Jacob (Jacques) Bourgeois - Wife of Nicolas GrandJean Bourgeois

Jeff,
Sorry if I am a bit curt..trying to keep this short and to the point.

1- First thing not correct with this is the assumption that Marie Bourgeois was married to Germain Doucet and that Jacques had a sister named Marie.

Prof White has discounted this. He lists the wife (wives) of Germain Doucet as unknown.

Go to
http://www.acadian.org/acadianmyths.html
Myth #4.

People have jumped to the conclusion that Germain was married to Jacques Bouregeois's sister because, according to the capitulation papers to the English in 1654, Germain left his "brother-in-law" Jacques Bourgeois as a hostage. White has said that it is possible that Germain's second wife was the sister of Jacques's wife. That would make then brothers-in-law under French law too.

Unfortunately, the sites you list as references are not sources I would rely on as documented proof. We do not have a marriage certificate, so no proof.

2- From what I have found, Jacques Bouregeois was the illegitimate son of a widow Marguerite Bourgeois. She was the widow of Nicolas Grandjehan. Jacques was raised with his mother's last name.

However, the Church records of the parish of Saint-Romain (according to https://sites.google.com/site/allthingsbourgeois/home/family-tree) lists the birth on January 9, 1621 and that he was the son of Marguerite Bourgeois and the deceased Nicolas Grandjehan.

One hopes this is the correct Jacques.

I am going to see if I can find what Prof White says.

3- I seriously doubt that we know who Marguerite's parents were. Her father was not Jacques Grandjehan. And her mom would NOT have such a non-French name as Wreckringer.

More latter

4- There was no Robert and no Catherine that we know of. The existence of a Robert Bourgeois as a soldier in the garrison of Port Royal has been disproved.

See..
http://www.histoire-de-bourgeois.ca/documents/UN_FRERE_ET_UN_PERE_I...

5-For the rest, sorry but I do not agree. I checked the site where the Marguerite Bourgeois's tree was suppose to be posted. The Wreckringer name is no longer there.

6- Unless there is documented proof (marriage, notary records etc..), everything pass Jacques is suspect, IMHO. I have yet to find any documented proof to support Marguerite Bourgeois's tree (after Jacques).

Cheers DL

I rather not disconnect it if we're just looking for documentation but it is widely published. We can use curator notes to state that the information is speculative or unproven. We can then correct if contradicting information comes out. Otherwise, we're just going to have people continue to merge in the information. I rather have a note and describe in the About section what we currently understand about it. If something is just wrong, then I definitely want to correct / disconnect it.

I've disconnected Marguerite Bourgeois (Grandjehan), daughter of Jacques Grandjehan & Anne Catherine Petrequin.

It looks like Nicolas GrandJean died shortly before Jacques's birth, so he could still be the father. That seems more likely then a bastard so shortly after her husband's death.

So the term 'brother-in-law' in french law extends to my wife's sister's husband? Normally that is only you're sister-in-law's husband. It's a two step removed relationship, where the other is three.

It seems the conclusion is that she's either the sister of Jacques or the sister of Jeanne Trahan and I assume we have no documentation that she was the sister of Jeanne Trahan. Just wondering how we should document this...

Just as a note on methods where there is not enough information to assign a "widely published" parent - I make "placeholder" unknown parent profiles, use the AKA fields for the possible names (along with curator notes, overview comments, & links within the overview).

I then field lock the profiles & a manager is challenged to present decent documentation before that "unknown" is changed.

And this way the profile is findable but the Geni tree closer to the scholarly reality.

Yes, brother-in-law in that era also extend to include the man married to the husband of a man's wife's sister.

There were two types of dispensations required by the Catholic Church in that era. One was based on blood and one based on relationship via marriage.

Marriage in that era in France had a great deal to do with property (hence the requirement for a marriage contract and the more extended view of family. ) Both men had married into the family of those two sisters and hence were brothers-in-laws, connected by marriage.

Do we know when Jacques Grandjehan died? I have not seen any record of his death? Unless there is a burial record we can point to, all this is guess work.

If Jacques would have been legitimate, he would have taken his father's name. Since he was known by his mother's last name (and in that era, women did not change their name when they married), one can only assume Jacques Bourgeois was not legitimate.

I read someplace the idea that Jacques took his mother's last name because she was from a more important family, a family of surgeons. That idea does not take into account the culture of the time since being a surgeon was NOT considered to be a respected position in those days.

According to Prof White, Germain's first wife is unknown. She is the mother of his children. He may have married the sister or sister-in-law of Jacques Bourgeois in Acadia but he had no children with his second wife.
In my database, I have her listed as unknown.

Private User You made a comment that I was recently guilty of as well. we do not know conclusively that Nicolas Grandjehan died before Jacques' birth, only before his baptism which were several years apart.

For general purposes, I'm still trying to unravel how a Marie Bourgeois came to be at all (not to mention who her parents were), as there seems to be no evidence that Jacques had a sister, and why would she likewise have the Bourgeois name?

Given all the previous, sound logic, if Jacques had a sister, she likely would have had a different last name.

So who is Marie Bourgeois, or did she even exist?

