MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉALOGIQUE
CANADIENNE-FRANÇAISE

The enigma of the Kerouac ancestor finally resolved:
Brittany-Quebec Cooperation  

Clément Kirouac  

Urbain-François Le Bihan, sieur de Kervoach, purposely and cleverly covered his tracks. His presence and actions have been hidden deep in the archives of both Quebec and Brittany for over two hundred years.  It has taken years of patient and dedicated research to finally unearth this ‘son of a good family’, who became an adventurer to find the most precious furs and to hold ‘his social rank’. [1]

PRELIMINARY

A very close cooperation between Brittany and Quebec was the essential condition that eventually made it possible to track down this most enigmatic ancestor of the Kerouac, Kirouac and Kéroack of North America. The person most responsible for this discovery is Mrs. Patricia Dagier of the Genealogical Centre of the Finistère in Quimper, Brittany. It took three years of steady arduous research and the rigorous determination of this passionate professional genealogist for the true identity of our ancestor to be finally revealed to us at the end of September 1999. François Kirouac, from Quebec City, was the third person to join the search team in the spring of 1998.

The present communication is meant to be an encouragement to all genealogists who, at one point or another in their research, meet with some seemingly insurmountable roadblocks, which make them feel like abandoning everything. This text may read like a history course as it follows the events chronologically as the quest for the Kirouac ancestor progressed from the end of the nineteenth century to 1995, and from 1996 to 1999 inclusively.

INTRODUCTION

In North America, that is in Canada and the USA, there are at least six different ways to write the name: Kéroack, Kérouac, Kérouack, Kirouac, Kirouack, Kyrouac. When our ancestor came over from Europe, most people could not read nor write which may explain why we have found, in old church records, some Carouac, Carunoac even Keloaque, but these always referred to our family name, which is of Breton origin.

KER, the first syllable of our name, means house or village. In Brittany there are no less than 18,000 surnames and place names starting with KER. In former times, Breton people often used to write a K followed by a stroke: K/, which stood for KER. So in our family too, various signatures showed different spellings: K/voac, K/uoac, K/voach. The pronunciation of the surname is also of interest: very recent research in Brittany showed that K/voac is pronounced: Kerouac, where v = u (and in English it is pronounced ‘OO’ like in ‘too’.  It is also useful to know that the letters ‘v’ and ‘u’ in the Breton language were not only interchangeable but could simply be left out when people wrote a name; in our case, it would give: Kéroac, pronounced: kay-ro-ak. Translator’s note).

In Quebec, many families are interested in doing their genealogy and have been able to go all the way back to their ancestor also identifying distant cousins with the same and/or similar surnames in France. For example, the Tardif come from Étables-sur-mer, (Barns-on-the-Sea) near Saint-Brieuc, (Brittany). The Legault dit (known as) Deslauriers come from Irvillac in Brittany, and the Perron, from La Rochelle. BUT when we tried to find some Kerouac in Brittany, that proved absolutely impossible! Not one in sight even with thousands of surnames starting with KER. Isn’t it strange?  None in Brittany but 3,000 in North America!

THE FIRST DOCUMENT: OUR ANCESTOR’S MARRIAGE ACT

As did the first researchers in our family, let’s start by looking at the principal elements mentioned in the marriage act of the ancestor. The ceremony took place in Cap Saint-Ignace, on 22 October 1732. The groom signs his name in ‘the Breton fashion of the day’, but it is only in the last decade that we have been able to decipher his signature!  

In the year one thousand seven hundred and thirty two, on the twenty second day of the month of October, having been granted marriage license directly from Monseignor de Samos, Coadjutor of Quebec, (without the three official public announcements in his parish church) between Maurice Louis Le Brice de Karouac from the parish of Beriel, bishopric of Cornouaille son of Mr. françois hyacinthe Le Brice de Karouac And of dame Véronique Magdeleine de meu Seuillac His father and mother on the one hand, And of Louise Bernier daughter of the late jean Bernier And of Geneviève Caron Her father And mother from this parish on the other hand.

(…) in the presence of Nicolas Jean de Kerverzo (…)
Brother Simon Foucault, miss(ionary)
Maurice Louis Le Bris S de K/voach

THE PERSISTENT TRADITION OF ABBÉ JULES-ADRIEN KIROUAC

It will prove to be a very long and arduous trek for the Kirouacs to find this surname of “Kervoach” that never existed any way, and to identify the native parish of “Beriel” that never was either. Over a century ago, the Abbé Jules-Adrien Kirouac, after a journey to France, worked out a hypothesis that was carried down from generation to generation in our family. After the death of the Abbé Jules-Adrien, his nephew and spiritual heir, Conrad Kirouac, better known as Brother Marie-Victorin, carried on the torch. So with the years, the tradition was gradually adapted to the circumstances. Later on, Brother Marie-Victorin passed on his writings to his former professor, Brother Lucien Serre, a historian, who collected all known information on the family and wrote it up into an article that became the official reference for our family. This article published in 1928 in the Bulletin de Recherches historiques[2].  (Bulletin of Historical Researches). Well, of course who in our family would ever dare to question the words of these two learned men: the Abbé Jules-Adrien and Conrad Kirouac, the great botanist? Many decades later, Jack Kerouac, the famous American writer, went to Paris and Brittany looking for the identity and place of origin of his ancestor. His real name was Jean-Louis Kerouac but, in Europe, he would introduce himself as “Jean-Louis Le Bris de Kerouac” convinced, as he was, that the particle ‘de’ (meaning ‘of’) was a legacy of the Breton nobility[3].

