Like so many others among our Jean ancestors, this family comes from the small Mortagne region around Loudun and Tourouvre: in this case, the village of La Chaussée (now a suburb of Blois). Antoine Béliveau was born there about 1621, and married Marie-Andrée Guyon (daughter of Jean Guyon and Mathurine Robin). We do not know the names of his parents. They were married about 1650, but we do not know whether it was in France or Acadia - probably the latter, as her parents emigrated too.

In any case, they had three children that we know of, and we are descended from two: the eldest wasJean-Antoine, born in Port-Royal c1652, who married Marie-Jeanne Bourg (daughter of Antoine Bourg and Antoinette Landry, 4 children). The second child was Marie-Madeleine (c1653, married Germain Bourgeois about 1673). The third child was Marie, who married Guy Chiasson in Port-Royal in 1664 and apparently died the next year giving birth to a son, Gabriel. After Jeanne Bourg died, Jean-Antoine married Cécile Melançon and had three further children, from whom we are not descended, as far as I can tell.

Jean-Antoine Béliveau and Jeanne Bourg's children: Marie-Madeleine (1676, married François Boudreau, 9 children); Jean-Charles (1678-1707, see below); and Antoine (c1680-1740, married Marie Terriot or Theriault, 1 daughter). All the numerous Béliveaus in Canada today are thus descended from our ancestor Jean-Charles.

Jean-Charles Béliveau was born in Port-Royal probably in 1678, and died there in September 1740. He married Marie-Madeleine Melançon (daughter of Charles Melançon and Marie Dugas) in 1699. They had at least three daughters: Marie (married her cousin François Landry), Marie-Josèphe (married Pierre Melançon) and Marguérite-Anne (married Pierre Lanou), as well as at least one son, Pierre Béliveau.

Marie-Josèphe and Pierre Melançon were the parents of another Marie-Josèphe, who married Claude Dugas; see Melançon and Dugas.

See Bourgeois for Marie-Madeleine's descendants.

The image above is a contemporary sketch of the stockade at Port-Royal.