perche-quebec.com
Perche, region of emigration
to Quebec in the 17th century
to Quebec in the 17th century
Church Saint-Aubin of Tourouvre (Orne) where Jean Guyon, the direct paternal ancestor of Celine Dion was baptized.
© 2014 perche-quebec.com
The direct paternal ancestor of Celine Dion, Jean, was named « Guyon ». He was a mason who spent his career in Mortagne (Perche, Orne, France) up to 1634, year of his departure to "La Nouvelle-France" in Canada.
September 18th 1592! While Henri IV tried to conquer his Kingdom, the parish of Tourouvre in Le Perche has been the scene of a modest event. On the parish registers, the priest records the baptismal certificate of a new parishioner in latin:
« Johannes filius Jacobi Guyon er Maria eus uxoris... ». His father is a notable, his mother is Marie Huet.
We do not know precisely how his childhood liked like but we found his name mentioned on an act of May 18th, 1614 when he lent money to a ploughman of Autheuil.
One year later, the priest of the parish Saint-Jean de Mortagne writes on a register: "On June 12, 1615, Jehan Guyon, of the parish Tourouvre, and Mathurine Robin, of this parish, were married."
At 42 years old, ten days after the birth of his last child, Jean Guyon will yield to the proposals of Robert Giffard, doctor, cantor of the emigration to Quebec and decides to leave France to make colony in New-France.
In March 1634, Jean and his family, except for his daughter Barbe and his son-in-law who will join the rest of the family in Beauport in 1652, leaves Mortagne. Embarked in Dieppe, the Guyon family will arrive, after two months of sailing, to the mouth of the Saint-Laurent river in June 1634.
Years after years, his children and descendants gave birth to generations of Guyon, renamed Guion or Dion. They are settled in Quebec, Canada and in the United States. Adhemar Dion, father of Celine, native from Charlemagne, is a descendant of Jean Guyon, the first son of the pioneer mason.
perche-quebec.com has found more than 2000 Celine Dion's ancestors. See details here.
perche-quebec.com has discovered that Celine Dion has many family ties with other celebrities in music (Madonna, Justin Bieber, Alanis Morissette), politics (Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Stephane Dion), the film industry (Xavier Dolan, Ryan Gosling, Angelina Jolie) and royalty (Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall).
All those celebrities have in common French-Canadian pioneers, and in particular Percheron pioneers.
For instance, the Percheron pioneer Zacharie Cloutier, an ancestor of most of the celebrities mentioned before, who was born in Mortagne-au-Perche.
As strange as it may seem, there is nothing exceptional about those family ties. As the Percheron pioneers were among the very first French settlers to arrive in what was then known as New France, most of North Americans with French-Canadian ancestry have Percheron blood and are more or less related.
Patrilineal and matrilineal lines
Celine Dion's family tree has a very rare feature; the patrilineal and matrilineal ascending lineages meet respectively at the level of the 12th and 13th generations!
The pioneer couple Jean Guyon and Mathurine Robin who left Perche in 1634 are at the crossroads of these two lines. It is exceptional that the same couple appears in both patrilineal and matrilineal lines.
The matrilineal line is the one of a woman and her female ancestors. It is the lineage of the mother, the mother’s mother, the mother’s mother’s mother, etc. over a certain number of generations.
This line is most certainly the one which raises the fewest doubts in a family tree. If a man recognizes a child as his own at the time of the birth, it is more difficult for a woman to hide her pregnancy, even if exceptions do exist. Sometimes a grandmother declares being the mother of a child to save the family's reputation as well as her daughter's.
The patrilineal line climbs up the family tree from father to father, it is the one through which the family name is generally passed on. In the case of Celine Dion, the family name has evolved over the generations from Guyon to Dion.