THE TRADITION OF ABBÉ JULES-ADRIEN K. CARRIED ON BY LUCIEN SERRE

Robert Rumilly, the respected historian, in his well-known book entitled Le Frère Marie-Victorin et son temps (Brother Marie-Victorin and His Time), published in 1949, copied word for word what Lucien Serre had transmitted:  

The Abbé Jules Kirouac, parish priest of Sainte-Justine, obtained his information during his journey in France.  He passed it on to his nephew, Brother Marie-Victorin, who passed it on to Lucien Serre in 1928. This information and other details on the same subject were collected by the Institut généalogique Drouin de Montréal (The Drouin Genealogical Institute of Montreal). They  had constituted a precious historical document concerning the genealogy of the family of Brother Marie-Victorin. We wish to congratulate them and thank them[4].

So what was in that article written by Lucien Serre and published in the Bulletin of Historical Researches in 1928? The ancestor was no longer from Beriel but from Kerien!  The reason for the change in the name was obviously to link the ancestor with the de Kerouartz family who had lived in that village of the Côtes-du-Nord (North-Coast area). From there, three brothers would have left in 1730. One of them would have died at sea. Upon his arrival in New France, Maurice-Louis de Kéroac would have been a merchant in Kamouraska. His other brother Alexandre de Kérouack, who had no descendants in Canada, left no trace of his time here except for one signature at the christening of the third son of Maurice-Louis! The great genealogist, Monsignor Cyprien Tanguay, does not even mention this brother. As for his signature, that is another story altogether that will destroy, nullify, and quell the legend of the three travelers.

At the wedding ceremony of the ancestor in 1732, Nicolas Jean de Kerverzo, another Breton, signed as a witness to the groom. Some historians here pretended that he had gone back to France soon after but, in 1998, research showed that there was indeed a Nicolas-Jean Olide de Kerverzo, originally from Saint-Brieuc in Brittany, who was married in La Pocatière, (Quebec) in 1736. He was a notary from 1748 until 1755 and he left 365 notary’s deeds and acts. To say that he had left no trace after the wedding of his compatriot de K/voach is obviously totally inaccurate.

Cyprien Tanguay wrote that the ancestor had three sons and that two of them left descendants. Rightly so but, when it came to naming them, he got the names of the youngest and oldest mixed up. This error was only discovered when the Parchemin Database was consulted. As a matter of fact, “Louis is the last son”,[5] and “Alexandre, known as Alexandre-Simon, is the eldest”.[6] Last, but not least, and always according to the tradition inherited from Lucien Serre, “in March 1736, in order to liquidate an inheritance and possibly to acquire some more goods for his business, Le Brice de Kéroac left Cap-Saint-Ignace on a schooner to get on board a ship for France. He fell ill near Kamouraska and died there on 5 March 1736”. Whoever wrote that, obviously did not know that the Saint-Lawrence River was frozen solid at that time of the year!

OTHER GENEALOGICAL SOURCES

As far as other genealogical sources are concerned when it comes to the name of the Kirouac ancestor, every French-Canadian genealogical search tool, person and group, used the marriage act of 1732. Every one of them transcribed the surname Le Bris as Le Brice, and as for the particle and surname de Kervoach, Cyprien Tanguay gives Kéroach known as Kéroac, known as Breton and Kuéroack. Other works usually state Kéroac, even Kirouac. In all these genealogical books, the only small differences found have to do with various spellings of the ancestor’s signature, perhaps because of the different accents in the spoken Breton language. As mentioned earlier, the proper way to pronounce the surname K/voach, is a very recent discovery, even for the Kirouacs. And you will see what a difference it makes to know the correct pronunciation of names in the Breton language.

OUR ANCESTOR’S PLACE OF ORIGIN

As well as for the surname, the ancestor’s place of origin was also another cause for confusion. In the parish records at the wedding, Father Simon Foucault wrote “Beriel”.  As mentioned before, this spelling of the name according to the tradition of Lucien Serre gave rise to many unfounded assertions. Nonetheless, as far back as 1892, the Abbé Jules-Adrien Kirouac was saying that he had been to “Berrien”? Closer to us, in the Dictionnaire national des Canadian-Français[7], it was clearly written that the Kirouac ancestor was from “Berrien in Cornouaille”. That is right and now proven.

