About eighty-six.read the page
6 Nov 1792Joseph Oligny × Marie-Thérèse Gaboriau dit LapalmeChambly. Both fathers stood in the room; only one could sign his own name. The act doesn't say which — but if the 1848 literacy claim holds, it wasn't the Oligny.read the page
20 Jan 1794A marriage contract before notary GriséA week ahead of the wedding. Both of Joseph's parents were already dead; so was his bride's mother. She contracted with her father's authorization.read the page
27 Jan 1794Joseph Saurette × Marguerite Marotte dite LabontéSt-Mathias-sur-Richelieu. He came to his own wedding an orphan of both parents.read the page
17 Nov 1794François Gaboury × Magdelaine TétreauBeloeil.read the page
14 Nov 1796Joseph-François Roy × Suzanne BoireSt-Philippe.read the page
25 Apr 1797Isaac Oligny bornl'Acadie, baptized two days later. His godfather was his mother's brother Isaac Gabouriault, and he took his uncle's name. The sighted baptism later corrected his age at death from eighty-nine to eighty-seven.read the page
12 Dec 1798The first Joseph diesNot yet three years old.read the page
1799Euphrosine Cardinal × Constant Dupuisread the page
24 Sep 1801Jean-Baptiste Brien dit Desrochers × Charlotte ChalifouxRivière-des-Prairies.read the page
14 May 1803Marie Séraphile Dupuis baptizedSt-Constant. The last sighted joint before Julien Oligny's 1848 marriage closes the descent to Philorum.read the page
16 Jan 1804Antoine Jourdain × Marie Renaud dit Blanchard dit RainaudSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. She is recorded as “Charlotte Blanchard“ on her own son's later marriage act — one woman, a triple-compound surname split across two documents.read the page
15 Sep 1806Guillaume Saurette Sr. bornSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, and baptized the same day. His act was sighted in 2026 and writes the month out in full, which is why it is not in doubt.read the page
16 Nov 1807Jérôme Bessette the elder × Marie-Josephte Surprenantl'Acadie. Two of the eight ancestresses' chains — Fourrier's and Ardion's — run through this one marriage.read the page
8 Feb 1808The second Joseph dies at fourteenThe burial act names him son of “Joseph Sauret dit Larose” — yet another spelling of a surname that never held still.read the page
4 Aug 1809The third Joseph, who livedBorn at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. He married in 1831 and had twelve children of his own.read the page
10 Jan 1810Jean-Baptiste Oligny diesBuried two days later at St-Luc. His name had drifted across his own lifetime — Jean Olignis Mathurin in 1759, plain Jean Oligny in 1766, Jean Baptiste Oligny dit Lauvergnac by 1784. That last form stuck for six generations, and it names the wrong province.read the page
5 Feb 1810Marie-Josephte Casavant × Jean-Baptiste Soret dit LaroseBeloeil — the join onto the Saurette spine. Casavant is the fifth form of Pepin in five generations.read the page
Jun 1812War, and Isaac in the militiaHe turned fifteen the month the war began — too young for the Select Embodied Militia's ballot or the Voltigeurs, and only sixteen the following April. A local Sedentary Militia company is the better-supported reading. “At fourteen“ is the family's rounding, not the record's.read the page
25 Jul 1814Antoine Jourdain dit Lafrance × Françoise BanlierSt-Charles-sur-Richelieu. A widower of thirty-two marries a woman of twenty-seven whose parents are both dead. Sixteen years later she will marry the other grandfather of their granddaughter-in-law.read the page
1815 Laurent Pepin × Geneviève Houde read the page
1817Hyppolite Laforce the younger × Esther BurkeNotre-Dame de Montréal. The act's own filiation clause — “fils majeur de Hyppolite Laforce et de Marie Angélique Lafleur“ — is what finally split one man into two and added a generation this site had been missing.read the page
19 Nov 1818François Gaboury × Hélène Desprez dit LorangeSt-Jean-Baptiste.read the page
26 Feb 1821Isaac Oligny × Clotilde Beauvais dit St-GemmeSt-Constant. Her father was dead; her mother is recorded as living au Détroit — the Detroit River strait settlements, still substantially French and Catholic a century after the region changed hands. She married with a guardian standing in.read the page
13 Nov 1822Jérôme Bessette the younger bornSt-Constant. Marie-Azilda's father, and son — not grandson — of the Jérôme born at l'Acadie in 1786. He would marry an Oligny widow in 1869.read the page
10 Feb 1823Marguerite Beauvais × Guillaume BaudinSt-Constant. Clotilde’s sister marries; Isaac Oligny witnesses and still cannot sign. Her son and her granddaughter will marry Isaac’s granddaughter and son, in 1870 and 1881.read the page
