The Crossing

Françoise Durand was born approximately 1648–1651 in Bracquemont, a farming village in the Pays de Caux, one mile east of Dieppe. Huge chalk cliffs, overlooking the English Channel, form the commune’s northern border. The church of Notre-Dame, dating from the seventeenth century, is the parish listed on her ship manifest. It still exists. Bracquemont was merged into the commune of Petit-Caux in 2016.

Her parents were Pierre Durand (b. 1628) and Noëlle Asselin. Both were dead by 1670. Noëlle’s parents were Jacques Asselin and Cécile Olivier (~1605, Bracquemont) — Cécile is the oldest verified ancestor in the maternal line, sixteen generations back.

Françoise had a brother, Noël Durand, who was present at uncle David Asselin’s wedding in Dieppe in April 1670. She had two maternal uncles already in New France: David Asselin (settled Sainte-Famille by 1666, owned 30 arpents and 10 cattle by the 1681 census) and Jacques Asselin. These uncles would be her anchor in the New World.

The ship was La Nouvelle France, a 250-tonne armed merchant vessel with fourteen cannons, the property of Pierre Gaigneur of La Rochelle, who had purchased it on April 5, 1667, for 15,700 livres from merchants Gédéon Bion, Daniel Brians, and Paul Bion. Captain Alain Durand of La Rochelle commanded her — a surname coincidence with Françoise, though no relation is documented. He had been at the helm since 1668.

La Nouvelle France was not alone. The fleet of 1670 bound for Quebec and Percé was composed of five ships: four from La Rochelle (L’Hélène, L’Hirondelle, La Nouvelle-France, and Le Saint-Pierre) and one from Dieppe (Le Saint-Jean-Baptiste).

The ship departed La Rochelle on April 30, 1670, carrying 120–128 Filles du Roi (one of the largest contingents ever sent), 100 engagés (indentured laborers), and complete families such as Claude Graton, his wife Marguerite Moncion, and their children. Some Filles du Roi had boarded at Dieppe — Françoise, being from Bracquemont (one mile from Dieppe), almost certainly boarded there.

On May 5, the ships were still in port due to bad weather. They weighed anchor a few days later. The Atlantic crossing took roughly eight to nine weeks. The ship stopped at Percé on the Gaspé coast, where four companies of infantry — Berthier, Chambly, La Durantaye, and Loubia — disembarked from other vessels and re-embarked aboard La Nouvelle France for the final leg to Quebec.

La Nouvelle France arrived at Quebec on July 21, 1670. The total journey from La Rochelle: 82 days.

The ship manifest records Françoise’s entry: “DURAND Françoise, Fille de feu Pierre et de feue Noëlle Asselin de la paroisse Notre-Dame de Bracquemond.”

The pastor of the parish of Saint-Sulpice had recruited about 68 women; 12 from his parish were aboard. Many of the girls were orphans. Some were from bourgeois families — one was the daughter of a master painter for the King, another the daughter of a royal guard. At least one widow, Françoise Goubilleau, traveled with her son Pierre Maguet.

The return voyage is documented too. Just before departing Quebec, the surgeon Busquet informed Captain Durand that a passenger named Jean Sureau was afflicted with leg wounds that could infect the crew. Unable to make the return, the captain had him put ashore. The ship went to Percé to take on two thousand pounds of fresh fish, departed September 12, and arrived at La Rochelle on September 29 — just 17 days, running with the prevailing westerlies. On October 7, Captain Durand, pilot Pierre Bataillé, and carpenter Thomas Pochon appeared before the Admiralty of La Rochelle to report on the voyage.

Yves Landry’s entry for Françoise Durand — #117 on his definitive 2013 list — confirms three stark facts: she could not sign her name (“Ne savait pas signer”); she brought no personal assets (“biens estimés” — blank); and she received no royal dowry (“don du roi” — blank).

Only 41% of Filles du Roi received the 50-livre royal gift; those were mostly women recruited through Parisian institutions. Françoise was a rural Norman orphan who boarded at Dieppe.

She arrived with only the standard trousseau: a coiffe, bonnet, taffeta handkerchief, stockings, gloves, ribbon, four shoelaces, white thread, 100 needles, 1,000 pins, a comb, scissors, two knives, and two livres in cash. She was the poorest of the ten verified Filles du Roi in Carl’s ancestry.

Eight months after arriving, on March 24, 1671, the marriage contract was drawn by notary Paul Vachon dit Pomerleau on the Île d’Orléans. The contract was signed in David Asselin’s house. Neither Françoise nor Jacques could sign it. Her uncles Jacques and David Asselin were present as witnesses — they had shepherded her settlement.

Jacques Baudouin was born July 29, 1645, at Saint-Martin, Île de Ré, near La Rochelle. He was Protestant, from a family of Huguenot gentry. His grandfather was the sénéchal (judicial officer) of the Île de Ré seigneurie. His father Solon was “Sieur des Marattes.” Jacques had been baptized August 4, 1645, at the Protestant church of Saint-Martin. He arrived in New France in 1664 on the ship Noir and was confirmed Catholic at the Hôtel-Dieu de Quebec on June 3, 1664 — the very day of arrival. By the 1666 census, he was an indentured servant in Charlesbourg. By 1671, he had risen to independent “habitant.”

Two illiterate people from opposite corners of France, opposite sides of the Reformation — a Catholic orphan from the Norman cliffs and a Huguenot convert from an island in the Atlantic — starting a farm together on an island in the St. Lawrence.

They settled first at Sainte-Famille, near her Asselin uncles. By about 1680, they moved to Saint-François at the tip of the island, where the St. Lawrence narrowed and the north shore rose dark with spruce.

The 1681 census captures the household in a single line: “Jacques Baudouin 37; Françoise Durand, sa femme; enfants: Jacques 10, Joseph 8, Françoise 5, Louis 3; 4 bêtes à cornes; 7 arpents en valeur.” Seven arpents of cleared forest. Four cattle. Four children under ten.

Nine children total, born between 1672 and 1690: Jacques, Joseph, Françoise, Louis, Marc, Pierre, Pierre (the second — the first died), Antoine, and Marie.

Their sons settled at Berthier, founded by Isaac Berthier, also a Calvinist — an interesting echo of Jacques’s own Huguenot origins. Their eldest son, Jacques the younger, married Catherine Morin and eventually became the Seigneur de Berthier — from seven arpents to a seigneurial title in a single generation.

Joseph died April 8, 1699, at twenty-five, unmarried.

On March 9, 1706, Jacques (sixty-one) and Françoise (about fifty-five) appeared before a notary at Saint-François to cede their farm to their son Marc. The terms were standard for the era: Marc would work the land and care for his parents until their deaths.

Jacques was buried at Saint-François on June 2, 1708.

Françoise lived on for another decade — ten years as a widow. She never remarried. She died September 15, 1718, at Saint-François, Île d’Orléans. She was approximately sixty-seven to seventy years old. She was buried September 16. The register reads simply: “Françoise Durand, veuve de Jacques Baudoin.”

She had lived in New France for forty-eight years. She never left.

The Y-DNA haplogroup for the Baudouin line — tested through Jacques P. Beaugrand in 2017 — is G2-S18765. It runs through fourteen generations to the present.