Jacques Guyon

Jacques married Marie Huet on 15 Apr 1583 in St Jean, Mortagne, Perche, France. Marie was born on 6 Jan 1578 in Tourouvre, Orne, Basse-Normandie, France; died on 26 Feb 1626 in Mortagne, Orne, Basse-Normandie, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Arrival: 1634, Québec, Québec, Canada

Notes:

Jean Guyon du Buisson, (1592 - 1663), was born at the Saint-Aubin parish in Tourouvre, Orne, France in 1592. Guyon was patriarch of "....one of the earliest French families to settle in (Nouvelle France), one of the most numerous in the beginning, one of the most respected and best known...."

Guyon made his living as a mason and was regarded as a "master mason of excellent reputation". In 1615, he finished the interior stone staircase of the church Saint-Aubin.
Arrival in Nouvelle France
Guyon and family emigrated to North America as part of the Percheron Immigration, a small group of families and some single men from the region of Perche, in the province of Normandy, brought over to Nouvelle France in 1634 to colonize new areas.
Jean de Lauzon, the Governor of New France, awarded a concession of land to Robert Giffard de Moncel, physician to the colony. Giffard, now Seigneurie of Beauport, recruited Guyon and other tradesmen to the new colony with the offer of 1,000 arpents of land with hunting and fishing rights in exchange for three years of service.

Guyon traveled aboard a convoy of four ships under the command of Charles Duplessis-Bochart and arrived in Nouvelle France in 1634. Guyon was awarded land in newly-established Beauport, one of the oldest European-founded communities in Canada (and now a borough of Quebec City). Under the seigneurial system, he received a rear fief (arrière fief) near rivière du Buisson (river of bushes). He attached its name to his own, Guyon du Buisson.
Guyon lived there until he died in 1663. He built a small mill and helped build the parish church of Québec city and the governor's residence.

For nine years, he and Zacharie Cloutier disputed Giffard's seigneural rights to receive foi et hommage (fealty and homage). Refusing to accept him as their superior, they did not stake their lands or pay him annual taxes. On July 19, 1646, the governor of the colony took action to force Cloutier and Guyon to comply with their contractual obligations. Such cases of censitaire refractoriness filled the time of the courts for the duration of the seigneurial system, both during the French regime and under the English.
His eldest son, also named Jean Guyon, married Élisabeth Couillard, granddaughter of Louis Hébert, the first French colonist established with his family in Nouvelle France. Their wedding was accompanied by the "....two violins...which had not been seen yet in Canada....”

After his death, his heirs engaged in a protracted legal dispute over his lands.

Descendants
Guyon fathered ten children, eight of whom married, and he is known to be an ancestor of many French Canadians. By 2006, news media noted that at least three out of four pure laine (old stock) French Quebecers descend from him. The descendants are often recognized as Dion, sometimes as Despres, Dumontier, Lemoine and in Louisiana as Derbanne. He has been linked to the family trees of Madonna, Celine Dion, Stéphane Dion and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

By 1730, more than 2,150 births of Guyon descendents had been recorded, according to The First French Canadians: Pioneers in the St. Lawrence Valley. By 1800, Guyon had 9,674 married descendents, the second-most of Nouvelle France immigrants, according to the Historical Demography Research Program of the Université de Montréal. This study enabled neurological researchers to trace 40 cases of classical Friedreich's ataxia, a rare inherited disease, across 12 generations to 14 previously unrelated French-Canadians kindreds to one common ancestral couple: Guyon and his wife Mathurine Robin. The disease causes progressive damage to the nervous system resulting in symptoms ranging from gait disturbance and speech problems to heart disease. The finding allows for gene chromosomal localization studies that had previously been judged to be almost impossible in rare autosomal recessive disorders.

Honours
In 1984, the 350th anniversary of Guyon's arrival, Quebec City named a park after him and a commemorative plaque to honour Guyon was mounted on the church in Beauport by the Association des Dion d'Amérique inc. In 2006, the city renamed a street after him.

Dictionary of Canadian Biography Article
GUYON DU BUISSON, JEAN (senior), master mason, pioneer at Beauport; baptized 18 Sept. 1592 at Tourouvre (Orne, France), son of Jacques and Marie Guyon; m. 2 June 1615 Mathurine Robin; d. 30 May 1663.
On 14 March 1634, at Mortagne, Guyon and his fellow-countryman Cloutier signed an undertaking with Robert Giffard. Guyon settled at Beauport that year with his wife and most of their children, of whom there were at least eight. When he received from Giffard an arriere-fief near the Rivière du Buisson, he assumed that nobiliary surname. Several of his descendants now bear the name Dion.
Honorius Provost
ASQ, Document Faribault, passim.; Séminaire, LVII. JR (Thwaites), XXVII, 314. JJ (Laverdière et Casgrain), passim. BRH, XLIX (1943), 268-72. Louis Guyon, Étude généalogique sur Jean Guyon et ses descendants (Montreal, 1927). É.-Z. Massicotte, "Les arpenteurs de Montréal sous le régime français," BRH, XXIV (1918), 304. [Mme Pierre [F.L.] Montagne, Tourouvre et les Juchereau ... (Québec, 1965).]

Jean married Mathurine Robin Guyon Du Buisson on 2 Jun 1615 in St Jean, Mortagne, Perche, France. Mathurine was born on 18 Oct 1599 in Mortagne, Chartres, Perche, France; died on 16 Apr 1662 in Beauport, Québec, Québec, Canada; was buried in Québec, Québec, Canada. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Jean married Élisabeth Couillard on 27 Nov 1645 in Québec, Quebec, Canada. Élisabeth was born on 9 Feb 1631 in Québec, Québec, Canada; died on 20 Dec 1683 in Château-Richer, Côte-de-Beaupré, Québec, Canada. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Elisabeth Boucher. Elisabeth was born in 1646; died in 1685. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

François married Marie Madeleine Marsolet on 4 Sep 1662 in Notre-Dame de Québec, Québec, Canada. Marie was born on 27 Sep 1646 in Québec, Québec, Canada; died on 5 May 1734 in Beauport, Québec, Québec, Canada. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Alexis married Marie Simone Couillard on 11 Oct 1719 in , Montmagny, Québec, Canada. Marie was born on 28 May 1697 in , Montmagny, Québec, Canada; died on 27 Oct 1732 in Québec, Québec, Canada. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Alexis married Marie Barnabé Michon on 20 Nov 1736 in , Montmagny, Québec, Canada. Marie was born on 21 May 1704 in Contrecoeur, Marguerite-D'Youville, Québec, Canada; died on 23 Jun 1773 in St-Thomas, Joliette, Quebec, Canada. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]