Paula Thornton, as I understand it, we probably have a wife of Germain named Marie. We also have that according to the capitulation papers to the English in 1654, Germain left his "brother-in-law" Jacques Bourgeois as a hostage. So the common assumption here is that Germain's wife was the sister of Jacques Bourgeois, thus making him Germain's brother-in-law. The other possibility, which is applicable under French law, was that she was the sister of Jacques's wife, Jeanne Trahan.

So, the possibilites seem to be:
* Marie Trahan
* Marie Bourgeois / GrandJean

In fact, I see FrancoGene actually has him married to Unknown Trahan.
http://www.francogene.com/genealogie-quebec-genealogy/118/118223.php

So I'm wondering if new research has been presented.
Here is some older info that explains a good bit of it. http://www.acadian.org/doucet.html

Private User You did not answer my question, you simply restated the many 'assumptions' that are in operation. I have not seen where anyone has effectively established someone called Marie Bourgeois. So far she is someone who was possibly married to Germain. But no one has established her existence otherwise.

There is no evidence to support that Jacques had a sister.

So without either of those relationships who is Marie Bourgeois, simply a "Marie" who was assumed to be the sister of Jacques? But he didn't have a recorded sister and she would most likely not have had the name Bourgeois.

There just seem to be a lot of 'assumptions' here that really need to be challenged.

It seems to me there is a certain level of evidence recorded in the Histoire et Généalogie des Acadiens that suggests two possible scenarios, one of which is that Jacques had a sister who married Germain. They list his wife as Marie Bourgeois.

According to René Perron, records show Marquerite Parie dit Bourgeois, wife of Nicholas GrandJean, baptized five additional children prior to Jan 1620 where "her name always figured", which seems to suggest they were baptized with the name Bourgeois or Grandjehan-Bourgeois. So we know Jacques had at least 5 siblings and it seems probable that at least one of them was a sister. Growing up without their father, them may have just been know as Bourgeois.

I've also seen where Nicolas is listed as "GrandJean dit Bourgeois", with some online trees having his parents listed as Jacques Bourgeois & Anatolia Fauconnet. I don't know if that is correct - part of this discussion / investigation.

We also have Stephen White writing this in the Dictionnaire Généalogique des Familles Acadiennes.
(i) It is not possible that the mother of the children of Germain Doucet is a sister of Jacques Bourgeois' wife, as certain authors have proposed, being given that the in-laws of Jacques Bourgeois didn't get married until 1627. There exists the possibility that Germain Doucet nevertheless married, in second nuptials, to a daughter of Guillaume Trahan who gave him no surviving children; but it is as possible that such a second wife is the sister of Jacques Bourgeois and not the sister of his wife. (See SGCF Vol VI, p 372.)

So, based on all this, it seems to be that the information leans toward Marie as the sister of Jacques (or half sister if he was illegitimate).

What records "show Marguerite Bourgeois, wife of Nicholas GrandJean, baptized five additional children prior to Jan 1620"?

http://www.acadian.org/doucet.html
René Perron of Sèvres, France, wrote an article for La Société Historique Acadienne. It was printed in their Les Cahiers publication (October to December 1991 issue) and was entitled "De Germain Doucet à Jacques Bourgeois". This translates as From Germain Doucet to Jacques Bourgeois. I have a copy of this publication as well as the very next one in which Mr. Perron continues with another article re Germain and Jacques.

Paul-Pierre Bourgeois states that Mr. Perron found something, while researching in France, that disturbed him. "It is the registration for the baptism of a certain Jacobus, dated January 8th, 1621. He is said the son of deceased Nicolas Grandjehan (Big John) and a Bourgeois woman whose name is left blank. She is the said widow of Grandjehan. This family is well known in the town*. The woman's name is Marguerite. She has baptized five other children, the last one in January 1620, where her name always figured. The Grandjehan-Bourgeois family has various alliances with the Order of Malta, the medical society, and even the court of France." (taken from A la recherche des Bourgeois d'Acadie (1641 B 1800) page 14).

Continuing with the next generation, it looks like we have one too many children (a Marie: www.geni.com/people/Marie-Françoise-Bourgeois/6000000002976694478) for Jacob Bourgeois and Jeanne Trahan. I propose that *that* Marie have her About "taken apart" into the other proper children of Jacob & Jeanne, moving children & spouses as appropriate. This "super-Marie" is super-'confused'! The other *known* children are all set as MP's.

The children of Jacques Bourgeois and Jeanne Trahan have been 'sorted out' and MP'd. However, the grandchildren have not been verified yet.

Thanks - not sure if I'll get a chance to look for a bit.

Thank you all for your help. It appears that he profile for Marie has been updated and merged. I am very grateful for all your efforts.

Phillip: If you could check the 'grandchildren', that would be great; I would not be surprised that with all the cross-merging that was done that there may be some grandchildren that are with the incorrect parents and/or duplicated in another family.

Has anyone proven that Nickalos is Jacques' father. I'm a direct descendant through my great grandmere Justilia Sildonise Bourgeois. Her daughter Jean Noel Bonamour is my dad's mother.

Great to have this info. I got alot of miss information on my tree on Ancestry.com. I have to delete half of the on it and start over. I have 6 couples listed on ever family surname and showing up about every of 50-100 years. I have the apps., so are people doing this or are the computer systems running these apps making the mistakes.