The Ancestors Pierre and Jean Valley (translated from French)

Country of Talou, place of origin of the brothers Valley

The history of this branch of the great Vallée family is lost in the mists of time with the country of Talou, area located between the plates cauchois and Picardy, in High-Normandy. This area of France was inhabited in the first times by Véliocasses, a Gallic tribe, which was conquered by the Frank ones then by Rollon the Viking with his troops of Danish warriors. It is of this mixture of races that was probably born with the whole beginning from the XVII E century, the Norman ancestor Pierre Vallée and his wife Madeleine DuMesnil.

The genealogists and historians Cambray, Tanguay, Drouin, Jetté, Langlois and Lebel located the place of origin of the Norman ancestor in the parish of Midsummer's Day of the town of Rouen in Normandy. Only one document supports this thesis. It is about the marriage certificate of his son Pierre Vallée with Thérèse Leblanc, on January 12, 1665, in Beauport in News-France. However the registers of the parish of Midsummer's Day, available for consultation to the Public library of Rouen and still in very good state, teach us that the Norman ancestors Pierre Vallée and Magdeleine DuMesnil, did not marry there and that their sons Pierre and Jean were not baptized there. The speed reading of the registers of some of the 30 other parishes of the town of Rouen indicates to us that there are some Vallée families in Rouen in first half of the XVII E century at most.

Two other documents of importance point however in another direction: marriage contracts of Pierre and Jean Valley in News-France. In the first case, on November 16, 1664, the Vachon notary indicates the parish of “St Feels” évêché Rouen like place of origin of Pierre. On January 7, 1666, in the marriage contract of Jean Valley, the same notary says the interested party originating in the parish of “Scainct Sang” archbishop's palace of Rouen. Moreover, Mary Louise Dalton in his article published in 1906, entitled Notes one the Genealogy of the Vallé Family mentions the village of Saint-Saëns like place of origin of the Vallée brothers. The author had consulted to sir Arthur George Doughty, archivist of Canada celebrates it, and a Mr Gaudet, genealogist, at the time, which had had to consult the marriage contracts.

Saint-Saëns and the Valley families

Saint-Saëns is a small Norman city located at nearly 30 kilometers in the north of the town of Rouen and at equal distance, in the south, of the town of Dieppe, on the river banks Varenne, in edge of the forest of Eawy. In addition let us note the proximity of the villages of Louvetot and Muchedent from where the pioneers of the families Leduc, Lefrançois and Trépanier emigrated.

To the XVII E century, in the registers, Saëns was written without the “S” final and decided “san”, just like still today, from where the difficulties of orthography of the notary Paul Vachon in News-France. Besides the city owes its name with an Irish monk of the name of Saën (name in old Gaelic which corresponds to “French Jean”) who founded a monastery there about year 675.

According to registers' of the parish of Saint-Saëns, of his marriage with Madeleine DuMesnil, the Norman ancestor Pierre Vallée made baptize ten children in this parish:

• Marie, baptized in the church of the village on February 26, 1630 and having had Nicolas Valley and Louise Mesnil like godfather and godmother; • Jean, baptized on March 16, 1631 and having had Jean Carrol and Magdelaine Bow like godfather and godmother; • Jacques, baptized on July 30, 1633 and having had Jacques Lion and Catherine Mesnil like godfather and godmother; • Louise, baptized on December 31, 1634 and having had Nicolas Dumesnil and Louise Guillebert like godfather and godmother; • Pierre, baptized on June 6, 1636 and having had Guillaume the Large one and Catherine Carrol like godfather and godmother; • Marguerite, baptized on February 19, 1638 and having had Éloy Auger and Marguerite Saint-Bear (probable wife of Jacques Dumesnil) like godfather and godmother; • Jean, baptized on August 29, 1640 and having had Louis Tassin Flanchet and Jacqueline Mill like godfather and godmother; • Robert, baptized on March 24, 1642 and having had Robert DeLamare and Pierrette Baulon (probable wife of Nicolas Mesnil) like godfather and godmother; • Adrianne, baptized on October 23, 1643 and having had Andre Aloyaudes like godfather and Louise Flams like godmother. Adrianne probably died on October 20, 1669. The identification of the parents not having been made by the priest during the burial, filiation is dubious. • Louis, baptized on July 16, 1645, godson of Louis Carrol and Anne Simon.

