Page without title

Association of descendants
of Paul Vachon
(Vachon and Pomerleau families)

Our ancestors in France
Research into our ancestors in France confirms the presence of Vachon, residents of La Copechagnière, a small commune in the Vendée region of Poitou. To put Poitou in its historical context, this region was the ancient land of the Pictaves (or Pictons), at the time of Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul. In the Middle Ages, Poitou was the gateway between Aquitaine and the Paris Basin. It was the cradle of three major confrontations: that of Clovis and the Visigoths at Vouillé in 507, that of Charles Martel and the Arabs in 732 and that of the French and English in 1356. In the 10ᵉ century, the feudal system developed here and, in the 16ᵉ century, the province was ruined by wars of religion (Battle of Moncontour).

In July 1976, on a camping trip to Poitou with my first wife Bärbel and our twins Michel and Martin, we planned our vacation so as to visit the place where the ancestor Paul Vachon was born. We set up our caravan at the La belle Henriette campsite in La Tranche sur Mer, located on the Atlantic beaches. I first consulted documents at the Departmental Archives in Niort, Luçon and La Roche-sur-Yon, before finally going to the commune of La Copechagnière. The staff at the Archives had strongly recommended that I be accompanied by a genealogist capable of reading old documents (an expert in paleography). After making an appointment with a certain Abbé P. Poisson of Saint-Fulgent (a well-known paleographer in the region), we went to the commune's Mairie on July 8. A kind lady allowed us to consult the two documents we were interested in. The first, the Tables de baptêmes from 1597 to 1697, was an original document in poor condition, kept in plastic sheets in registers. A second document, a copy of the Tables de baptêmes from 1593 to 1704 (dated September 10, 1853), was kept in a notebook. Reading these baptismal tables confirmed the following facts:

- Vincent Vachon and Sapience Rabeau had a daughter, Marie, baptized on November 19, 1632, and another daughter, Jeanne, in December 1637;

- Jean Rabeau and Catherine Vachon had a son, Jean, baptized on May 6, 1632;

- Denis Boiceleau and Catherine Vachon, who may be the same wife as Jean Rabeau, in second marriage;

- Jean Boiceleau and Perrine Vachon had a son, Daniel, baptized between October 1ᵉʳ and December 31, 1634; a daughter, Françoise, on February 6, 1640; and another daughter, Catherine, on March 28, 1641;

- Etienne Vachon and Catherine Guibert had a son, Étienne, baptized on October 10, 1656;

- Jacques Grimaud and Jeanne Vachon had a son, Jacques, baptized on August 22, 1666 (Étienne and Jeanne could be cousins of Paul Vachon);

- Etienne Rabeau and Sara Robin had a child baptized in 1594 (the first name, day and month are missing), a daughter, Sapience, on February 22, 1599 (Sapience Rabeau could be Vincent Vachon's future wife and Paul's mother) and a son, Pierre, on June 10, 1602.

Unfortunately, consultation of these two documents has not enabled us to confirm the baptism of our ancestor Paul Vachon at La Copechagnière. It is possible that, at the time of his birth, his parents were living elsewhere in the area. In fact, archivists have been able to establish that Paul lived at La Copechagnière, but have not been able to confirm that he was born there. However, I did find that, on March 8, 1690, 64-year-old Paul Vachon was listed as a native of Saint-Jean-l'Évangéliste, Bas-Poitou, in the registers of persons admitted to Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu de Québec. Did we mean to specify the region, or is this a clue to pursue?