François BRUNET dit BOURBONNAIS
Biography

François BRUNET — (ca 1644 - 1702)

François Brunet dit Bourbonnais passed away on June 23rd, 1702, at Lachine, Québec. He and wife Barbe Beauvais had 12 children, including a pair of twins, Marie-Anne and Catherine. François and Barbe's firstborn, Jean, married Elisabeth Deshayes in the Louisiana territory and raised a family in Kaskaskia, Illinois. (Gérard Lebel in Nos Ancêtres reports that Elisabeth was an "Indian woman", but this is most likely untrue.) François and Barbe have a great number of notable descendants including actors Jim Carrey and Ryan Gosling.

There are complex connections between the families of François Brunet, Barbe Beauvais, and the merchant/ fur-trader Alexandre Turpin, including a scandalous liaison. Barbe had in-laws among the Turpin family. Her eldest brother Raphaël married Alexandre's daughter Elisabeth Turpin in 1683. The following year, Barbe's sister Charlotte married the much older Alexandre himself, a widower. Charlotte had eight children with Alexandre before her death on Christmas Day, 1700.

Alexandre remarried in 1702 at the age of 60 to Marguerite Gauthier, who was not yet 18 years old. After the wedding Alexandre reportedly "made a trip out west without permission from authorities, going all the way to Michilimackinac." During his absence of about two years, Marguerite became pregnant and gave birth to a son, François. On the PRDH baptismal record for this François Gauthier, it's noted that the child had no godfather, but the godmother told the priest that Marguerite wanted the child named after his father François. PRDH does not identify the younger François Brunet as the paramour, but elsewhere it's stated that Marguerite had "become pregnant due to the unwelcome solicitation of François Brunet dit Le Bourbonnais."

[Sources: PRDH; Fichier-Origine; Our French-Canadian Ancestors (vol.15, pp.54-64), Thomas J. Laforest (tr.), Palm Harbor, Florida, 1983; Phantoms of the French Fur Trade, Timothy J. Kent, Silver Fox Enterprises, 2015; "An Entrepreneur in Early New France — Alexandre Turpin", Laura M.]

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