15 May 1824Julien Oligny bornSt-Constant, baptized the next day. His godfather was Ignace Migou. Entered as cultivateur at his 1848 marriage and in the 1871 census, both at St-Rémi — and as journalier at a son’s baptism there in 1870.read the page
21 Mar 1825Joseph Saurette diesSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, buried two days later at fifty-three. Fifteen children born across the marriage; seven survived to inherit.read the page
19 Jul 1825Marguerite Marotte homologated as tutriceCourt-appointed guardian of her four minor children, with an estate inventory following. She was dead herself within two years.read the page
27 Aug 1825A Gédéon Thouin buried, aged three monthsMascouche. Son of Jean-Baptiste Thouin, cultivateur, and Marie Allard — the parents Octave Thouin dit Roch’s 1840 marriage act names, which would make him Octave’s brother and put the name Gideon in the family twenty-seven years before Octave’s son received it. Probable: no act yet joins the 1825 child to the 1840 groom.read the page
31 Jul 1826Joseph Roy × Storophile DupuisSt-Constant. One marriage carrying Doucinet through the bride and Gobinet through the groom — the two ancestresses meeting a generation before either reaches an Oligny.read the page
16 Jan 1827Guillaume Saurette Sr. × Apolline ArchambaultSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. The act marks him mineur — twenty years old, marrying a bride of twenty-one whose own father was already dead.read the page
30 Apr 1827Marguerite Marotte buriedSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. The act enters her only as “la veuve Joseph Sauret“ — not misspelled, not illegible. Simply not given.read the page
4 Sep 1827Céleste Sorette signs, at fourteenSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, at her sister Sophie’s wedding — one of eight hands, two days after her fourteenth birthday. The earliest of her four signatures, three years before her own marriage and fifty before her last.read the page
13 Nov 1827Guillaume Saurette Jr. bornTen months after his parents’ wedding, and baptized the next day. This site gave the 14th until his act was sighted in 2026 — that was the day he was carried to the church. One census return drifts as far as 1820.read the page
14 Oct 1828Marie-Françoise Moitié diesNapierville, eighteen years after her husband.read the page
21 Sep 1830Jean-Baptiste Soret dit Larose × Françoise BanlierSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. She is Antoine Jourdain’s widow; he is Céleste’s father. One woman has now married both of Elmire Jourdain’s grandfathers — and seven weeks to the day after this, their children marry each other.read the page
9 Nov 1830Marguerite Soret × Jean-Baptiste Robert — the wedding before Céleste’sSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, act M.21, written into the register immediately above M.22. Guillaume Saurette Sr. and his brother Charles witness their sister’s marriage; she marries as an orphan, and nobody present could sign. Minutes later Céleste signed hers alone.read the page
9 Nov 1830Jean-Baptiste Jourdain × Céleste Sorel dite LaroseSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. The bride is already a Saurette — which is why their daughter would need a bishop's dispensation to marry one.read the page
17 Sep 1832Marie-Hedwige Laforce bornNotre-Dame de Montréal, baptized the next day, née hier. This entry read 17 October until September 2026; the month came from a compiled source, and her own baptismal act corrects it.read the page
23 Apr 1835Sophie Dégré dies, nine months marriedSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, buried two days later, about twenty-seven years old. She was Désiré Morier’s second wife; he remarried five months later, and his third wife bore Marie-Anna’s grandfather. The act gives no cause of death, and no child of Sophie’s is recorded anywhere.read the page
5 Oct 1835Désiré Morier × Zoé Blanchardread the page
4 Feb 1837Twins born — Alexandre and VirginieAlexandre died that August. Virginie lived to 1926.read the page
25 Feb 1837Apolline dies, twenty-one days after bearing twinsBuried on the 27th, the officiant her own double second cousin — a young priest ordained that January, in his first posting. A childbirth death: the actuarial reality of rural Quebec obstetrics, not a particular misfortune.read the page
12 Jun 1838Guillaume Sr. × Zoé HaldeHis second marriage. It lasted ten months.read the page
4 Nov 1838“So as they cannot be used to fight against us“Isaac summons the magistrate John Robinson twice in one evening, demanding he surrender his arms. Six hundred men mustered in the village, an oath sworn to conquer or die, Napierville and Beauharnois already taken, and a republic on the American model intended.read the page
