Men And Women Of Renown My Maternal Ancestry [Paperback]

Genevieve Massignon, author of Les Parlers Fran?ais dAcadie, sought to establish the origins of the French Acadian people based on linguistics, making the argument, in 1961, that many Acadians came from the Poitou region, south of Loudun, mainly because they were still speaking the old language, one rich and thick of Rabelais and Montaigne. She was also able to locate a number of records from the Poitou area that bore many of the same surnames found in early Acadie. Some of the villages in this area include Martaize, Aulnay, and La Chauss?e. As a young man, Vincent Breau had been recruited as an agricultural worker for the fledging French colony of Acadie (possibly from the Poitou region of France). He settled at Port Royal (present day Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia). Several years after arrival, he married Marie Bourg, a daughter of another colonist from the same region in France. Never would I have thought, when I first began researching the Breau surname, that I would have ended up locating Catherine (de) Baillon, a 9th great grandmother, who, in turn would help me identify Charlemagne as a long lost ancestor. Many people of French-Canadian ancestry are able to trace their ancestry back to the Middle Ages, all courtesy of this woman. Catherine was born in Layes, near Montfort-LAmaury in the Chevreuse Valley, ?le-de-France, in 1645. Her parents, Alphonse de Baillon and Louise de Marle, were members of the minor French nobility. Coming to New France around 1669, as a daughter of the King, or Fille du Roi (meaning an immigrant bride that royal officials would send over to the colony to marry a settler), she married Jacques Miville dit Desch?nes on November 12, 1669 at Qu?bec City. Jacques Gu?ret dit Dumont, born 1665, son of Ren? Gu?ret and Madeleine Vigoureaux, was my 7th great grandfather. Born in the Parish of Canchy, in Normandy, by 1691 he had immigrated to Nouvelle-France (present day Qu?bec) by way of La Rochelle. Three years later, on April 19, 1694, he lã-