As in the case of the surname, only the most recent research has unraveled the truth from the legend regarding Beriel and Kerien.  Let’s look at Beriel first. Mr. Seckel from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France) wrote in 1996: “There is no parish by the name of Beriel. (…) Our predecessors, in genealogical precision, have mentioned a possible link with the real village of Berrien, in the Finistère Department, in the township of Huelgoat.” Mrs. Jeannine Blonce, president of the Genealogical Centre of the Côtes d’Armor (Brittany), wrote in a letter dated 26 November 1996: “ I have read through the archives of the towns and parishes of the bishoprics of Dol, Rennes, Saint-Malo, Nantes, and Saint-Brieuc. Nowhere have I found a Beriel and it does not seem that Beriel would have become Kerien”. So many detours to arrive at Berrien, a very large parish with two villages: Huelgoat and Locmaria-Berrien, located at the foot of the Monts d’Arrée, (Arrée Hills). Huelgoat has since taken over Berrien and is the most important town in the area and is also our ancestor’s home base and place of origin, as you will see.

CREATION OF THE KIROUAC FAMILY ASSOCIATION

If the Lucien Serre legendary tradition lasted many decades, even as late as the early nineties, it does not mean that nothing was happening amongst the Kirouacs. Far from that. Towards the end of the eighties, Mr. Le Petit, a Breton researcher, was hired in order to find the truth. During five years, he sifted through the records of many Breton villages, including those of Berrien (Huelgoat) where he found a François Le Bris. Thinking that he could be the ancestor’s father, he followed this lead. He also found a François-Joachim Le Bihan de Kervoac and the names of certain members of his family.

As a conclusion to his research, here is what he wrote in the Bulletin of the Kirouac Family in December 1994: “I leave these many assumptions for the readers to ponder.”[8]  Six months later, Jacques Kirouac, the founding president of the association, made the following comments on those results: “All these efforts should eventually produce some results. We need to be patient, and in the long run, chance is probably our best ally”.[9]

1996-1999: A PERSONNAL QUEST

I have always been fascinated by the history of the Kirouac ancestor and, in 1996, I decided to take on this search for my own personal satisfaction. In May 1996, as part of the preparation to our journey to Brittany, I mailed over a hundred search notices to the Le Bris that I found in the telephone books of the departments of Finistère, Côtes d’Armor, and Morbihan. There was a bait in these search notices sent to people living in twenty-seven villages and towns. It mentioned that the famous American writer Jack Kerouac was a member of this ‘Le Bris de Kerouac’ family.

One of the recipients was Pierre Le Bris, librarian and publisher in Brest who, in 1965, had met Jack Kerouac when Jack was in Brittany.[10] This very well known Mr. Le Bris would be a great help later on. Due to his contacts with André Rivier, a journalist at the ‘Télégramme de Brest’, the search notice was published in that paper on Saturday, 17 August 1996.[11] At that time the paper’s circulation was 200,000 copies. Here is how Patricia Dagier described the impact of this notice:

As the search exploded in all directions, assumptions were multiplying like dandelions in the sun. Some thought that the Kerouacs could be from Gouarec in Côtes d’Armor, or from the town of Muzillac in Morbihan, from the village of Kerouac in Kernevel, from Perguet Chapel in Bénodet, known in the past as Beriet, from Kervoarc’h Pond in Plomelin, from the town of Berrien, from Moustoir in Châteauneuf-du-Faou, from Carhaix and from so many other places. Well, one thing was common to all these places, their archives had never been thoroughly and rigorously read through, otherwise the presence of some “Le Bris de Kervoac” might have been discovered.

A VERY IMPORTANT STEP

On the marriage certificate, the ancestor’s place of origin was Cornouaille, so it was logic to stop at the Genealogical Centre of the Finistère in Quimper, the main town in Cornouaille. After our visit there, the Kirouac file was given to Patricia Dagier but, in order not to influence her research, she was not informed of the last researcher’s hypotheses. She really started from scratch.

PATRICIA DAGIER FROM QUIMPER,  A PASSIONATE GENEALOGIST

During three years, Mrs. Dagier, genealogist from Quimper, read every word of every parish records of the Finistère. This is what she wrote in 1999:  

When I say that I have read every parish record of the Finistère, I mean all the records, on paper and on microfilms, containing all the legal acts. I insist on this point, because this is the only way to correctly go about it in genealogy. The whole content of an act is important. There is so much more important information besides the names of the baptized or names of the bride and groom, there are also the names of the godparents and the witnesses, etc… all this information can be used and has to be used to find answers and clues. I consider that I have all the time in the world and I am studying carefully every small phrase, each small clue. If I had not done this so far, I would still be at square one because I would never have found those four signatures of your ancestor hidden in the dark recesses of mountains of judicial archives.[12]