10 Nov 1838Defeat at NapiervilleIsaac signs a petition with seventeen other men offering to surrender and swear allegiance — offered, Robinson wrote, only once they knew the fight was lost. Isaac fled to the United States.read the page
31 Dec 1838“C'était mon frère Isaac Oligny qui me l'a fait parvenir“Bénoni Oligny, examined under oath, names his own brother as the man who carried Robert Nelson's order to him. This one sentence is what proves the rebel Isaac is this family's Isaac — not a matching name and a plausible age.read the page
18–22 Jan 1839Isaac taken into custody at MontrealOne to five days after Robinson swore his deposition. Released on bail shortly after. It's plausible the deposition itself is what caught him.read the page
6 Feb 1839Appolonie Finney petitions for her husbandTravelling repeatedly from St-Rémi to Montreal through that winter, gathering affidavits from neighbours who swore Bénoni was “patriote... que de nom et non de coeur.“ None of that defence speaks for Isaac.read the page
9 Apr 1839Vitaline bornThe only child of the second marriage. She lived to 1929.read the page
24 Apr 1839Zoé Halde dies, fifteen days after giving birthTwenty-six months after Apolline. Two wives dead of childbirth in a little over two years — the same mechanism this site documents across other generations, structural rather than a run of bad luck.read the page
15 Oct 1839Guillaume Sr. × Julie PoirierFive months and nineteen days after burying Zoé. He was thirty-two, with a newborn daughter and a farm. This marriage lasted twenty years.read the page
6 Oct 1840Christine Brien dit Desrochers × Octave Thouin dit RochMascouche. The surname that becomes Rock arrives here, by a woman marrying into it.read the page
21 Feb 1843Narcisse Gaboury × Justine Ayet dit MaloSt-Damase.read the page
9 Nov 1847Elmire Jourdain signs her aunt's marriage actSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. Nine hands on the page at Julienne Saurette's wedding, and two of them are Elmire's and her mother Céleste's. Elmire was a child — eleven or thirteen, the records disagree — and would not marry for another seven years. The earliest sample of her handwriting the project holds.read the page
1848 Cécile Pepin × Élie Tousignant read the page
16 Apr 1844Isaac Oligny signs his daughter’s marriage actSt-Rémi, at Clothilde’s wedding to Adolphe Dugas. Four Olignys sign the page. Isaac had declared he could not sign at his own wedding in 1821, aged twenty-three; here he is forty-six and writing his name. The acts give the two ends and nothing between them — when and how he learned is undocumented.read the page
6 Mar 1848Julien Oligny × Félicité Roy dit LapenséeSt-Rémi. The groom signed; the four witnesses — two friends of his, two of the bride’s — and the bride could not. No Oligny witnessed it. He is not the earliest literate Oligny on this line: his father Isaac signed four years earlier, at Clothilde’s wedding — and so did he.read the page
24 Dec 1852Gédéon Noël Thouin dit Roch baptizedMascouche. In Massachusetts he becomes Gideon Rock Sr.read the page
24 Dec 1852Named for his godfatherGédéon Noël Thouin dit Roch takes his name from Gidéon Magnon, who stood godfather. Until September 2026 this entry added “not for family” — but a Gédéon Thouin, very probably Octave’s infant brother, had died in the household in 1825. Why the name was given, no act says.read the page
27 Feb 1854Guillaume Saurette Jr. × Elmire Jourdain-LafranceA dispensation du troisième au quatrième degré, from the Bishop of Saint-Hyacinthe. The bride's mother was already a Saurette. Second cousins once removed, marrying back into the family's own root two generations after it scattered.read the page
1859Jean-Baptiste Amédée dies at twoThe first of three of Guillaume and Elmire's twelve children not to survive childhood.read the page
21 Feb 1856Marie-Thérèse Gaboriau dies at eighty-sixBuried at St-Rémi the next day, entered as épouse de feu Joseph Oligny — which is how this project knows her husband was already dead. Isaac's mother. The site said for a long time that no death record for either of them had been found; hers had been on file throughout.read the page
2 Mar 1860Delphine Oligny dies at sixAt a hospice in Montréal. A daughter unknown to this project entirely until a decade-long search for her mother's death turned her up instead. The circumstances aren't established by the act.read the page
