Jean Guyon and Mathurine Robin

Jean Guyon was a master mason from the Perche, in northern France, who signed on in 1634 to help build a new settlement at Beauport, just below Quebec. He and his wife, Mathurine Robin, were among the first families to farm there. Their daughter Barbe is an ancestor of Philomène Dubé, Leo Roy's grandmother, and their daughter Marie is an ancestor of his mother, Amanda Beaudoin.

Tourouvre and Mortagne

Jean Guyon was baptized on September 18, 1592, at the church of Saint-Aubin in Tourouvre, a village in the Perche, a small province between Normandy and the Loire. He was the son of Jacques Guyon and Marie Huet.

He became a master mason. According to Françoise Montagne's history of Tourouvre, in 1615 he worked on the stone staircase inside the steeple of Saint-Aubin, and in 1625 he was put in charge of rebuilding the walls of Mortagne, the chief town of the Perche.

On June 2, 1615, Jean married Mathurine Robin at the church of Saint-Jean in Mortagne. They made their home in that parish, and their children Barbe, Simon, Claude, Denis and Michel were baptized there between 1617 and 1634.

Robert Giffard's Contract, 1634

Robert Giffard was a master surgeon from Autheuil, near Mortagne, who had first gone to New France as a ship’s surgeon in 1627. On January 15, 1634, the Company of New France granted him the seigneury of Beauport, a league of land along the St. Lawrence just below Quebec, and he went to the Perche to find men who could clear land and build. He knew the people of the area, and many of them followed him.

On March 14, 1634, at Mortagne, Jean Guyon and Zacharie Cloutier, a master carpenter, signed a contract with Giffard before the notary Mathurin Roussel. They agreed to work for him in New France for three years. Giffard would pay their passage and give them food and lodging for those three years, and each would then receive 1,000 arpents of land, about 850 acres, with the right to hunt, fish and trade with the Indigenous peoples. Jean's land lay near a stream called the Buisson, and he took the name Guyon du Buisson. Some of his descendants later took the name Dion.

That spring a group of settlers from the Perche left by way of Dieppe on four ships and reached Quebec about June 4, 1634. Among them were two other ancestors of this family, Zacharie Cloutier and Marin Boucher. It was the beginning of a migration from the Perche that brought a few hundred people to New France over the next thirty years.

When did Mathurine and the children come?

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says that Jean settled at Beauport in 1634 “with his wife and most of their children,” But the same dictionary's biography of Robert Giffard says that Giffard hired Guyon and Cloutier to go to Canada “each with one of his children,” which fits the idea that Jean went first with his oldest son, Jean, and that Mathurine and the younger children followed. The Cloutier biography in the same dictionary says that both families were in the colony by July 27, 1636, when they are named in the marriage contract of Zacharie Cloutier's daughter Anne.

Their son Michel was baptized at Mortagne on March 3, 1634, only weeks before the ships sailed. By July 12, 1637, their daughter Marie was being married at Quebec, and their son Noël was born at Quebec in August 1638. So the family was together in New France by 1637 at the latest. No passenger list survives to say which ship they were on.

Beauport

At Beauport, Jean and Zacharie cleared land and put up houses for Giffard's settlers, and they built Giffard's manor house near the Notre-Dame River. On February 3, 1637, with their three years of service nearly done, the two men formally took possession of their own lands at Beauport.

They did not get along with their seigneur. Under the seigneurial system, a man who held a fief had to go to his lord's manor, kneel, and pledge “faith and homage.” Cloutier refused, and Guyon followed him; they also would not pay the yearly dues. In July 1646 Giffard asked the governor, Charles Huault de Montmagny, for permission to seize their lands, and the governor sided with Giffard. Jean eventually gave in and paid, but the quarrels between the families and the seigneur went on for years.

The Family in New France

Jean and Mathurine had at least nine children. Every son who grew up married in the colony, and so did their daughter Marie, who married François Bélanger at Quebec in 1637, when she was a young teenager.

Their son Jean married Élisabeth Couillard, a granddaughter of Louis Hébert, the colony's first farmer, at Quebec on November 27, 1645. The Jesuits noted that there were two violins at the wedding, something that had not been seen before in Canada. The younger Jean learned surveying in the colony and became the first surveyor trained in Canada.

Barbe, the oldest, did not come with the family in 1634. She had married Pierre Paradis of Mortagne at Tourouvre in February 1632, and they stayed in the Perche for almost twenty years. Their son Jean was baptized at Mortagne in November 1650, and their daughter Madeleine was born at Quebec in January 1653, so they made the crossing in between, probably in 1652. They settled on the Île d’Orléans, where Barbe died in 1700.

Their Last Years

Mathurine Robin died at Beauport on April 17, 1662, and was buried at Notre-Dame de Québec. Jean died at Quebec on May 30, 1663, at about 70, and was buried there the next day.

Few couples in New France left more descendants. The PRDH at the Université de Montréal counted thousands of Guyon descendants in the colony by 1730, and by its count Jean ranks second among all the pioneers of New France for the number of his married descendants. In 1984 Quebec City named a park in Beauport after him.

The Line to Patty Roy

I (Patty Roy) descend from Jean Guyon and Mathurine Robin through two of their daughters, one on each side of Alfred Peter Roy's family.

Through Barbe, to Alfred's mother, Philomène Dubé:

1. Jean Guyon, 1592–1663, and Mathurine Robin
2. Barbe Guyon, 1617–1700, and Pierre Paradis
3. Guillaume Paradis, 1644–1716, and Geneviève Milloir
4. Guillaume Paradis, born 1677 (no burial record found), and Marie Jeanne Hudon
5. Marthe Paradis, 1718–1786, and François Macé
6. Marie-Josephte Macé, 1760–1798, and Noël Grégoire Dubé
7. Antoine Noël Dubé, 1783–1843, and Florence Bérubé
8. Philomène Dubé, 1828–1909, and Régis Roy
9. Alfred Peter Roy, 1865–1938
10. Leo Roy, 1900–1989

Through Marie, to Alfred's wife, Amanda Beaudoin:

1. Jean Guyon, 1592–1663, and Mathurine Robin
2. Marie Guyon, 1624–1696, and François Bélanger
3. Nicolas Bélanger, 1638–1682, and Marie de Rainville
4. Pierre Étienne Bélanger, 1670–1703, and Marguerite Delaunay
5. Marguerite Madeleine Bélanger, 1701–1786, and Noël Marcoux
6. Louis Alexandre Marcoux, 1730–1814, and Marie Thècle Mercier
7. Madeleine Marcoux, 1759–1824, and Louis Barthélemi Laisné (Laliberté)
8. Angélique Laliberté, 1782–1844, and Charles Roy
9. Charles Roy, 1803–1855, and Anastasie Goulet
10. Henriette Roy, 1834–1887, and Étienne Beaudoin
11. Amanda Beaudoin, 1869–1910, and Alfred Peter Roy
12. Leo Roy, 1900–1989