Buteau

also Butor, Butaud

L'Hermenault is a small town in the Vendée, just north of La Rochelle. Attached to it are two smaller hamlets, one named Marsais and the other La Vineuse or La Virieuse, both served by the parish church of Ste-Radégonde. The Buteau family seems to have lived in Marsais. Mathurin Buteau and his wife Perrine Ragot lived there in the mid-seventeenth century. Their son Pierre Buteau, the immigrant, was born and baptized there May 23, 1636. He signed on for a voyage from La Rochelle on March 14, 1662, and was in Beaupré a few months later. There he married Jeanne Défosseé or Dufaussay, a fille du roi, in 1670; but for some reason the marriage was quickly annulled (she lived until 1698). Pierre then married Pierrette Lauriault on October 21, 1671. She was also a fille du roi. They lived in the parish of St-François on the Île d'Orléans. If census records are accurate, their surviving children were born in the 1680s and 1690s; there must have been some others who died young.

They had six children, birth order uncertain: Claire (died 1755; married Jean-Baptiste Gagné); François (married Marie Jinchereau); Marguérite (died 1758; married Joseph Verieul); Marie- Françoise (married Jacques Baudon); Marie-Madeleine (died 1752, married Pierre Duchesne and François Dupont); and Pierre (married Marie Carbonneau in 1698; he may have been the eldest).

See Verieul for descendants.