Some other Roys and odds and ends of interest

Marriage of Simon Roy in 1656 http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.118&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

Birth of Jean Roy son of Simon Roy and Jeanne Godart http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.43&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

Da

A massacre or battle in June of 1660 no Roys, just found it interesting http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.177&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

Simon Roy killed with others by Indians 1662; http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.179&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

Marriage of Marie le Roy daughter of Guilliame 1666 http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.146&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

The Montreal parish registers for 1664 and 65 show an unusally large number of deaths at the hands of the Iroquois.

Daughter Marie of Simeon Roy in 1681, http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.218&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

This same Marie died at 3 Months, http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.220&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

Mystery

The more I work on the genealogy the more respect I have for the old time researchers who actually had to visit libraries and churches to find their information.  The Internet makes things much easier in some ways but the abundance of information and the ease with which it can be found creates a temptation to find more and more without digesting it and placing it in context.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on the life of Jean Roy.  Should be simple, he was born, grew up and died, married and had children along the way and had a job.  Even those facts are shrouded in mystery.  We assume that he was born in 1633 because of the age given on the manifest of the St. Andre, where his name is spelled Jehan  Roy instead of Jean Roy.  We know it our Jean because his wife Francoise Bouet is listed as well.  Spellings were not always consistent. Follow this link to see more about the manifest  http://www3.telus.net/michel_robert/standre1659.html .  But notice that in this reproduction Francoise is simply “the wife Roy”.  Other documents support the link.

More mystery surrounds his death.  The entry at Lachine seems to indicate that he died in November of 1676.  Problem is there were two sets of records for the church at Lachine in the first years because it was a mission out of Montreal’s Notre Dame.  The Montreal records show that Jean Roy died in May of 1676 just before the little church at Lachine opened.  The first church at Lachine opened in the summer of 1676, still as a mission, it did not become it’s own parish until 1678.  I tend toward the earlier date because I suspect that the priest at Lachine was working from notes or memory when he wrote those initial entries after the parish was officially established;  many dates are left blank as if he was going to go back and fill them in from the original entries later and then never got around to it.  Certainly there would have been enough to do at the little church to keep him from finishing his task.

Montreal Records for those of you who have ancestry.com http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.198&sid=&gskw=Jean+Roy&cr=1

Jean is often listed as a Sergeant Royal.  One of his children married sometime after his death and he is mentioned as dead and as having been a Sergeant of the Bailliage of Isle of  Montreal.  A Baillage is  the area in which a court has jurisdiction.  The first court opened in Montreal in 1663, four years after Jean arrived.  The  job of  is much like that our Sheriffs do, they enforce court orders.  So what brings Jean to Lachine in 1676? Is he there as an officer of the court? Has he been assigned to help manage the construction of new fort and new church and other buildings at Lachine?

There are some other interesting things going on in the immediate area in 1676 the church is very involved in protecting Indians who have converted to Christianity.  This small community does a bit of moving during the years around the death of our Jean.  It seems less likely that he would have been involved in this than in the building of the fort.  There must be records available from the court in Montreal that would clear up some of the questions surrounding his death.

Some links:

Birth of his first child Jeanne Francoise, with Jeanne Mance as the godmother http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.40&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

Birth of his second child Jean,  http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.48&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

Birth of his second daughter Marie Agnes, http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.63&sid=&gskw=&cr=1

Birth of his third daughter, again named Jeanne Francoise, http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=1091&path=M.Montr%c3%a9al+(Basilique+Notre-Dame).1642-1681.76&sid=&gskw=&cr=1