Aubuchon

dit Le Loyal

This family originated in the parish of St-Rémy (above) in the port of Dieppe. Jean Aubuchon (born c1591) and Catherine LeMarchand (c1595, died April 1632) were married there in August 1617, and had a son Jean (1617) and a daughter Marie (1629) as well as our immigrant ancestor, Jacques Aubuchon (1617). Jean Aubuchon was a wealthy Dieppe merchant who sponsored several voyages to Canada; though he did not go himself, his children did. Jean had a brother named Jacques, who was our ancestor's godfather. Jean's second wife, Jeanne Gille, was the mother of another Jean, who also emigrated (see below).

Jacques, who was trained as a master carpenter, came to Québec in 1643, and was married to Mathurine Poisson in 1647; they had at least four children, perhaps as many as eight (François, Jacques, Joseph, and Marie-Anne) before Mathurine died about 1667. Jacques then married a "fille du roi," Marguérite Itasse (daughter of Jean Itasse or Itas and Marie Casson or Capon of St-Siméon in Normandy) in November 1667. She died in Trois-Rivières in 1689. They were the parents of Jeanne (1669-1748, married Florent Leclerc) and of Marguérite (married Pierre Desrosiers). We are descended from Florent Leclerc's sister Etiennette Bergeron as well as from Marguérite, whose daughter Marie-Françoise was a great-great-great-grandmother of Joseph Arthur Martin.

While living in Trois-Rivières in 1649 and 1650, Jacques signed a contract to enlarge a warehouse, and he also built a house there. In 1654 he was fined 100 livres for going outside the town's palisades when there was danger of an Iroquois attack. A 1681 inventory of his property shows a house surrounded by a cedar fence, a shop and a barn, various livestock, a small townhouse in Trois-Rivières, and other pieces of land up and down the river. In 1668 he was arrested for attacking the Sieur d'Anceau during an argument - specifically, he broke an egg on the nobleman's head. The subsequent trial is on record, but the verdict has been lost.

Several of Jacques' siblings also came to Canada, but evidently their parents did not. Marie Aubuchon (born 1629) died in Trois-Rivières, apparently unmarried. Jean, a half-brother, was born in 1634, but if the recorded date of his emigration is correct, he was only 8 or 9 years old. He married Marguérite Sédilot when she was only twelve (1655), and became a wealthy fur trader. But he was often in trouble with the law (for adultery, and for selling alcohol to the Indians); later in life he 'found religion' and became a pillar of the local church. He fathered thirteen children, and in 1685 was murdered - evidently by his wife's lover, who was convicted.

There is an Aubuchon family association.