Gaudin dit Beauséjour

also Godin

Claude Gaudin or Godin and his wife Marie Bardin lived in the parish of St-Vorle in the town of Châtillon-sur-Seine (upstream from Paris, in Burgundy). The Romanesque church (above) was built in Carolingian times and is famous, and well-preserved today. We know of one son, the immigrant Pierre, born about 1633 and recruited as a colonist in May 1653, and in Montréal by the end of that year. He was a master carpenter, and for reasons unknown (possibly because he knew the sieur de La Vallière, who was sent to Acadia as governor), he moved to Beaubassin in 1676 or 1677. In Montréal on October 13, 1645 he married Jeanne Rousselière (daughter of Louis Rousselière and Isabelle Parisé), of Moëze near la Rochelle - she was born about 1636, and died before 1710; after Pierre died she married Pierre Martin, brother of our ancestors Marguérite and Andrée Martin. Jeanne does not appear to have been a fille du roi, but there is no record of her parents having emigrated.

Pierre and Jeanne Gaudin had seven children: Anne (married her stepbrother Pierre Martin, son of Pierre and his Micmac wife; 7 children; see Martin); Catherine (c1656-1746, married Louis Fortin and Jean Neveu); Gabriel (married Andrée-Angélique Jeanne and settled in New Brunswick); Laurent (1655-1737, married Anne Guérin and Marie-Anne Brunet); Marie (1657-1687, married Vivien LaMadeleine); Marie-Madeleine (married Robert Henry); and Pierre (married Jeanne Cauchon).

Laurent Gaudin (mistakenly identified as Charles in some genealogies; there was an unrelated Charles Gaudin of the same generation, who married Marin Boucher's daughter Marie) was born August 10, 1655 in Montréal, before his parents moved to Acadia. His godfather was the governor, Paul de Chomedy, sieur de Maisonneuve. He accompanied his parents to Beaubassin in Acadia when he was about 21, and married there about 1675: his wife was Anne Guérin (1659-1718, daughter of François; see Guérin). Laurent acquired a large farm at Pointe Beauséjour, and thereafter called himself "sieur de Beauséjour." Their children: Pierre (c1678, see below); Charles (1689-1714); Marie-Josèphe (c1692, married Alexandre Mercier, son of Andrée Martin by her second husband); François (1698-1718); and Marguérite (1702, married Jean-Baptiste Gareau dit Lagarde and then Charles de Rainville). After Anne Guérin died, Laurent married Marie-Anne Brunet, widow of Antoine Pilon; no further children.

Pierre Gaudin (born about 1678 in Beaubassin) married, when he was probably 20, Catherine Pellerin dite Colbec of Beaubassin (daughter of François and of Andrée Martin, who was also the mother of his sister's husband Alexandre Mercier). Catherine died on May 9, 1758 at St-François-du-Sud (after having been exiled from Acadia). Their children: Pierre (c1699-1765, married Angélique Proulx, 11 children); Cécile (died 1763, married Guillaume Rouleau, 11 children); Claude (1705-1709); Geneviève (1706-1761, married François Larivée dit Maurice, 8 children); Jean (1708); Antoine (born and died 1709); Ursule (1710); Marie-Madeleine (born and died 1713); Catherine (1714); Marie-Josèphe (died 1763; married Louis Thibault); and Marguérite (married Simon Dubé on January 11, 1738; probably the youngest of Pierre's children).

See Dubé for descendants.