Mrs. Dagier was determined to have all the cards in her hands, trumps included; therefore she took on herself to read every single legal act from Huelgoat for a period of two hundred years, from 1612 to 1812. She put all this information into the ‘Logiciel Accès’ (a genealogical database). In other word she translated all this information from hand written Old French into modern understandable and readable print. This computerized information bank now holds for that period:  6446 births, 1736 marriages and 4719 burials. As for the surnames, which are of interest to us: 479 Le Bris, 37 Bizien, and 124 Le Bihan were found. No one will ever know how many journeys Patricia Dagier made to all the various genealogical centres and to the General Archives of Brittany. It represents countless trips to Brest, Saint-Brieuc, Vannes, Huelgoat and Rennes to read Breton sources.[13]

NON-EXISTANT SURNAMES

Through LE LIEN, the Bulletin of the Finistère Genealogical Centre, many questions were published for the readers and researchers to answer. After one whole year, not one positive answer had been received. This proved that Mrs. Dagier was right once again: “Not one Le Bris from Brittany had ever added the particle de Kervoach to his name as did the ancestor on his marriage act in 1732.”

Now, what about his mother’s name? On the marriage act she is: “Véronique-Magdeleine de ‘meu Seuillac’”! Once more, if we had known anything about the old Breton language, we would have discovered sooner, that this surname meu Seuillac is the ancient form of “Muzillac”. All the experts agree on that point and add that it is a very well known surname in Brittany and that it belongs to a noble family still holding all their noble titles. This family used to live in the Château de Pratulo en Clenden-Poher, (the Pratulo Castle in Clenden-Poher). The names of every member of this family have been carefully registered over the years and could very easily be checked, but Véronique-Magdeleine is nowhere to be found. So what’s up? Is our ancestor trying to look noble by borrowing a surname? After all, didn’t he like to be called “De Kervoach”?  Here is another interesting detail: Nicolas-Jean de Kerverzo, witness at the ancestor’s wedding, was most likely related to the Muzillac through the family Perichou de Kerverzo. Could this crafty compatriot be in connivance with the groom? ‘Véronique-Magdeleine de Muzillac’ is a non-person, and the ‘Le Bris de Kervoach’ not a family!” So where could this name “Kerouac”, spelled: Kervoac in the Breton language, come from?

AUTUMN 1997,  AT LAST A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

In the autumn of 1997, about one year into the search, some hope a last. Again I quote Mrs. Dagier:  

After shifting and sifting through reams of documents and cataloguing the information for all the villages with a name somewhat similar, maybe, at long last, there was a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. In the parish records of Saint-Mélaine in the town of Morlaix, there is an Auffroy LeBihan, sieur de Kervoac, in 1648! Then there is also another Auffroy le Bihan born in 1618, in Lanmeur, son of a notary-solicitor. There is even a village called Kervoac in Lanmeur! At last, we had come full circle.[14]

After checking the whole diocese of Cornouaille, Mrs. Dagier started looking into the next area called Trégor and there she found three places known as Kervoac Huella (Upper Kervoac), Kervoac Izella (Lower Kervoac), and Kervoac Creiz (Middle Kervoac) all located around Lanmeur. Mr. Jean-François Pellan, President of the Genealogical Centre of the Finistère writes: 

I have found no other place called KERVOAC in Brittany, save for the one in Lanmeur (…) given the fact that this Kervoac in Lanmeur seems to be the only one in Brittany, one can rightly declare that the name comes from that parish, that it is the place of origin of the Kerouac ancestor (…) and that everyone bearing that name is a descendent of that ancestor and there is only one place in Brittany with that name. This is rather unusual (…)[15]

The search that followed went along those lines: the use of land or property as surname. As we mentioned before, in the whole of Brittany, there was only one Le Bihan family, originally from Lanmeur, that ever used the name and particle de Kervoac and they did so for four generations.  

Henry Le Bihan, notary in Lanmeur, (married in 1609)
Auffroy Le Bihan, sieur de Kervoac, merchant in Morlaix, (1618-1662)
Laurens Le Bihan, sieur de Kervoac, attorney-solicitor in Huelgoat. (1646-1686)
François-Joachim Le Bihan, sieur de Kervoac, royal notary in Huelgoat, (1667-1727) Wedding: 1687.

This Le Bihan family, who used the particle de Kervoac, from places known in Lanmeur, first moved to Morlaix then finally settled in Huelgoat. As already mentioned, Huelgoat used to be part of Berrien where we find three inter-related families by marriage: Le Bihan, Le Bris, and Bizien.

INTENSIFYING THE SEARCH IN QUEBEC

During that time, the search went full speed ahead in Quebec, in the National Archives and at the French-Canadian Genealogical Society. In 1998, François Kirouac, from Quebec City, came on board this fast moving train, conducted by Patricia Dagier, giving his help and determination, and also the fruit of his patient research already started a few years before. Given the fact that our ancestor lived in the Judiciary district of Quebec meant that numerous non-classified notaries’ deeds were only available in the National Archives of Quebec. Indeed it is in these bundles of papers that François Kirouac made some very important discoveries concerning our ancestor.

