Jean Guyon ''du Buisson'' (Bapt. September 18, 1592 – May 30, 1663) was the patriarch of one of the earliest families to settle on the North shore of New France's

St. Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connecting ...

. Guyon made his living as a

master mason Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

and, according to Perche-born genealogist Madame Montagne, was regarded as having an excellent reputation as a mason. In 1615, he helped construct the Saint-Aubin de Tourouvre church steeple's interior stone staircase and in 1625 he was charged with the re-building of Mortagne's fortifications.

Habitant in New France

Guyon was from the village of

Tourouvre Tourouvre () is a former commune in the Orne department in north-western France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Tourouvre au Perche. The first photovoltaic road in the world was under construction in Tourouvre in Novem ...

's Saint-Aubin parish located in

Chartres Chartres () is the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 170,763 inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Chartres (as d ...

diocese, ancient

Perche Perche () (French: ''le Perche'') is a former province of France, known historically for its forests and, for the past two centuries, for the Percheron draft horse breed. Until the French Revolution, Perche was bounded by four ancient territorie ...

province, and present-day

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

Orne Orne (; nrf, Ôrne or ) is a département in the northwest of France, named after the river Orne. It had a population of 279,942 in 2019. Guyon and his family emigrated from

province to

New France New France (french: Nouvelle-France) was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spai ...

on the North shore of the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connectin ...

near present-day

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

city as part of the Percheron immigration movement, a pioneering group of about 300 colonists who settled in Canada in the three decades starting in 1632. Robert Giffard de Moncel was granted by the Company of Hundred Associates the Beauport seigneurie, one of the New France's first seigneuries, Beauport now being a borough of

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Communauté métrop ...

. The Beauport seigneurie was to be the first agriculturally-based settlement requiring the recruitment of tradesmen such as Guyon to establish the new colony. At the end of a three-year service contact taking effect on arrival in Canada, Guyon was in turn granted a one-thousand-

arpent An arpent (, sometimes called arpen) is a unit of length and a unit of area. It is a pre-metric French unit based on the Roman ''actus''. It is used in Quebec, some areas of the United States that were part of French Louisiana, and in Mauritius ...

arrière-

fief A fief (; la, feudum) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an Lord, overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a for ...

(subordinated-fief) land concession from Giffard. Guyon traveled aboard a convoy of four ships under the command of Charles Duplessis-Bochart and arrived in New France in 1634. As Guyon's arrière-fief was located near ''rivière du Buisson'' (river of bushes), Guyon exercised his seigniorial system right to be known as Guyon du Buisson, or the ''sieur du Buisson''. He built a small mill and helped build the parish church of nearby Quebec and Giffard's seigniorial manor. For nine years, he and

Zacharie Cloutier Zacharie Cloutier (c. 1590 – September 17, 1677) was a French carpenter who immigrated to New France in 1634 in the first wave of the Percheron immigration from the former province of Perche, to an area that is today part of Quebec, Canada ...

disputed Giffard's seigniorial rights to receive ''foi et hommage'' (

fealty An oath of fealty, from the Latin ''fidelitas'' (faithfulness), is a pledge of allegiance of one person to another. Definition In medieval Europe, the swearing of fealty took the form of an oath made by a vassal, or subordinate, to his lord. "Fea ...

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 seigniorial system, both during the French regime and under the English. His eldest son, who would become a royal

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

of the colony and also was named Jean Guyon, married Élisabeth Couillard, daughter of :fr:Guillaume Couillard, New France's first settler to be ennobled by

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

, and granddaughter of

Louis Hébert Louis Hébert (c. 1575 – 25 January 1627) is widely considered the first European apothecary in the region that would later become Canada, as well as the first European to farm in said region. He was born around 1575 at 129 de la rue Saint ...

, the first French colonist established with his family in New France. Their wedding was accompanied by the "two violins...which had not been seen yet in Canada." After his death in 1693, 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 Canadian French Canadians (referred to as Canadiens mainly before the twentieth century; french: Canadiens français, ; feminine form: , ), or Franco-Canadians (french: Franco-Canadiens), refers to either an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to Fren ...

s. By 2006, news media noted that at least three out of four Québécois descend from him. The descendants are often recognized as Dion, sometimes as Despres, Dumontier, Lemoine, in Louisiana as Derbanne and Texas as Berban. According to Charbonneau et al. 1993, more than 2,150 births of Guyon descendants had by 1730 been recorded, and according to the

Université de Montréal The Université de Montréal (UdeM; ; translates to University of Montreal) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte-de ...

's ''Research Program in Historical

Demography Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and Population dynamics, dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups ...

'' (PRDH), Guyon had by the end of the 19th century 9,674 married descendants, and thus ranked second among top New France pioneers in terms of number of married descendants. The PRDH program enabled neurological researchers to trace 40 cases of classical

Friedreich's ataxia Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA or FA) is an autosomal-recessive genetic disease that causes difficulty walking, a loss of sensation in the arms and legs, and impaired speech that worsens over time. Symptoms generally start between 5 and 20 year ...

, a rare inherited disease, across 12 generations of previously thought unrelated French-Canadians descendants to one common ancestral couple: Guyon and his wife Mathurine Robin. The disease causes progressive damage to the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes th ...

resulting in symptoms ranging from gait disturbance and speech problems to

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, hea ...

. The finding allows for gene

chromosomal A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

localization studies that had previously been judged to be almost impossible in rare

autosomal recessive In genetics, dominance is the phenomenon of one variant (allele) of a gene on a chromosome masking or overriding the effect of a different variant of the same gene on the other copy of the chromosome. The first variant is termed dominant and t ...

disorders.

Toponymy and memorials

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.

References

Bibliography

CIEQ
- Centre interuniversitaire d'études québécoises, Inventaire des lieux de mémoire de la Nouvelle-France, Université Laval
DCB
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Université Laval / University of Toronto
Fichier Origine
- Répertoire informatisé de la Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie en partenariat avec la Fédération française de généalogie *
PREFEN
- Programme de Recherche sur l'Émigration des Français En Nouvelle-France, Université de Caen * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Guyon, Jean 1592 births 1663 deaths People from Orne Emigrants from France to New France