The name is also spelled Turcaut and Turcot. It's a large family; among the many descendants is Jean-Claude Turcotte, the current Cardinal Archbishop of Montréal (pictured above, left).

Jean-Baptiste Abel Turcotte was born in 1631 or 1632 in Mouilleron-en-Paredes, Fontenay Le Compte, Maillezais, Poitou (this is near the Atlantic coast; the town church is pictured above). He was in Québec by November 1662, when he married Marie Giraud, also a recent immigrant (she was then about 21) in Château-Richer, Montmorency. They were members of the church of Ste-Famille in Montmorency, where both were buried (Abel in September 1687, Marie in February 1712). They had at least eight children: François (1663-1718), Marie (1664-1701, not married?), Geneviève (1666-1724, married Antoine Bilodeau), Françoise (born 1668, married Jacques Plante), Anne (1670-1716, married Simon Bilodeau), Marie-Reine (1672-1749, married Nicolas Asselin), Marie-Madeleine (1676-1748, married Pierre LePage), and Louis (1678-1748, married Angélique Plante).

François Turcotte was born in Montmorency on September 16, 1673 and died in Québec city on January 19, 1718. In November 1688 he married Marguerite, daughter of Jean Ouimet or Houymet and Renée Gagnon (one of their descendants, also called Jean Ouimet, is a former chief of Québec's Green Party). They had eight children: Jacques (born 1694, married Marie Audet dit Lapointe), Marie-Anne (1698-p1740, married Ignace Paradis), François, died an infant; Simon (married Marie-Madeleine Godbout in 1722), Joseph, Nicolas (born 1704, married Marie-Jeanne Glinel), Augustin, and Marguerite.

Simon's birth and death dates are unrecorded but he married Marie-Madeleine Godbout (born 1704) on February 22, 1722 in Québec city. (It was her second marriage; her first husband Pierre Langlois had died.) We know the name of only one child: Jean-Baptise Turcotte, who married Marie-Josephte Verieul on November 23, 1750 at the church of Ste-Famille, Île d'Orléans. Again, we know only one child: Gabriel, who married Rose Gaudrier or Gauthier at Trois-Rivières on November 15, 1790. (Forty years after his parents' wedding - this suggests that he was a younger child of theirs.) A Gabriel Turcotte was a soldier in a Trois-Rivières regiment during the War of 1812, and was killed at the Battle of Plattsburg in September 1814, but there were several Gabriels, and our ancestor was probably too old to have been a soldier in 1814. There was a daughter, Angèle, who married Antoine Martel in 1824; a daughter Marguérite who married Antoine Ricard in 1816; and a son Aléxis Turcotte, who must have lived to a considerable age; his birth date is unknown but he died in June 1872. He married Charlotte Prince at the church of St-Grégoire-le-Grand, Nicolet on July 29, 1823. We know of two children: Célina Turcotte, who married Louis Jean in November 1859, and Zoël Turcotte, who married Caroline Campagnas in June 1852 in Arthabaska. (They emigrated to Lewiston, Maine and had at least one child, Marie-Caroline Turcotte, who married Louis Malo and had ten children; descendants still in Lewiston).

Célina Turcotte and Louis Jean were the parents of our great-grandmother Marie Eva Jean Martin.