In the spring of 1998, the cooperation between Quimper, Montreal, and Quebec became closer than ever. Mrs. Dagier kept repeating: ‘Everything must be read, absolutely everything’. So more and more time was spent reading parish records and notaries’ deeds on microfilms. This mentally and physically very demanding work would eventually bear fruit. On top of all the birth, marriage, and death certificates, already accumulated during the previous twenty years, numerous deeds, totally unknown until then, were found and were very revealing. In the end, there were thirteen documents signed by the ancestor.  These signatures were of great quality, quite superior to those of his contemporaries. They also showed that he had received an excellent higher education and that he had even been trained as a notary, nothing less.

OUR  ANCESTOR’S  13  SIGNATURES

First, let’s look at eleven of those thirteen signatures found on documents dated between 1730 and 1735, that is over a five-year period. Then we will study two more signatures from 1727, but only found in July 1999. They are a turning point in the research. These signatures were all compared and scrutinized to guarantee their authenticity. Let’s look at them chronologically.

2 January 1730: Beaumont. Records of the Conseil Supérieur (Upper Council) legal procedures in criminal cases. Inventory of items found at the home of Ménart. The ancestor signs his Christian name only: 
Alexandre.

18 February 1730: Michon, Notary. Private deed of sale of land by Jean Costé, Seigneur de la Rivière Verte (Lord of the Green River) to Jacques Gueray. The deed is written and signed by Allexandre Lebreton.[16] (Note: Cyprien Tanguay writes ‘Breton’ as the equivalent of ‘de Kerouac’).

22 October 1732 in Cap-Saint-Ignace: In the parish records, the marriage act of the ancestor with Louise Bernier. License given without the three official public announcements. First signature under the name “Le Bris”:  
Maurice Louis Le Bris S de K/voach.

12 January 1733: Notre-Dame Parish in Quebec City: As a witness at the marriage of Olivier Guiguin with Marie-Louise Giraud, the ancestor signs:  
Louis De K/voach

10 February 1733: Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours in L’Islet: As a witness at the wedding of Jean-Baptiste Duval with Françoise de Ladurantaye, the ancestor signs: 
Maurice Louis Le Bris K/voach.

9 March 1733: Michon, Notary. Act by which he gives up the estate of his parents-in-law, Jean-Baptiste Bernier and Geneviève Caron. He signs: Maurice Louis Le Bris K/uoach.  

Important facts: Our ancestor uses the surname “Le Bris” only on three occasions over a period of five months during his nine-year stay in the New World. During those five months, the christian name Alexandre disappears and our ancestor creates a new identity for himself: by calling himself “Le Bris de K/voach”, known as Maurice Louis or simply Louis, but he keeps his surname De K/voach.

On 30 November 1733, from Cap-Saint-Ignace, our ancestor writes a five-page letter to Governor Beauharnois to denounce a church robber, asking for help to capture said robber.[17] His signature is reduced to: 
Alexandre de K/voach.

Four days later, on 3 December 1733, the answer comes from Superintendent Hocquart himself:  “Order is given to all Captains and other army officers to give assistance to Alexandre Le Breton from Cap Saint-Ignace… to help capture the man.”[18] (Such a quick reply from Superintendent Hocquart indicates that the ancestor was very well thought of in high places in New France.) [19]

21 March 1734: Rageot, Notary. In Cap Saint-Ignace, on the enrolment papers of a certain Chamberlant, he signs: 
Alexandre De K/uoach

9 July 1734: Étienne Jeanneau, Notary. In the Parish of Saint-Roch, of the Seigneurie des Aulnes, (now des Aulnaies) when buying the land of the Trois-Ruisseaux (of the Three-Streams), he signs: 
Alexandre De K/uoach.

25 May 1735: Cap-Saint-Ignace: at the christening of his youngest son, Louis, he signs:
Alexandre De K/uoach.

Note:  In Lucien Serre’s article published in 1928, it is said that this is the signature of the ancestor’s assumed brother. At that time, the researchers did not know that the ancestor often changed identity but this last signature is definitely his, without any doubt whatsoever.

14 July 1735: Kamouraska. At the funeral of Joseph Michaud, he signs: 
Alexandre DeK/uoach.

Note:  There is something very important to note here: these last five signatures show that this is now his definite identity. He has started using Alexandre again, his first choice as a Christian name, and it is the particle and surname “K/voach” as from his family land, that becomes his official surname and which he uses until his death on 5 March 1736. At his funeral in Kamouraska, Father Auclair, the parish priest, wrote: “Alexandre Keloaque of Breton nationality.”