6 Oct 1857Vitaline Saurette × Joseph RobertShe is eighteen, and marries with her father’s consent. The couple leave for L’Ange-Gardien, where both their first children are baptized — the second Saurette household to turn up in that parish.read the page
27 Aug 1861Guillaume Sr. × Sophie RoyHis fourth marriage, both of them past forty, sixteen months after Julie's death. No children — a companionate late-life union, unlike the first three in shape. She outlived him by fourteen years.read the page
27 Dec 1861Marie-Ezilda Gaboury × Isaac MorierSt-Hyacinthe.read the page
24 Nov 1862Alida Morier born — baptized Marie-Justine-AlidaSt-Damase, christened the next day. Both godparents were her own grandparents, one from each side — and the godmother was Justine Ayet dit Malo, her mother's mother, holding the child who had just been given her name. The act enters the family as Morières, a third spelling after Morier and Moriez. She was Alida in every American record of her life, as her husband was Alméric and not Josué-Armorique.read the page
13 Apr 1864Alméric Saurette born — baptized Josué-ArmoriqueSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. He was called Alméric his whole life. The 1881 census records him as “Ulderic“ — an enumerator's ear catching a rough echo of the baptismal name nobody in the family actually used.read the page
2 Jan 1868Philorum Oligny bornMontréal, baptized three months later at Notre-Dame.read the page
30 Aug 1869Marie-Hedwige Laforce × Jérôme Bessette the youngerSt-Rémi, both widowed. She had buried Hubert Oligny — Isaac's own son. Her daughter would marry back into the same family eighteen years later.read the page
1869 Marie-Caroline Tousignant × Zéphirin Perreault St-Pierre-les-Becquets. read the page
17 Jan 1870Hazilda Oligny × Théophile BeaudinSt-Rémi, with a consanguinity dispensation, second-to-third degree: Théophile was the son of her grandmother Clotilde’s sister Marguerite. Eleven years before her own father married into the same family, at the same degree. Her grandfather Isaac witnessed, at seventy-two, and signed; so did she.read the page
1 Feb 1870Hédwige Oligny × Wilbrode LerouxSt-Rémi, two weeks after her sister. She signed her own name.read the page
24 Jun 1870Marie-Azilda Bessette bornSt-Rémi. Théophile Oligny — very likely Philorum's own brother — stood godfather at her baptism, seventeen years before she married into that family in fact.read the page
1871“Fillerome,“ age four, in the censusThe earliest contemporary record of Philorum that exists anywhere in this project — everything before rests on his own later self-reports. Five more children surface in the same household, none previously on any family sheet.read the page
1871 Joseph-Arsène Perreault baptized St-Pierre-les-Becquets — the parish Léonida's own 1916 marriage record independently names as her father's birthplace. read the page
1873Hedwige Laforce diesMarie-Azilda was three.read the page
1875A twenty-dollar gratuity, sixty years on“Oligny-Hauvergnac, Isaac, 77, S.-R.-de-Napierville, 1er Bataillon“ — his War of 1812 service confirmed on a survivors' roll. The spelling is a fourth variant of a dit-name that already named the wrong province.read the page
1876Two more children lost in one yearMarie-Antoinette at ten, and Évelina at eleven weeks.read the page
24 Sep 1877Joseph Beaudry × Rose-Anne SauretteSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville. Guillaume Sr. attends at seventy-one, named on the act as grand-père de l'épouse — the only dated appearance the record gives him between 1861 and his death. Both of the bride's grandfathers witness it. Three of Guillaume Jr. and Elmire's daughters sign: Rozana, Dorila and Amanda. So does Céleste, the third of four times across fifty years. The bride’s own father does not — he could not write his name.read the page
24 Dec 1881Julien Oligny × Ernestine BeaudinSt-Rémi, his son Adolphe standing witness — with a consanguinity dispensation, second-to-third degree. She was already his blood kin: his aunt Marguerite Beauvais's granddaughter, a first cousin once removed. The same degree as his daughter Hazilda's marriage to Marguerite's son in 1870 — the two tightest consanguinity dispensations on either of the two lines this site follows, jointly (a first-cousin dispensation at Troy in 1854 is tighter still, but it sits on the Rock name line rather than on this family's blood).read the page
6 Jan 1882Ernestine dies, thirteen days marriedBuried twenty miles from St-Rémi at St-Romain, Huntingdon County. She was about twenty-six; Julien was in his late fifties.read the page
30 Jan 1882Alfred Saurette dies at twenty-fourThe first of three deaths in this family inside twelve weeks.read the page
