Gareman

dit Le Picard

As the "dit" name indicates, this family originated in Picardy, in the small town of Bagneux near Soissons. Pierre Gareman married Marguérite Charlot there in about 1620, and they had two children (Florence, 1621? and Nicole, 1631) before emigrating to Québec in 1638. Their third child, Marguérite, was born in Trois-Rivières in 1639. Their son Charles was born there too, in 1643. Madeleine died in January 1652. The birthdates of the children are somewhat questionable, being spread out over more than twenty years. Some sources have Florence born in 1629, but if so, she was married at age eleven. We are descended from both Marguérite (via Marie Eva Jean) and Florence (via Joseph Arthur Martin).

The family moved to Cap-Rouge (about eight miles upstream from Québec city) in the 1650s, then still very much a dangerous frontier area; Iroquois raids were common. On June 10, 1653, Pierre and Charles were working in their fields when an attack occurred on the farm of their neighbor, François Boule. He was shot and killed, and the Indians were scalping him as Pierre and Charles arrived to help (having heard the gunshots, probably). They were captured, and never heard from again. Florence was already married (to François Boucher) and living in Québec city. Nicole had married another neighbor, René Mezeray, but Marguérite was still unmarried (she later married Mathurin Trud and was the mother of our ancestor Geneviève Trud, who married Jean Morneau). See Boucher and Trud for descendants of Florence and Marguérite.

The photo above is Cap-Rouge's parish church, St-Félix.