OUR ANCESTOR, THE KNOWLEDGEABLE NOTARY

When reading these legal documents prepared by the ancestor, it becomes quite clear that he had been trained as a notary. His letter to Governor Beauharnois and the deed of sale of land between Costé and Gueray, in the Rivière Verte Seigniorial Domain, were drawn in the usual legal form and wording. To be valid, such deed had to be deposited at a notary’s office, so did the ancestor by giving it to Notary Michon. Thanks to François Kirouac from Quebec City, we now have these two precious documents to prove, without any doubt, that Alexandre de Kervoach was a trained notary and that he made good use of his training to help his compatriots, as was often the case in those days.

While on this subject, let’s point out other interesting details not to be missed: the witness at the wedding of our ancestor, Nicolas Jean de Kerverzo, was a land-surveyor and a notary. Why didn’t our ancestor prepare his own marriage contract? Could it be because he knew only too well that he would have had to reveal his real identity then?

THE MISSING LINK

On Saturday, 11 July 1999, François Kirouac, made a major discovery in Quebec City. At the bottom of the religious marriage act of Gabriel Chartier with Marie-Jeanne Coutance d’Argencour, he found the first signature of a certain ‘Alexandre Le Bihan’.  In the parish record, the priest mentioned the presence of Alexandre Carunoac. The next logical step after this discovery was to consult the Parchemin Database in the National Archives in Montreal to see if the Chartier-Coutance couple had a marriage contract registered with a notary.  There was one indeed, registered by Notary Dubreuil, and dated 25 January 1727 and, when reading the act on microfilm, what a surprise to discover that our man had signed himself: hyacinthe Louis Alexandre DeK/voach Le Bihan. Once more Patricia Dagier was right:  “Everything must be read. One must read everything.”

Those two signatures, well hidden in very ordinary records and deeds, like so many others, meant a giant step forward. It was one more proof that Mrs. Dagier was right all along. For over a year already she had been convinced that the ancestor was a member of the Le Bihan family, from Lanmeur, and that this family was the only one, in the whole of Brittany, who had ever used the particle and surname de Kervoac. So he was obviously a descendant of the Le Bihan family at the fourth generation, that of François-Joachim Le Bihan, Sieur de Kervoac, royal notary in Huelgoat, who had married Catherine Bizien in 1687. Their union produced thirteen children born between 1688 and 1711. Of these thirteen children, at least five were born between 1692 and 1703 inclusively, but of course during a period when all records are non-existent!

As mentioned before, Mrs. Dagier did not want to leave anything to chance. So, on 15 August 1999, she arrived in Montreal, in order to read ALL the parish records for the period of 1720 to 1736! She wanted to read every one of them. Well she did read half the existing church records of the province of Quebec for that period during her one week here.  But because the ancestor was a known “voyageur”, Mrs. Dagier also wanted to cover all the French Forts where he might have stopped during his travels. François Kirouac and I completed the reading of the documents.

NOTHING DEFINITE YET

In these two acts of 1727, a son was discovered, but which one? It would take another two months to find out. Mrs. Dagier knew by then that this family had been living in different parts of the Finistère, in Huelgoat, Brest, Landivisiau, Scrignac, and Saint-Pol-de-Léon. A first reading of all the official legal records for: birth, marriage and death, official wedding announcements, church dues, taxes, legal deeds, etc, showed no trace of our Hyacinthe Louis Alexandre Le Bihan de Kervoac. However, given the notoriety of the family in the area, many signatures and names were mentioned over and over, offering interesting avenues. It became quite obvious that we were dealing with one of the sons of François-Joachim Le Bihan de Kervoac, Royal Notary in Huelgoat. But which son? Which one? The answer came by E-mail on 15 September 1999: “Rebondissement” “Boomerang” writes Mrs. Dagier. She had just found a mountain of legal documents, criminal procedures from the jurisdiction of Huelgoat, Châteauneuf-du-Faou and Landeleau.  One of these was a plea presented by François-Joachim Le Bihan de Kervoach in the name of his younger son, Urbain-François, involved in some theft at a wedding where the wine had been flowing generously! Patricia Dagier can best sum up this surprising story.

Urbain-François Le Bihan has attended a wedding as the guest of honour. After the reception, he goes to l’Auberge Fournel, the local inn, with the groom, the bride’s sister and a few other people. While they are enjoying some wine seated at a large table in a room above the kitchen, Constance, the bride’s sister, suddenly notices that her money has disappeared; she turns to Urbain and calls him a thief. Her brother, Maurice, and her two sisters, Louise and Françoise, take her side. They bring Urbain down into the kitchen to search him, all the while calling him names and such, then drag him to the stables to search him again when suddenly someone shouts that the money has been found right under the very table where they were sitting and drinking a few minutes before.

The noise and shouting attract a crowd who witness the younger Le Bihan in this rather shameful predicament. The Barthelemys, undress him, take off his ties and sleeves, swear that this is not his first theft, that he has already stolen forty ‘sols’ from a certain Plassart on his way to Saint-Pol, and that he has also stolen three other purses on that same road. They also add that he is a very clever rascal, well known in Leon and Cornouaille, capable of anything. To top it all they accuse him of having tried to seduce Constance in the Prat Ru field. François-Joachim, the father, takes them to court, calls upon eleven well-chosen witnesses to testify in favour of his son and against the Barthelemys in order to have them arrested and punished.