22 Mar 1882Guillaume Saurette Sr. diesSeventy-five, in the parish where he had married four times and buried three wives. His daughter Julie died a month later, at thirty.read the page
11 Sep 1884Isaac Oligny buriedBack in his birth parish, l'Acadie, entered as a bourgeois — eighty-seven years old, not eighty-nine. A Crown militiaman who carried a rebel's order against that same Crown, and came home to an ordinary rest of a life, remembered as neither.read the page
7 June 1887Philorum Oligny × Marie-Azilda BessetteNotre-Dame de Montréal, with a dispensation of two banns. No pregnancy on record explains the hurry, and the record doesn't say what did. Her mother had already been married to Philorum's own uncle — not two strangers meeting, but a family marrying its own members again.read the page
13 Sep 1887Alméric Saurette × Alida MorierSt-Damase. The act gives the 13th; an earlier family account circulated the 3rd, likely a transposition. Seven children followed, all born in Quebec.read the page
24 Jun 1888Marie Azilda Romilda Saurette bornAlméric and Alida’s eldest, baptized two days later. Both godparents are her own maternal grandparents, Isaac Morier and Marie-Azilda Gaboury, and both signed. A compiled sheet had called her Donalda.read the page
9 Jun 1889Joseph Philorum Oligny bornSt-Rémi, Québec.read the page
1 Oct 1890Marie-Anna Saurette bornSt-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, third of seven children.read the page
23 Dec 1890Gideon Joseph Rock bornHolyoke. His own birth registration names his father a barber named Gideon and his mother Oralie (Racicot) — closing the last joint on the Desbordes line to him.read the page
1890 Joseph-Arsène Perreault × Palmyre Grégoire Biddeford, Maine. read the page
Jan 1891A birth registration closes the whole Desbordes structureHolyoke No. 1537 names Gideon Joseph's father as Gideon, barber, and his mother as Oralie (Racicot) — given name, trade and maiden name all matching exactly. For years the paternity was family story with no document behind it; this closed the last open joint in a nine-generation chain.read the page
15 Sep 1891Joseph crosses at St. Albans, aged twoBy the Central Vermont Railroad with his parents, settling at Holyoke. He would restate this crossing himself, under oath, twenty-three years later.read the page
~24 Oct 1891Julien Oligny diesBuried two days later at St-Rémi.read the page
1891Philorum and Marie-Azilda cross into the United StatesThrough St. Albans, Vermont, with an infant son who would marry Marie-Anna Saurette twenty-one years later.read the page
15 May 1892Fortunat Saurette × Regina Dame — declared and dispensedNotre-Dame du Perpétuel-Secours, Holyoke, “related to the 3rd degree of consanguinity” on the face of the entry — witnesses Treffle Saurette and Elzear Dame. Fortunat was Marie-Anna's own cousin, and this is the same parish that would marry her twenty years later with no such note.read the page
Aug 1893A cousin enters the Congrégation de Sainte-CroixJoseph-Adolphe Saurette takes the name Frère Philippe, later superior of the order's own formation house, and spends his last years at the Oratoire Saint-Joseph advocating the beatification of Frère André. Two cousins, two directions out of the same parish: one to the mills of Chicopee, one into the Church.read the page
13 Jun 1894 Marie-Léonida Perreault born Biddeford, Maine. Joseph Philorum Oligny's second wife, and the third line Jeanne Mechin reaches him by. read the page
1896Gédéon Rock Sr. dies of tuberculosisHolyoke, at forty-three — leaving Aurélie a widow at thirty-seven with a five-year-old and a six-year-old. His stated age drifts low every time it was ever recorded, in two countries, twenty-five years apart, the error growing rather than shrinking.read the page
1900The family hidden under “Onley“The census taker's spelling is why Philorum's own household went unfound for years. Seven children born to the couple by this count; five still living.read the page
8 Dec 1907The Saurettes cross at Swanton, VermontBy the Central Vermont Railroad, settling at Holyoke. The manifest names the brother left behind in St-Jean-Baptiste. Marie-Anna crossed with them at seventeen — not around 1908, as an earlier account had it, but on this date.read the page
7 Mar 1909Elmire Jourdain-Lafrance diesSte-Brigide d'Iberville.read the page
1910Évangéline at the State Industrial School for GirlsLancaster, Massachusetts, at fifteen — committed on 10 September 1908, aged thirteen, on the statutory ground of stubbornness. In Massachusetts that was a status offence, chargeable against a minor for disobedience to a parent or guardian: it names the section of the statute, not what she did. The conduct behind the complaint is in no record this project holds.read the page
