We wish we knew more about our great-grandmother Marie Eva Jean; even her correct legal name is in doubt - it may have been "Marie Julie Oliva" with "Eva" as a nickname. Her marriage record calls her "Oliva Jean." In any case the last name is certain. She was born in February 1865 in St-Charles-sur-Richelieu, Québec, and baptized there on the 21st. She probably knew her future husband from childhood, as both lived in the same small town. She married Joseph Arthur Martin on June 18, 1882, age 17, in Providence - her family had alread emigrated to Rhode Island in 1880. She gave birth to our grandfather Alexander in April 1883 (and so was not pregnant when they married). Her daughter Aggie (Agatha) was born a year later, and she evidently died in childbirth with a stillborn baby in 1887, though her death certificate lists "consumption." She had just turned 22, and was buried in the Church of the Precious Blood cemetery in Woonsocket.
The earliest known ancestor is one Vivien Jean, who was born in the parish of St-Vivien d'Ecoyeux in the seaport of La Rochelle. A dozen or more French men named Jean immigrated to New France and were married there; three more lived in the Saint Lawrence valley without doing so. Among the more important forebears were the four sons of Vivien Jean, of Petit Fétilly, in Aunis. He was a master blacksmith at Ecoyeux, a place not far from Saint-Jean-d'Angély. He married Suzanne Hérault at La Rochelle c.1640. They had eight children, four boys and four girls. Whereas the four daughters stayed in France, the four boys (Pierre, Vivien, Elie, Guillaume) immigrated to Québec.
Pierre Jean was born on 19 February 1645. On 8 July 1668, at La Rochelle, the 23-year-old married Françoise Favreau or Faverel. The following year found the couple in the Québec City area; there, before notary Pierre Duquet, Charles Roger des Colombiers, a Québec City businessman, and his wife Marie Gachet rented to Pierre Jean and his brother Vivien a piece of land on the isle d'Orléans, consisting of "[four arpents in width of arable land, meadows and woods, houses, barns and stable.]" Pierre Jean would appear regularly before notaries about contracts concerning land concessions. In 1671, he lived at Beauport; two years later, he was mentioned in a contract as living at Charlebourg. He would reside at La Trinité, la Canardière, and l'île aux Oies. According to a 1705 contract, he lived at Port-Joly, which is where he died between 1724 and 1727. Pierre Jean and Françoise Favreau had four children, three boys and a girl. Only one of the boys and the girl (our ancestor Louise, married Jacques Chouinard) were married. Pierre "junior" married Marie-Madeleine Prinseau in 1700; she bore eleven children. Five months before his marriage, this Pierre, the son, had become the father of a child born out of wedlock, a girl whose mother was Marie-Anne Faye. As for Louise, she had been married eight years earlier to Jacques Chouinard, a Québec City carter; they had sixteen children.
Pierre Jean and Marie-Madeleine Prinseau were the parents of a third Pierre, about whom little is known; he married Marie-Josette Lagacé at La Pocatière on February 6, 1742. (This Lagacé family can still be found in that town, which is in Kamouraska County.) Their son, yet another Pierre, was married to Marie-Josette Dube on May 14, 1764 at St-Rock-des-Aulnais, Kamouraska. Their son Augustin Jean married Marie-Louise Caron in September 1796 at St-Jean-Port-Jolie, on the lower St Lawrence, not far from St-Rock-des-Aulnais. Their son was Louis Jean, who married Esther Daignault dit Laprise and was the father of yet another Louis, who married Célina Turcotte in November 1859.
The children of Louis Jean and Célina Turcotte: Alcide, born probably 1861; Marie Eva or Oliva, born February 1865; Ludger [?], born c1867; Alfred, c1869; Anne, April 1872; Honoré, c1875; Napoléon, June 1877, emigrated to New England; and Célanise, who married a cousin, Henri Turcotte.
index of Jean surnames
