Joyelle dit Lafrenière

or Joyal, or Jouiel

The earliest known ancestor is Etienne Joyelle, who was born about 1610 in Bergerac in Guienne (Dordogne), and married Suzanne Massau or Masseau there. Etienne died before 1669. They were the parents of the immigrant Jacques-Louis Joyelle, born in Bergerac in about 1641. There was another son, Claude, who is known to have emigrated in 1646, and must have been much older. We do not know when Jacques-Louis came to Canada, but one source says he came with his brother - but he would have been only about five at the time. He signed on as an "arquebusier" in the service of Louis d' Ailleboust, seigneur de Coullanges et d'Argentenay, in 1658, and subsequently served under other commanders before he married Gertrude Moral or Morel in Trois-Rivières (pictured above) in November 1676 (one source says 1669). The family moved to St-François-du-Lac, where Jacques-Louis and Gertrude both died (March 1716 and August 1736, respectively).

We know of ten children: Jacques (1678), Marie-Gertrude (1681, married Joseph Forcier), Jean (1683, who used the surname "Bergeron" - this is what inhabitants of Bergerac are called), Marie-Josèphe (1690?-1693), Jean-Baptiste (1691?-1693), another Marie-Josèphe (1693, married Pierre-Abraham Desmarais), Antoine (1696-1739, married Marguerite Patry), François (married Marie-Catherine Raux) and our ancestor Joseph-Michel Joyelle, born January 1694 in Sorel, married Marie-Madeleine Patry in April 1731 in St-François-du-Lac (his age, 41 or more, suggests this might have been a second marriage). Their daughter Marie-Anne Joyelle married our paternal immigrant ancestor, Jacques Martin, in October 1760 at St-François-du-Lac. She died in October 1815, having had ten children (see Martin).