Of course this is a social class conflict. How could people ‘of the lowest possible rank, such miscreants’ dare attack the dignity of the Le Bihan family? The Sieur de Kervoac who has taken great care to instill in his children the exemplary integrity inherent in the whole family, even hereditary in his family, cannot let such people call his son a thief, a cheat, a scoundrel and a clever rascal and say that his son would have wanted to abuse a girl of the ‘lowest rank’.

During the cross-examination, all the accused retracted themselves and denied ever having insulted the younger Le Bihan, saying that, as they had had too much to drink that day, they could not remember what they had said and done. There is not a single document attesting to the aftermath of the case. Given the fact that the money was found, we can assume that the tribunal was lenient. For the Le Bihan family it was above all a matter of honour. After that episode, Urbain-François Le Bihan completely disappears from all records in Huelgoat, and as far as we know, to this day, no trace of him has ever been found in any other parish [20].

THE LAST CHAPTER OF A LONG SAGA

The last chapter could not be written yet. It still had to be proven that Urbain-François Le Bihan from Huelgoat and Le Bihan de Kervoach, who signed on 25 January 1727, at Notre-Dame parish in Quebec City, were one and the same person. On 2 October 1999, Mrs. Dagier announced that she had received the results of a comparative graphological analysis done on four signatures of Urbain-François Le Bihan in Brittany and four signatures of our man, Alexandre de Kervoach, in New France. There was no doubt whatsoever that these belonged to the same person. Only then, we knew for sure that we were talking about one and the same person. The verdict was final: Urbain-François Le Bihan, this son from ‘a well to do family’, known as Alexandre De Kervoach, made famous and infamous in Huelgoat in 1720, was indeed our man. Borrowing the expression of Maurice Berthelemy, brother of the bride and one of the accused in the court case, Mrs. Dagier concluded with these words: “Urbain-François Le Bihan, ‘this very clever rascal’, is definitely your ancestor!”

“MAISTRE URBAIN-FRANÇOIS LE BIHAN” - NOTARY

There is no doubt that the ancestor was a trained notary. As the ancestor’s signatures and certain deeds that he wrote here in New France were studied, this became perfectly obvious and many more proofs were also found in Brittany. First, let’s mention that he was the son of a notary. In those days, the only way to become a notary was to be trained in one’s father’s office or sometimes, that of a friend. Mrs. Dagier also found two legal decrees where he signs, in lieu of someone else, as: “Maistre Urbain-François Le Bihan” (Maistre being the French title given then, and still today, to lawyers and notaries).

Finally, let’s take a look at the documents concerning the plea entered by his father, François-Joachim Le Bihan de Kervoac. The court case was heard during the autumn of 1720. There were fifteen sessions through which he was consistently referred to as “Maistre Urbain-François Le Bihan”. The notaries’ deeds found in the Quebec National Archives also show clearly that the ancestor, Alexandre De Kervoach, known as Le Breton, had effectively been trained as a notary.

SOMETHING TO HIDE ?

The Barthelemy case, this infamous affair, was probably the reason why Urbain-François had lo leave Brittany and why he falsified his identity on his wedding act; he made up a name for himself, some sort of a white lie: Maurice Louis Le Bris De Kervoach. In those days it was not unusual for sons of well-to-do families to have to disappear suddenly, vanish into thin air, because of some ‘affair of honour’ or dishonour.

But why borrow the surname Le Bris? As previously indicated, the surname Le Bris, like Le Bihan, was quite common in Huelgoat. Urbain-François’ mother, Catherine Bizien, was first cousin to a François Le Bris. For that reason, at one point, we thought that if there was no one to take over the particle and surname ‘Kervoac’ amongst the Le Bihan, it might have gone to the Le Bris. Of course now we know that this was not the case.

MRS. PATRICIA DAGIER’S IMPORTANT CONCLUSIONS

To explain how this long saga finally came to such a conclusion, again let’s quote Patricia Dagier:

As you can see, to be successful this research needed painstaking efforts to read mountains of old legal documents and a very close Franco-Canadian cooperation in order to solve two riddles:

Show the ancestor’s different identities used in Canada and find the reason why in Brittany; also, piece together the ancestor’s life in Canada not only using documents pertaining to his own life but by finding his signature on other official documents to discover what he was involved in.

Even with so many gaps in the archives of Huelgoat, try to piece together the life of the Le Bihan family and of all its members even those very rarely mentioned, like Urbain-François because of his young age. His older brothers were usually asked to represent the family. The wedding in 1720 was an exception as it was the ancestor’s first public duty. Well, we know that story and its aftermath.