1911Guillaume Jr. leaves Rouville at eighty-threeRecorded as a boarder next door to his son Philippe at Ste-Brigide, away at last from the parish where he was born, married, and raised twelve children. This entry used to call it the first time in his life the record placed him anywhere else — it wasn't. He and Elmire were in the United States in 1873; see Corrections.read the page
10 Mar 1921Guillaume Saurette Jr. dies at ninety-threeMontréal, buried at Cimetière de l'Est — far in both distance and years from the Rouville parish that had held every earlier generation. The longest-lived man in this line by a wide margin.read the page
1921Aurélie Racicot diesHer son Gideon Joseph was likely the informant, giving her age to the day. This certificate gives her birthplace as New York against Canada on her son's birth registration — a conflict since settled from a third record, his 1890 baptism, which gives her as “from Troy NY.”read the page
16 Jan 1922Alméric files to naturalizeHampden County Superior Court. Whether he ever completed the process isn't settled by anything in hand.read the page
15 Jan 1927Alméric Saurette diesWillimansett, at sixty-two years, nine months and two days. The certificate is a study in an informant's memory under stress: it renders him “Almeric Laurette,“ his wife “Florence Maurier,“ and his mother by his mother-in-law's name instead.read the page
27 Feb 1933Alida Morier diesChicopee, a widow since 1927.read the page
12 Nov 1945Marie-Azilda Bessette diesLowell General Hospital. Buried under a third spelling of her own surname: the cemetery record reads “Oligny Exilda (Besette).“ Her recorded age drifts by two years whenever someone else is answering for her.read the page
1954Philorum Oligny diesLowell; buried at St. Joseph's Cemetery, East Chelmsford, in the plot that holds two of his children. A compiled ahnentafel gives 30 October; the family's own telling gave November. Neither rests on a sighted death record.read the page
a century later A machine raises the question first A MacFamilyTree kinship report for Roland — Joseph and Marie-Anna's own son — cross-lists his parents as cousins at two different degrees. No evidence given, no reasoning shown. Checked by hand, generation by generation, it turned out to be right. read the page
30 May 1912 · Holyoke, Massachusetts

The two lines meet.

Eight women are ancestors of both the bride and the groom. Neither family had any idea. From here the record runs as one household — and then, after 1922, as two again.

30 May 1912Joseph Philorum Oligny × Marie-Anna SauretteNotre-Dame du Perpétuel-Secours, Holyoke, solemnised by Rev. Jos. Marchand; witnesses Victor Leclerc — a name and nothing else — and Alméric Saurette, the bride's own father. He was twenty-two, a casemaker; she was twenty-one, a mill operative. Both gave Canada as their birthplace. Neither had any idea they were already cousins twice over.read the page
30 May 1912A mill operative, in her own rightMarie-Anna's occupation on the marriage certificate is the first industrial occupation recorded for a woman anywhere on either family's direct line, in either country, in three hundred years. Five years off the boat, earning her own wages.read the page
30 Apr 1913Irene bornHolyoke, at 75 Front Street — and baptized the same day as Marie Anne Alida, her mother's name and her grandmother's, with Alméric Saurette and Alida Morier standing as her sponsors. Irene is a footnote in the parish register, not a baptismal name.read the page
11 Mar 1914Joseph swears off allegiance to George VHis Declaration of Intention at twenty-four, two years into the marriage and seven before the divorce — and the only record anywhere that describes him physically: five feet seven and a half, 141 pounds, black hair, brown eyes, dark complexion, no distinguishing marks.read the page
19 Nov 1915Roland born75 Front Street, Holyoke. Entered on the civil register as Roland Lawrence Oligny — a name that appears in full nowhere else in his life.read the page
20 Nov 1915Roland baptized, and named for his godfatherNotre-Dame du Perpétuel-Secours, the day after his birth: Joseph Roland, footnoted Alberic, sponsored by his uncle Albéric Saurette and Florence Trudeau. Carried on this site until August 2026 as Joseph Rolland Albini — the spelling on the parish's own extract, against Alberic in its published répertoire; this site follows the godfather's name.read the page
1915 & 1917Boarding, not keeping a householdHolyoke directories place Joseph rooming in both years — suggestive of separation, but not proof. A man can be listed at a work lodging while his family lives elsewhere.read the page
