Marin Boucher and Perrine Mallet

Marin Boucher was a mason from the Perche who was already in his forties, a widower remarried with a second family, when he sailed for New France in 1634 with Robert Giffard's settlers. Champlain left him a suit of clothes in his will. He helped build Beauport, farmed at Château-Richer, and lived to about 82. His children Pierre and Françoise are ancestors of both Philomène Dubé and Henriette Roy, Leo Roy's two grandmothers.

Saint-Langis and Mortagne

Marin Boucher was baptized on April 15, 1589, at Mortagne, the chief town of the Perche, or at Saint-Langis, the village just outside it; the accounts differ. His parents are not known. He was a mason by trade and worked the land as well.

On February 7, 1611, he married Julienne Baril. They had seven children, born between 1611 and 1625. Julienne died on December 15, 1627, and was buried at Saint-Langis the next day. By the time Marin left for Canada, most of these children had married or died. Only François, who was about sixteen, went with him.

A year or two after Julienne's death, about 1628 or 1629, Marin married Perrine Mallet (also written Malet), the daughter of Pierre Malet and Jacqueline Liger. She was born about 1604 or 1606, perhaps at Courgeoût, near Mortagne, and was some fifteen years younger than her husband. Their first two sons, Louis Marin and Jean Galeran, were born in France.

When did Marin marry Perrine?

Our French-Canadian Ancestors says about 1628, at Saint-Langis, and Lawrence Molumby writes that Marin remarried “a year or two” after Julienne died in December 1627. The PRDH gives August 29, 1630, but that is the birth date of their son Louis Marin, so the PRDH date appears to be a mistake. This page uses about 1628–1629. No marriage record has been found.

To New France, 1634

In 1634 Robert Giffard, a surgeon from the Perche, received the seigneury of Beauport, below Quebec, and came home to recruit settlers. Marin was about 45 when he signed on. He was one of the group of Percherons who left that spring with Jean Guyon and Zacharie Cloutier, two more of Leo Roy's ancestors.

Marin went with Perrine and three children: François, about sixteen, from his first marriage, and Louis Marin, three, and Jean Galeran, a baby, from his second. In April 1634 a party of 43 people loaded wagons with provisions, furniture and tools and traveled about 125 miles overland, by way of Rouen, to the port of Dieppe, where four small ships were waiting. They reached Quebec on June 4, 1634. Claire Lindell names their ship as the Petit Saint-Christophe; Lawrence Molumby, who has also written about the family, says the name of the ship is not known.

The newcomers were lodged at first in Champlain's fort while the men went to work. The Jesuit superior, Paul Le Jeune, watched them that first summer and wrote: “The men are the horses and oxen; they carry or drag wood, trees or stones; they till the soil, they harrow it… I am astonished at the hardships they have to undergo, in doing things they have never done before.”

Champlain's Suit

The first record of Marin in New France is a remarkable one. Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec, had a stroke in October 1635 and died on Christmas Day. In his will he left his newest suit of clothes to “Marin, the mason,” and described him as living near the house of the Récollet fathers. At that time Marin had a piece of land with about 575 feet of frontage on the St. Charles River, just outside Quebec.

From Beauport to the Côte de Beaupré

As a mason, Marin was put to work building for Giffard at Beauport. Lindell writes that he helped build Giffard's manor house and eleven houses for the settlers, and Molumby adds the parish church at Quebec.

There is no record that Marin ever received land from Giffard at Beauport. He and his brother-in-law Thomas Hayot rented a farm on the Jesuits' land across the St. Charles River, and by 1641 he had staked out a claim for himself and his sons farther down the river, on the Côte de Beaupré. Jean Bourdon's map of that year shows the long, narrow strips of land along the shore, with “Marin Boucher” and “les fils de Marin Boucher,” Marin Boucher's sons, written on their lots, not far from the land of Zacharie Cloutier and Robert Drouin.

Marin sold his land on the St. Charles River, and in 1650 he received the title to his land on the Côte de Beaupré: about 1,150 feet along the river, running back more than four miles into the forest. By 1663 he had divided it into three strips, keeping one and giving the others to his son Jean Galeran and his son-in-law Jean Plante. His son Pierre had bought a farm of the same size a little to the west from Symphorien Rousseau for 100 livres on April 1, 1662.

Five more children were born at Quebec between 1636 and 1647. The girls married young, as girls in the colony usually did, and all three were married in their parents' house: Françoise to Jean Plante in 1650, when she was fourteen, Madeleine to Louis Houde in 1655, and Marie to Charles Godin in 1656, when she was twelve. When Marin's son François married in 1641, Governor Montmagny came to the wedding.