SOME INTERESTING FACTS ON URBAIN-FRANÇOIS LE BIHAN

Outcome of the criminal procedure

We are very fortunate indeed to still have in our possession this thick legal document giving us all the details of the plea entered by François-Joachim Le Bihan, Sieur de Kervoac, and the testimonies of the eleven witnesses giving us numerous details of the wedding day events, the declarations of the accused during the cross-examination, all retracting themselves, alleging that they had had too much to drink but, still, we do not know, nor can we find, the decision of the Court nor the judge’s sentence! For some unknown reason, the records of the Civil Tribunal for the Royal Court of Châteauneuf, Huelgoat, and Landeleau, seem to have disappeared for the period between 11 January 1720 and 2 March 1723. This is most unfortunate because it would have given us a lot of information on the outcome of this case.

The ancestor’s date of birth

More archives are also missing: those between 1692 and 1704, therefore we are unable to discover the date of birth of Urbain-François Le Bihan. Taking into consideration the dates of birth of his brothers and sisters, we can assume that he was born around 1702.

The particle and surname ‘de Kervoac’

Why is it that the youngest son of the family, Urbain-François is the one who uses the particle and surname ‘de Kervoac’ and not one of his older brothers? Traditionally the custom was for a son to use the particle and surname of his father only after the death of said father. In the present case, François-Joachim Le Bihan de Kervoac, died only in 1727, therefore his older sons, Laurens and Charles-Marie-François had to attach to their family name another ‘surname’ after the particle ‘de’; so Laurens Le Bihan became, Le Bihan, sieur du (Lord of) Lézard, and his brother, Charles-Marie Le Bihan, sieur du (Lord of) Rumain, also written Rumen, after a property and land in the Locmaria-Berrien district. For both of them this was important and a rather definitive choice as both were notary-solicitor like their father, and when they registered as such with the Royal Court of Justice they needed to register their official title and signature at the same time.

Therefore, the particle and surname ‘de Kervoac’ was free for another son. Urbain-François, being in the New World, quite far away from his native land and from his father, decided to use it though his father was well and alive. As a matter of fact, after the death of François-Joachim le Bihan de Kervoac in the last semester of 1727, no Le Bihan, not one of them, ever claimed the particle and surname ‘de Kervoac’; this obviously proves that there was a family consensus; everyone knew who was using it.[21]

DATE OF DEPARTURE OF URBAIN-FRANÇOIS

The presence of the Le Bihan family can be traced in Huelgoat from as far back as 1650. They were obviously well known and of high social rank and the members of this family seemed to be very close. The extensive work done by Mrs. Dagier enabled her to follow closely the many different events in which they took part, whether in Huelgoat, Carhaix, Scrignac, Brest and Saint-Pol-de-Léon. All this information enables us to determine the year when Urbain-François left Brittany. The presence and name of Urbain-François is mentioned eight times in different parish records and legal deeds between 1717 and 1721. But after that date, his name disappears completely from all records throughout the whole area.

So where was he after 1721? Our man’s signature only reappears six years later in the records of the parish of Notre-Dame in Quebec City at the Chartier-Coutance d’Argencour wedding on 25 January 1727. As this event took place in winter, one has to assume that the ancestor had arrived in New France at least in 1726. The passenger lists on the boarding rolls of the ships that sailed from France to the New World in those days are unfortunately very scarce. So we have yet to find answers to those questions.

To conclude this presentation, the least one can say is that the Kirouac ancestor left his mark in his new country. Here is Patricia Dagier’s description of this very exceptional character:

The son of the notary of Huelgoat managed through his cleverness, audacity, and exceptional courage to make an impression at the highest level of government in his new country. Alexandre de Kervoach, ‘coureur de bois’, hunter, fur trader, and voyager had ambition when he arrived in Canada and managed to rise to the top where he rightly belonged.[22]

According to many genealogists here, the enigma surrounding the Kirouac ancestor was one of the most difficult to clarify and for good reasons. If the Canadian Kirouacs had applied Patricia Dagier’s method of ‘reading absolutely everything’, it is most likely that this ancestor ‘who had hidden himself in the darkest recesses of the Breton and Quebec archives’ would have turned up sooner. If this arduous quest was finally successful and has given the positive results that we know, it is thanks to Patricia Dagier, from the Genealogical Centre in Quimper, Brittany, who took it on in the autumn of 1996, and to the close collaboration of two researchers here.

Such a happy ending demanded a proper celebration so, in July 2000, a group of thirty-two Kirouacs from North America went to Brittany, many for the first time ever, to take part in special festivities. The top authorities of the Genealogical Centre of the Finistère commented on the high quality of the research concerning the Kirouac ancestor. In their speeches they recognized officially the results of many long years of research. Also, the enthusiastic welcome of the Municipal authorities of Lanmeur, Huelgoat, and Quimper, as well as that of the General Council of the Finistère, were an official acknowledgement that the ancestor was Urbain-François Le Bihan de Kervoac, known as Alexandre de Kervoach.

Translation : Marie Lussier Timperley, Montréal, June 2001.