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 (, ) is a large international river in the middle latitudes of North America connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Its waters flow in a northeasterly direction from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawren ...

. Guyon made his living as a

master mason Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

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's Saint-Aubin parish located in

Chartres Chartres () is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir Departments of France, department in the Centre-Val de Loire Regions of France, region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 1 ...

diocese, ancient

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

province, and present-day

Normandy Normandy (; or ) is a geographical and cultural region in northwestern Europe, roughly coextensive with the historical Duchy of Normandy. Normandy comprises Normandy (administrative region), mainland Normandy (a part of France) and insular N ...

Orne Orne (; 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 (, ) was the territory colonized by Kingdom of France, 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 Kingdom of Great Br ...

on the North shore of the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (, ) is a large international river in the middle latitudes of North America connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Its waters flow in a northeasterly direction from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrenc ...

near present-day

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

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 Robert Giffard de MoncelMoncel is the name place one km south of Autheil, (c. 1587 – 14 June 1668) was a Perche-based surgeon and apothecary who became New France's first colonizing seigneur. Initial voyages As a naval surgeon, Giffard made ...

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 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 Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...

. 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 (; ) 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 overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal alle ...

(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, Canad ...

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

fealty An oath of fealty, from the Latin (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. "Fealty" also r ...

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. These points are usually on the ...

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

Louis XIV LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...

, 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 Sa ...

, 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 nineteenth century, are an ethnic group descended from French people, French colonists first arriving in Canada (New France), France's colony of Canada in 1608. The vast majority of ...

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 Després, 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; ) 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-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce on M ...

's ''Research Program in Historical

Demography Demography () is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration. Demographic analysis examine ...

'' (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) is a rare, inherited, autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects the nervous system, causing progressive damage to the spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and cerebellum, leading to impaired ...

, 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 complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...

resulting in symptoms ranging from gait disturbance and speech problems to

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. CVDs constitute a class of diseases that includes: coronary artery diseases (e.g. angina pectoris, angina, myocardial infarction, heart attack), heart failure, ...

. The finding allows for gene

chromosomal A chromosome is a package of DNA containing part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes, the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with nucleosome-forming packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells, the most importa ...

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 Phenotype, effect of a different variant of the same gene on Homologous chromosome, the other copy of the chromosome. The firs ...

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