Étienne and Jean Gellineau
(Gelinas)
By Thomas J. Laforest
When genealogist Drouin states that all French Canadian families have Zacharie Cloutier as a common ancestor, he is not completely accurate. We may claim that Etienne Gellineau and his son Jean are the progenitors of nearly all the families of Trois-Rivieres who have original ancestors.
We are unable to disassociate the name of Etienne from that of his son Jean. Until quite recently, we still wondered about their origin, even though we knew that the father was married about 1645 in the church of Saint-Eutrope in Saintes. His bride was Huguette Robert, the mother of Jean. Heretofore, we believed that the archives of this town in Saintonge (Charente0Maritime) were destroyed in the great fire of 1870 and therefore all traces of the origins of this family were irremediably erased. Surely this would have been the case were it not for the insight and tenacity of a descendant of this family.
ELIE THE JEW
According to notes made at the Bibliothque de Saintes, there lived a man called "Elie the Jew" in the sixteenth century whose name was recorded in the religious registries under the primitive form of "Juiellineau" and "Jullineau" to indicate his non-Christian origin. "Juillineau" was the surname adopted by Olivier, son of Elie, about 1558. He married Louyse Roger about 1584 under this name. At least three children were born from this union: Marie, Olivier and Joseph. It was this Joseph who took a wife at Saint-Eutrope about 1623. His wife, Madeleine Morrison, gave birth to Etienne (our ancestor), Louise and Marguerite. Madeleine died shortly after bringing her last child into the world and husband Joseph lost no time in remarrying. This time to a Catholic girl from Saintonge. She was named Huguette Preveraud, whose property "Portail" was situated near the church at Gonds. It was there that Joseph raised his second family, leaving the children from Madeleine in the care of her parents.
SERGE-WEAVER AND MASTER CARPENTER
We do not know under what circumstances Huguette Robert died. She might have been one of the numerous victims of La Fronde, a civil war that devastated France in the mid-seventeenth century, or quite simply, she might not have survived the birth of her last child, as so often happened in those days. In this year of 1658, faced with a future more and more uncertain, Etienne decided to emigrate. On 11 May he was at La Rochelle, in the office of notary Jacques Savin, in the presence of the merchant Arnault Pere, the representative of Squire Pierre Boucher, Sieur de Grosbois, living in Trois-Riviers in New France. There Pere received the solemn commitment
"of Estienne Gellineau, sargier and master carpenter, native of Saint-Vivien de Pons, and of Jean Gellineau, his son presently living at Tasdon, near this said town on the other side…"
As Pere was at the point of embarking, Etienne promised, for himself and for his son, to live in the house of the Sieur de Grosbois and to serve him for three consecutive years. He agreed to put his knowledge to the profit of Boucher, to bear him honor and respect as a true and legitimate servant, to obey him in all things lawful and reasonable, all for the sum of one hundred eight silver livres for each of the three years. The commitment anticipated the return to France of the Gellineaux at the expense of the employer. The act was drawn up in the presence of clerks Jean and Pierre Lezeaux. Jean stated that he did not know how to write his name.
THE SETTLEMENT AT CAP-DE-LA-MADELEINE
Etienne and Jean Gelineau must have worked in the domain of Sainte-Marie, an area of 200 arpents, which Boucher owned at the Cap, and to which the former governor of Trois-Rivieres had just retired. Concerning this subject, historian Raymond Douville makes the following observation:
"We realize, in reading the minutes of the notaries of the time and particularly those of Claude Herlin, how much importance Pierre Boucher attached to the safety of the inhabitants who agreed to become his tenant farmers. He built redoubts, bastions and palisades. Boucher continued to protect his people even in spite of themselves, because the danger of Iroquois attacks remained, especially in 1658 and 1659. The inhabitants of the Cap were laying in supplies, when on 27 April 1660, the Jesuit superior of the missions, Father Jerome Lallemant, noted the great expense which Sieur Boucher undertook for the support of all of Cap-de-la-Madeleine against the Iroquois and the expenses which he had made to settle there."
At the end of their period of indenture, Etienne and Jean decided to remain in the colony, where they found themselves, without a doubt, more useful than they would be in their native country, on 17 March 1661, the name of Etienne was mentioned in an act by notary Herlin, while that of Jean appeared in the minutes of Louis Laurent de Portail on 24 August 1662. By the following 13 September, The Gellineaux were settled at the Cap where father Claude Allouez, in the name of the Jesuit Seigneures, ceded to Etienne a piece of land with two arpents in frontage, near the properties of Etienne Pepin de Lafond and Rene Houray. By this act, the missionary acknowledged:
"to have given and ceded title of cens and rentes, payable each year on the feast day of Saint-Martin, to Etienne Gelinat presently living in this place for him, his heirs and trustees, the area of one arpent seven perches of frontal land along the main road which marks the depth, situated in the said seigneurie of Cap…in return for two bushels of wheat and one capon and two deniers for the cens and rentes". Etc.
CENSUSES AND MARRIAGES
In this same year of 1666, the general census of New France tells us that the father and son lived in the town of Trois-Rivieres; the following year we find them at Cap-de-la-Madeleine. Etienne was then 42 years old and Jean was in the prime of his life: he was twenty years old and he felt that he was mature enough to take a wife. On 17 October 1667, a the home of notary Jacques de La Tousche, he had his marriage contract drawn up uniting him to Francoise de Charmenil, born at Saint-Maclou in Rouen, daughter of Robert and of Marie Denise. The nuptial ceremony took place at the Cap a short time later, but the act itself has been lost.
