Boulet

also Boulay, Boulé, Boullé, Boullet, Boulais

Robert Boulet was a native of Saint-Germain de Loisé, in the Mortagne, the same small region that produced so many other emigrants to Québec in the seventeenth century. He was born about 1630. We do not know his parents' names; but he married Françoise Garnier or Grenier in 1657; she was twenty-three. They crossed the Atlantic in the summer of 1662 on the ship l’Aigle d’Or, and they first appear in Canadian records in 1662. Their son Jean was baptized in Coulimer (near Loisé) in September 1661, and their daughter Jacqueline was baptized in Loisé in April 1659.

In 1663 they acquired three arpents on the Île d'Orléans (parish of Ste-Famille, photo above). The 1666 census records them both as age 36, with three children, five farm animals and six arpents. By the time of the 1681 census they had moved to Rivière du Sud, and had only five arpents, a gun and six animals. Robert died in March 1707, and Françoise in January 1709, both at Montmagny.

Robert and Françoise had ten children altogether, but five died young: Jacqueline (1664-1717, married Pierre Joncas dit Lapierre, 3 children); Jacques (1664-1738, married Françoise Fournier, 14 children); an unnamed boy in 1666; Jean-Baptiste (1667-a1681); Pierre (1669-1689); Marie (born and died 1670); Martin (1672-1728, married Françoise Nolin); Françoise (1674-1741, married Pierre Bernier); Paul (1677, married Françoise Paquet, 10 children); and Jean (1679?-1680).

For Françoise's descendants, see Bernier. She was a great-great-great-great-great-grandmother of Marie Eva Jean Martin.