17–27 Jul 1916Petition for separate support — not divorceHampden County Probate Court, case 39079, docket 33 p. 116. Signed on the 17th — the day before Joseph was convicted of assaulting her — and filed on the 27th, nine days after. A distinct remedy that orders money and settles custody without dissolving a marriage. The space for detailed grounds was left blank, and no decree is recorded against the docket. This site called it a divorce filing for years, and dated it to April; it was neither.read the page
18 Jul 1916Joseph convicted of assaulting his wifeThree months. Two days later a newspaper reported Marie-Anna would sue. She was twenty-five, with a three-year-old and an eight-month-old.read the page
20 Jul 1916“Will now sue for divorce with separate support”Her stated intention, in the newspaper, two days after the conviction — and three days after she had already signed a petition for separate support alone. What she filed a week later was the second thing, not the first.read the page
17 Aug 1916Léonida Perreault × Wilfrid TalbotBiddeford, Maine. Her first marriage, six years before Joseph's own first ended.read the page
31 Oct 1918Marie-Rose Valeria Talbot dies an infantIn the influenza pandemic.read the page
2 Nov 1918Wilfrid Talbot dies, two days after his daughterBronchopneumonia with influenza contributing — nine days before the Armistice. Léonida was left widowed and pregnant.read the page
25 Feb 1919A son named for the father he would never meetWilfrid John Raymond Talbot, born four months after Wilfrid's death. Very likely the Raymond who appears throughout the rest of this family's record — though no single document states the equivalence outright.read the page
Apr 1919Marie Lucile Doris — fourteen daysBorn 3 April, died the 17th of broncho-pneumonia, buried at Notre-Dame Cemetery, South Hadley Falls. She is the one child of this marriage absent from the Perpetual Help register — which records home and hospital baptisms explicitly, so her absence is a change of parish rather than a gap. The household had moved to 66 High Street that April.read the page
Jan 1920The census finds the family wholeJoseph, Anna, Irene at six, Roland at four, one Holyoke household — four years after the petition, eight months after burying a daughter.read the page
18 Mar 1921Divorce libelledHampden Superior Court, docket 1673 — cruelty and “gross and confirmed habits of intoxication,“ alleging conduct as recent as August 1920. A separate action from 1916, five years on, on different grounds. Stapleton & Stapleton acted for her both times.read the page
5 Jul 1921Decree nisiCustody of Irene and Roland awarded to Marie-Anna outright. The printed line offering to restore her maiden name is struck through and left blank.read the page
5 Jan 1922The divorce becomes absoluteCertified to the day by the clerk of the Superior Court at Springfield — on a document that survives only because Marie-Anna had to produce it in New York to remarry. The docket jacket’s “Finished February 6, 1922” is the case being cleared a month later, not the decree taking effect. Nearly ten years after the wedding.read the page
27 Apr 1922Marie-Anna × Gideon RockThe Municipal Building, Borough of Manhattan — a civil ceremony before J. J. McCormick, Deputy City Clerk, witnessed by F. E. Waterman and Thos. J. Douglas. Sixteen weeks after the decree. Not a parish marriage: Joseph was alive, and the Church would not remarry a divorced Catholic. She is entered under Oligny, exactly as the decree left her. Licence file no. 10891 — the affidavit, the licence and the officiant’s return, sighted.read the page
1929Richard Ernest Rock bornMarie-Anna's son by Gideon — and, decades on, easily confused with Roland's own son Richard.read the page
Apr 1930Step-children, still OlignyThe Chicopee census records Roland at fourteen and Irene at sixteen in the Rock household, under their birth surname. Whoever answered got both fatherhoods exactly right — Canada-French for one pair, Massachusetts for the other.read the page
Apr 1930Joseph recorded naturalizedStill a British subject on his 1917 draft card, still “Alien“ on the January 1920 census. The exact date the status changed has never been pinned down.read the page
27 May 1932Lucille born, LowellJoseph's daughter by Léonida — and the latest possible bound on a marriage whose own record is still unfound.read the page
Dec 1936Roland names his father to the governmentApplying for a Social Security number, already using Rock as an alias against a legal name still Oligny — and naming his father, on that federal form, as Philorum Oligny. The last document in which he claims Joseph.read the page