Patrilineal line |
Matrilineal line |
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| GUYON Jean (1592 Tourouvre - 1663 Beauport) | X 1615 | ROBIN Mathurine (~ end XVI Mortagne-au-Perche - 1662 Beauport) |
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| GUYON Jean (1619 Mortagne-au-Perche - 1694 Chateau-Richer) COUILLARD Elisabeth Isabelle (1631 Quebec - 1704 Chateau-Richer) | GUYON Pierre (1670 Chateau-Richer - 1697 Chateau-Richer) TESTU Angelique (1675 L'Ange-Gardien - 1710 Sainte-Famille-de-l'Ile-d'Orleans) | GUYON Louis (1697 Chateau-Richer -) GAMACHE Marguerite Anne (1694 Cap-Saint-Ignace - 1759 Cap-Saint-Ignace) | GUYON Joseph Joachim (1728 Cap-Saint-Ignace - 1793 Cap-Saint-Ignace) FOURNIER Marie Marguerite (1734 Cap-Saint-Ignace - 1801 Cap-Saint-Ignace) | DION Joseph (1781 Cap-Saint-Ignace - 1810 Cap-Saint-Ignace) BERNIER Yvonne Modeste (1776 L'Islet -) | DION Joseph (1804 Cap-Saint-Ignace -) CHESNEL Marie Julie (1806 Cap-Saint-Ignace - 1878 Cap Chat) | DION Joseph (1833 Rimouski - 1905 Sainte-Anne-des-Monts) LETOURNEAU Marcelline (1845 Matane - 1922 Saint-Martial de Riviere) | DION Adelard (~1870 - 1940 Sainte-Anne-des-Monts) LEVESQUE Esther (1871 Sainte-Anne-des-Monts - 1934 Sainte-Anne-des-Monts) | DION Joseph Charles Adelard (1895 Sainte-Anne-des-Monts - 1957 Charlemagne) BARRIAULT Marie Ernestine (1904 les Mechins - 1980) | | | | DION Adhemar (1923 les Mechins - 2003 Laval)  | |
| GUYON Barbe Marie (1617 Mortagne-au-Perche - 1700 Saint-Pierre-de-l'Île-d'Orleans) PARADIS Pierre (1604 Mortagne-au-Perche - 1675 Sainte-Famille-de-l'Ile-d'Orleans) | PARADIS Madeleine Marie (1653 Quebec - 1669 Chateau-Richer) ROUSSIN Nicolas (1635 Tourouvre - 1697 L'Ange-Gardien) | ROUSSIN Marie (1669 Chateau-Richer -) TREMBLAY Pierre (1660 Quebec - 1736 Petite-Riviere-Saint-François) | TREMBLAY Marie Anne (1710 Baie-Saint-Paul - 1749 Tadoussac) DUFOUR Joseph (~ 1709 - 1774 La Malbaie) | DUFOUR Marie Josephe (1735 Petite-Riviere-Saint-François - 1760 Baie-Saint-Paul) TREMBLAY François (1727 Baie-Saint-Paul -) | TREMBLAY Felicite GAGNE Joseph Ignace (1752 Baie-Saint-Paul -) | GAGNE Marie Modeste (1789 L'Isle-aux-Coudres - 1866 Baie-des-Sables) SAINT-LAURENT Michel (1786 Rimouski - 1859 Sainte-Luce) | SAINT-LAURENT Emilie (1830 Rimouski -) GAGNE Joseph (1822 Rimouski -) | GAGNE Marie Adele (1853 Sainte-Flavie - ~ 1901) SERGERIE Joseph Gustave (1870 Cap Chat - 1910 Grosses-Roches) | SERGERIE Antoinette (1897 Cap Chat - 1976 La Tuque) TANGUAY Achille Lauriat (~1893 - 1953 La Tuque) | TANGUAY Therese (1927 Sainte-Anne-des-Monts - 2020 Laval)  | | |
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| DION Celine (1968 Repentigny) 
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Besides Jean Guyon, the direct ancestor of Celine Dion born in Tourouvre, Celine Dion has many ancestors whose the origin is Perche.
All immigrated in the 17th century. They came from the following villages (note that the ancestor pages are available in French only):
- Bresolettes (Guillaume Pelletier)
- Champs (Louis Guimond)
- Comblot (Nicolas Delaunay)
- Coulimer (Guillaume Fournier)
- Courgeon (Perrine Mallet)
- Dangeau (Jean Cordeau)
- Ige (Louis Gagne, Pierre Gagne)
- Mortagne-au-Perche (les Boucher, Zacharie Cloutier, Jean Côte, Xainte Dupont, Nicole Lemaire, Pierre Maheust, Pierre Paradis, Mathurine Robin)
- Moussonvilliers (Pierre-Denis Aloignon)
- Neuilly-sur-Eure (Mathurin Landry)
- Le Pin-la-Garenne (Robert Drouin)
- La Poterie-au-Perche (Louise Goulet)
- Randonnai (Pierre Tremblay,
Tavernier)
- Reveillon (Toussaint Giroux)
- Saint-Cosme-en-Vairais (Gervais Bisson,
Jacques Dodier,
Julien Fortin,
Marie Lereau,
Pierre Maufay)
- Saint-Germain-de-Loise (Robert Boulay)
- Saint-Leonard-des-Parcs (Noël Langlois)
- Saint-Maurice-les-Charencey (Rene Letartre)
- Tourouvre (Jean Gagnon, Michelle Mabille, Julien Mercier, Jean Pelletier, the Roussins)
- La Ventrouze (Robert Gagnon, the Lehoux,
Guillaume Landry)