As for Etienne, he continued as a widower for fifteen years. On 12 October 1682, he married a young 37 year old widow at Quebec, Marie de Beauregard, born in 1645 at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, daughter of Olivier de Beauregard and of Philippe Langelier. Shortly after this marriage she lived through some difficult moments. On 20 August 1667 a lawsuit was brought before the Sovereign Council of New France, purporting that she led a most scandalous life and "that it would be appropriate to render justice" in the matter. Undoubtedly she was made wiser by the suit. When Etienne took over from Sebastien, she was already the mother of two sons and two daughters. The couple settled at Pointe-aux-Trembles in Quebec (Neuville), where two other children of Etienne were baptized in 1684 and 1687. How many more years did our ancestor live? We do not know. It is probable that he and his second wife were buried in the Quebec region.
The census of 1681 indicated that Jean still lived at the Cap with his wife Francoise. The census taker said he was 37 years old and his wife 29. Their children then were Etienne, born in 1670; Jean, in 1671; Benjamin, in 1672; Pierre in 1674; Francois, in 1676 and Anne, in 1678. Another daughter, bearing the name of Marie-Anne, was born in 1683. The family owned a gun, six head of cattle and worked four arpents of land.
FARMERS FOR NICOLAS GASTINEAU-DUPLESSIS
For a while Etienne and Jean Gellineau were farmers for Nicolas Gastineau-Duplessis, one of the most well know pioneers of the Trois-Rivieres region. ON 3 February 1670, in recognition of their services, Nicolas gave them his concession a the Cap. Six years later, Etienne and Jean resold to their patron, for the sum of 225 livres, the land that had been ceded to them by the Jesuits in 1664.
THE SETTLEMENT ON THE SOUTH BANK
Shortly after ending their contract of employment with Nicolas Gastineau-Duplessis in 1677, the heretofore inseparable father and son team made the most important decision since their departure from France in 1658: They went their separate ways. On 2 May 1677, Charles Le Gardeur de Villiers ceded two arpents of frontage, situated near Lake Saint-Paul, on the south bank of the Saint-Lawrence across from Cap-de-la-Madeleine, to Jean Gelinas, who settled there with his family. On 19 March 1678, Jean acquired from Adrien Saillot dit Lacroix another piece of land in the same place with the same dimensions.
As for Etienne, undoubtedly a little lost after the marriage of his son who decided to go it alone, he saw nothing better than to ensure food and lodging for himself in his senior years. Therefore, on 3 August 1677, when he found a place at l’Arbre-de-la-Croix, he gave to the seigneur Charles Le Gardeur de Villiers, and to his wife Jeanne-Judith Matras, the gift of himself to serve them every day in every way. Five years later, when he met the young and attractive widow of Sebastien Langelier, love caused him to change his mind. His good master, understanding the old man’s change of heart, set him free. Who can fail to understand an aging gentleman falling for the charms of a much younger woman?
THIRTY YEARS LATER
Thirty years pass and we find Jean and Francoise still living at Becancour. Two acts by notary Pierre Poulin, one dated 1 July 1717 and the other on the 13th of the same month, tell us that the couple separated in their advanced age. Wife and mother Francoise de Charmenil gave 800 livres and a draft ox to Pierre Rochereau dit Moriceau, her son-in-law, and to Anne Gelinas, her daughter with whom she wanted to live. Jean did the same with his son Etienne and his daughter-in-law Marguerite Benoit "in order that they keep him with them." On 9 August Jean completed the disposition of his property, giving half each to those who would keep him and his wife as long as it would please God to keep him and his wife as long as it would please God to keep them alive.
Author Raphael Bellemare concludes:
"It is probable that they were interred in two different cemeteries, the remains of the mother at Becancour, and those of the father at Yamachiche. Their Christian faith shows itself by the requests for Requiem Masses after their deaths."
FIRST INHABITANTS OF YAMACHICHE
Etienne, Jean-Baptiste and Pierre Gelinas, sons of Jean were, with the Seigneures Charles and Julien Lesieur, the first inhabitants and the first land owners at Yamacheche, an parents of the first children born in this parish. The descendants of Etienne kept the name of Gelinas, those of Jean-Baptiste became Bellemare and those of Pierre are Lacourse.
In his history of Yamacheche, Raphael Bellemare reports that the Gelinas brothers must have received, at the end of the seventeenth century, their concession from Lambert Boucher de Grandpre, son of the governor, who had married Marguerite de Vauvril, grand-daughter of Pierre Lepele dit Lahaie. Etienne, son of Etienne Gelinas and of Marguerite Benoit, was born on 8 October 1704 and was baptized by the Recollet priest Simeon Dupont. The second child born at Yamachiche was the cousin of the first, Jean-Baptiste, son of Jean-Baptiste Gelinas dit Bellemare and of Jeanne Boisonneau dit Saintonge, also baptized at Yamachiche, at the paternal home, by the same missionary on 3 March 1705. These two baptismal acts notes Bellemare,
"sufficiently prove the occupation of these place before the first concessions granted by the seigneurs of the two division of Grosbois."
For an uninterrupted two and three-quarters centuries, from 1703 to the present, the Gelinas and the Bellemare families worked the ancestral lands at Yamachiche. Lands occupied by the same family for nearly three centuries have become more and more rare in our time. These lands at Yamachiche bear witness to the vitality of the Gelinas and the Bellemare families and of their very great desire to maintain tradition. For them, it was a matter of filial love and deep respect for their ancestors.
Lavallée - Gélinas Index