22 Mar 1937“...for the reason that his father died shortly after his birth“Roland petitions to change his name legally, and swears something false to a probate judge. Joseph was alive in Lowell that week and lived another twenty-nine years. Three months earlier he had named that same father on a federal form.read the page
23 Apr 1937The name change is allowedUnopposed, published three weeks running. He signed the petition “Roland Oligny“ — the last time that name appears on anything he wrote.read the page
22 Feb 1938Roland × Helena WilliamsSkinner Memorial Chapel, Holyoke. Line 11 of the certificate asks for the groom's father. It reads: Gideon.read the page
Apr 1940Two doors down from his motherRoland at twenty-four on Franklin Street, an elevator operator in the tissue mills, fifty-two weeks that year for $992. At number 307: Gideon, Anna, Donald, Richard, and Irene back under her mother's roof with a five-year-old son.read the page
Oct 1940“Mrs. Helena Rock — wife“His draft card asks for the person who will always know where he is. This is what he wrote.read the page
1940Joseph gives his birthplace as MassachusettsOn a census he answered himself — plainly wrong against his own 1889 baptismal record, and never explained. His ex-wife's household had given the right answer a decade earlier, unprompted.read the page
29 Mar 1944Roland enters the ArmyFort Devens, twenty-eight. Supply Clerk; no battles, no decorations, no wounds. Discharged eight months later on a dependency provision. His civilian trade had been repairing Lee-Enfield rifles — a Commonwealth weapon, so his own employer was likely already on an Allied contract.read the page
6 Dec 1944Discharged on a dependency provisionEight months in. The same packet gives the only physical description of Roland anywhere in this project: blue eyes, brown hair, medium complexion, five feet nine and a half.read the page
autumn 1947A photograph in Irene's kitchen672 High Street. He sits in a wooden chair in a full suit and tie while his sister, heavily pregnant, stands beside him in a housedress. The clothes alone tell you he was visiting.read the page
1950“Father: born in the United States“Roland falls on a census sample line. The household answers US for his father — Joseph was Canada-born and living — and Canada for his mother, which is right. Not a decree. Just what the house said.read the page
1950Barber, barber shopGideon's own trade on the census and again in his obituary — a trade he can barely have watched his father practise, having lost him at five.read the page
20 Oct 1961Gideon Rock diesHolyoke Soldiers Home, aged seventy. His obituary names Roland, Donald and Richard as his sons, Irene as his daughter — no distinction drawn, thirty-one years after a census called two of them step-children.read the page
c. 1964Fifty years in the mills end in retirementParsons Paper to Crocker Manufacturing to Saco-Lowell Shops to the Boott Mills — millwright, machinist, millwright again.read the page
Oct 1965Marie-Anna's seventy-fifth birthdayRoland at forty-nine beside his mother, Irene on her other side, Donald and Richard standing behind. The family's own caption calls them her four children.read the page
15 Mar 1966Joseph Philorum Oligny diesLowell — the date on the city clerk's record of death; 17 March, carried here until September 2026, is the date of record, two days later. His obituary, printed two days later, says “died Tuesday” and corroborates the day. Asked for his survivors, his household named “Roland Oligney of Holyoke” among his sons — the name Roland had not borne since 1937 — which is evidence of what the household called him and of nothing more.read the page
20 Oct 1968Léonida diesLowell, at seventy-four. Her obituary is what finally gave this project her birthplace, her father's name, and a son surnamed Talbot nobody had traced.read the page
13 May 1979Marie-Anna diesHolyoke, outliving Gideon by seventeen and a half years. Her death certificate names her Anna M. Saurette Rock. She had survived both husbands she'd had by law.read the page
29 Oct 1998Roland diesChicopee, at eighty-two, three weeks short of his eighty-third birthday. Quality control inspector for thirty-three years. The one person both lines and all three marriages run through — and the last this site follows.read the page

This page is assembled from the dated events already documented elsewhere on this site; every entry carries the grade its own page gives it, and links back to the full account. Where a date is bracketed, incomplete, or disputed between two sources, it appears here the way it appears there — hedged, not tidied.