Claude Guérin dit Lafontaine was born about 16691 in Lusignan, France in the ancient department of Poitou. He was the son of Michel Guérin and Jeanne Véron and is the only known child of the couple due to a lack of surviving records in France. He passed away at the early age of 39 on 30-Mar-1708 and was laid to rest in the parish cemetery of Notre-Dame-de-La-Prairie-de-la-Madeleine in La Prairie.
A Guérin Arrives in Québec
Claude came to Québec around 1687 as a soldier in the company of Capitaine Bruno Pierre Payen de Noyan, one of the many Compagnies Franches de la Marine which were raised to defend French colonies and other interests abroad. It was probably during his time of service that he received his ‘dit’ name of Lafontaine as this was a common practice among French military units of the time.
A Family Tree Takes Root
On 19-Nov-1697, Claude married Jeanne Marie Cusson in the church of Notre-Dame-de-La-Prairie-de-la-Madeleine in La Prairie. Jeanne was Claude’s first wife, while Claude was Jeanne’s third husband; her first two husbands both met tragic ends. Present at this wedding were Jean Cusson, brother of the bride, Robert Grotton, Yve St-Ange, Antoine Adhémar, royal notary and brother-in-law of the bride.
The couple had four known children who all survived to adulthood, got married and had children: Jacques, Jean Baptiste, Ange and Marguerite. All told, these four children had a total of 28 children of their own, most of whom survived to adulthood, married and subsequently had children of their own. And so began the Guérin dit Lafontaine line in North America. I am a descendant of Claude via his son, Jean Baptiste.
Deep Roots in La Prairie
My particular line of Guérins stayed in La Prairie from Claude’s arrival in the late 1600s to about 1870. In that year, Célestin Guérin and his wife, Florence Bisaillon, buried a stillborn infant in the parish cemetery of Notre-Dame-de-La-Prairie-de-la-Madeleine. By the 1880 US Census, Célestin and his family were recorded as living in Lowell, Massachusetts. Célestin would pass away in 1905 in his son’s home on Hemlock Street in Dracut, Massachusetts, five streets away from my childhood home, unbeknownst to my family.
La Prairie was not a wealthy town and, in spite of it being the site of the first railroad in British North America, the Guérins struggled to survive. In addition to Claude’s untimely passing, another Guérin man of my particular line also met an early end. Gabriel Amable Guérin, son of Jean Baptiste and grandson of Claude, drowned in the St. Lawrence River near the town of Sorel in 1768, at the age of 32, leaving one son and three daughters. These early deaths made life difficult for their widows and surviving children.
It was the confederation of Québec into a greater Canada in 1867 and the faltering Québecois economy following that confederation that prompted the migration of the Guérin clan to Massachusetts. They were not the only family to migrate, of course, but they were among the early wave of what became known as La Grande Émigration. From those early roots, new transplanted ones grew in the soil of Massachusetts and continue to this day.
- The database record at Généalogie Québec for Claude’s marriage states that the year of the marriage was 1696. The actual scanned image of the marriage record shows the year, in ancient French, as: “mil six cens novante et sept”. Additionally, the year “1697” can be seen near the priest’s signature. His age in the record is listed as 28, giving his approximate birth year. ↩︎