Château-Richer

Marin's land was in what became the parish of Château-Richer, next to the spot where its church would be built, on a rise with a view of Quebec, the Île d’Orléans and Cap Tourmente. In the bitter winter of 1659–60, the new bishop, François de Laval, traveled for ten days on snowshoes through the woods and over the frozen rivers to visit the settlers of the Côte de Beaupré. In the new stone church at Château-Richer he confirmed 170 people, among them Marin, who was about 71, Perrine, and their whole family except François, who had settled at Sillery. One of the other young people confirmed that day was Louis Jolliet, who would later explore the Mississippi.

Life on the coast was not safe. The Iroquois raided the French settlements for years, and in 1661 their neighbor Xainte Dupont, Zacharie Cloutier's wife, wrote to her family in France: “We have been in great fear of the Indians all summer. In the month of June, eight inhabitants of the Côte de Beaupré were massacred by the Iroquois.”

Even so, the family prospered. The census of 1667 shows Marin with eight head of cattle and twenty arpents of land under cultivation, and he and Perrine had enough land to help each of their children set up a household nearby.

Marin died at Château-Richer on March 29, 1671, at about 82. Three priests took part in his burial. The priest who wrote the record, F. Fillion, would bury Zacharie Cloutier six years later.

Burial of Marin Boucher (translated from the French)

In the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ one thousand six hundred seventy-one, the 29th of March, died Marin Boucher, after having lived as a good Christian and received the holy sacraments of penance, the Eucharist as viaticum, and extreme unction, and he was buried in the cemetery of Château-Richer by M. Morel, accompanied by the Reverend Father Nouvelle and by me, then performing the parish duties on the Côte de Beaupré.

F. Fillion, missionary priest

When did Marin die?

Family trees, including the RootsMagic report, give March 25, 1671, and Claire Lindell gives March 28. The burial record says that he died on March 29, 1671; it does not give a separate date for the burial.

Perrine lived on another sixteen years. She died at Château-Richer on August 24, 1687, and was buried the next day, at the age of 84. Two of her sons-in-law, Jean Plante and Charles Godin, attended the burial. The priest was Charles-Amador Martin, a son of Abraham Martin, for whom the Plains of Abraham are named, and only the second priest born in Canada.

Burial of Perrine Malet (translated from the French)

The twenty-fifth of August, one thousand six hundred eighty-seven, was buried in the cemetery of this parish Perrine Malet, widow of the late Marin Boucher, who died the day before, aged eighty-four years, after having received the sacraments of penance, Eucharist and extreme unction. Present at her burial were Jean Plante and Charles Godin, who declared that they did not know how to sign, having been asked according to the ordinance.

Charles Amador Martin

Remembered

Marin Boucher and Perrine Mallet are named on the bronze plaque to “the first settlers of Quebec” on the monument to Louis Hébert in Parc Montmorency, along with Jean Guyon and Zacharie Cloutier and their wives. Claire Lindell estimates that Marin has some 350,000 descendants in North America.

Two Lines to Leo Roy

I (Patty Roy) descend from Marin Boucher and Perrine Mallet through two of their children, one line to each of Leo Roy's grandmothers.

Through Pierre, to Philomène Dubé, the mother of Alfred Peter Roy:

1. Marin Boucher, 1589–1671, and Perrine Mallet
2. Pierre Boucher, 1639–1707, and Marie Anne Saint-Denis
3. Marie-Angélique Boucher, 1676–1717, and Louis Dubé
4. Louis Dubé, 1699–1765, and Cécile Émond
5. Jean François Dubé, 1724–1790, and Marie Angélique Côté
6. Noël Grégoire Dubé, 1751–1827, and Marie-Josephte Macé
7. Antoine Noël Dubé, 1783–1843, and Florence Bérubé
8. Philomène Dubé, 1828–1909, and Régis Roy

Through Françoise, to Henriette Roy, the mother of Amanda Beaudoin:

1. Marin Boucher, 1589–1671, and Perrine Mallet
2. Françoise Boucher, 1636–1711, and Jean Plante
3. Pierre Plante, 1666–1737, and Marguerite Patenôtre
4. Marguerite Plante, 1702–1782, and Pierre Laisné
5. Pierre Laisné (Laliberté), 1723–1803, and Marie Angélique Alaire
6. Louis Barthélemi Laisné, 1753–1811, and Madeleine Marcoux
7. Angélique Laliberté, 1782–1844, and Charles Roy
8. Charles Roy, 1803–1855, and Anastasie Goulet
9. Henriette Roy, 1834–1887, and Étienne Beaudoin

Philomène's son Alfred Peter Roy married Henriette's daughter Amanda Beaudoin, and their son was Leo Roy. Marie Angélique Alaire, in the second line, was herself a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier, so Marin's and Zacharie's lines met in her son Louis Barthélemi.