Old church of Saint-Saëns demolished in 1896

There is other baptism celebrated by our couple, neither front, nor after these dates. It thus seems that Marie was the elder one and Louis, the youngest child. In the register however, Magdelaine Mesnil was buried with the cemetery of the parish of Saint-Saëns on March 20, 1646. Is this the woman of Pierre, our Norman ancestor? Uncertainty will remain on this fact because the priest did not note the usual references during the burial. Chronologically, this date corresponds to disappearance with the registers of the couple Pierre Vallée and Magdelaine Dumesnil and with the marriage of Pierre Vallée with Suzanne Savary on July 31, 1646. Is this our ancestor who remarie? If it is the case, it has at least three other children: Laurens, baptized on July 24, 1647, Catherine, on April 23, 1649, and Louyse, on February 8, 1652. Is this also our ancestor Pierre Vallée whom one buries with the cemetery of the village on March 28, 1657? Is coincidence what in this same year 1657 it made mention for the first time of his/her son, Pierre, in News-France, in a baptismal certificate of December 28, 1657 to the Three-Rivers?

Other evidence and research in the notarial acts of Saint-Saëns are however necessary to confirm the bonds between these marriages and death. The research carried out with the Departmental records of Rouen in June 1994 in the minutiers of tabellions Dumesnil, Jacques Leblanc and Louis Varengues did not bring any additional information to us on the life and the family of our Norman ancestor. Was this one too poor to require the services of a tabellionÝ? Did it sign its authenticated contracts at a tabellion in another village? did it There-have others tabellions in Saint-Saëns which one would not have preserved the minutiers? All these questions remain unanswered.

Under Ancien Régime, Saint-Saëns was a châtellenie “in the spring of which several neighbouring parishes were”, according to André Lejeune in its Notes on Saint-Saëns written in 1930 and published in 1999 by Association for the XIII E Centenaire of Saint-Saëns. The reading of the notarial acts of the royal tabellionage of first half of the XVII E century, revealed us the existence with Saint-Saëns of several Valley of which some are declared surgeons.

The parochial registers of first half of the XVII E century of Saint-Saëns, for their part, come to supplement the overall portrait. A dozen baptisms and about fifteen burials consolidate our impression which several Vallée families live at the village of Saint-Saëns and there are installed since more than one generation. To be still better located in the historical context, let us mention that, according to Notes' on Saint-Saëns of Andre Lejeune, the plague made its Saint-Saëns appearance in the year 1628, just two years before the birth of the first girl of Pierre Vallée and Marguerite Dumesnil. The plague was then widespread in all the area

by a poor fellow, ragman of its state, of the name of Bault which had acquired of old man flags with Saint-Saëns where “the plague was strong vehement”.

Then the year 1639 was remembered by the plague once again and the revolt of the Flip-flops, which has been allotted to the many extraordinary taxes imposed to the French people for three years for the financing of the war to king d' Espagne. Lastly, on May 16, 1648, fire was going to almost destroy all the village of Saint-Saëns. According to Lejeune, the destroying element

… consumed hundred fifty houses of the borough without counting one great number of buildings which were also the prey flames. Majority of the inhabitants who were victims of the disaster, were reduced to the begging; the material loss was evaluated with more than two hundred thousand books. The construction of all these May sounds which was of wood and cob and forks and spoons of thatch provided an easy food to the flames.

Is this because of these frequent calamities that Pierre and Jean Vallée left their village? Those, added with the many taxes, were to surely discourage many young people. Father and mother most probably deceased, family cohesion does not retain them any more. Let us add to that the taste of the adventure and the promises of the merchants of Rouen charged to bring immigrants in News-France in exchange of exclusive rights on export of the skins with beaver, one will not have any more to decide both young people Valley to embark.