Chronicles

Audet dit Lapointe families of Restigouche

        I wonder what bug bites us when we reach between 30 and 50 years of age? Most of us at that age start wondering who we are? where we come from? who were our ancestors? what they looked like? and that is the time that we take out our shovel and our wheelbarrow and head for the past.

I'm quite sure that my grandmother Edith Godin, who's mother was a Lapointe, never knew that she was a descendant of Nicolas Audet dit Lapointe son of Innocent and Vincente Reine of St Pierre de Maille, at Poitou, France, who came to Canada, at L'Ile d'Orléans in Quebec.

I doubt even that she knew who her great great grandparents were, or even her great grandparents, Charles Lapointe and Angelique Guillot, for that matter. Well for my part, although I've always been involved in many other things and always seem to have way too much to do, I have been interested in finding out who my ancestors were, where they came from, what they did, what they looked like and much more. I always seemed to have questions, I always seemed to be collecting information, photos of the family and all that I could get my hands on. I also loved doing research and I was always asking questions. Not to say I always asked the right ones or the right persons but I was a pretty inquisitive kid.

Well the saying goes "Seek and ye shall find", and find I did. At the Public Archives in Quebec, there is a register with records of children's confirmation dating March 1664 which contains the name of our Nicolas Audet / Odet, the first proof of his existence in Canada. In 1666 he is noted to have been a farmer for Mgr de Laval on the Hill of Beaupré, in 1668 he is doorman at the Episcopal Castle. On September 15, 1670, Nicolas married at the "Eglise Ste-Famille" of l'Ile d'Orléan, Madeleine Després, 14 year old daughter of Francois Després and Madeleine Legrand. Nicolas and Madeleine had seven sons and three daughters: Pierre who married Marie Dumas, Jean-Baptiste, Madeleine, Joseph who married Jeanne Pouliot, Joachim, Marie, Francois, Marguerite and Innocent.

In the 1681 census he owns 15 acres of land, 6 cattle and a gun. At age 59, he died at St. Jean, Ile d'Orléan leaving a large list of belongings.

Later we find two of their descendants in Maria, Quebec. Gabriel son of Joseph and Jeanne Pouliot, and a second Gabriel son of Pierre and his second wife Marie Dumas. The ancestors of most of the Audet dit Lapointe of our area.

We find the name Audet spelled in so many different ways but here are just a few: Odet, Oudet, Hode, Houde, Audette, Hodette, Haudet, Haudette, Audaitte, Haudaitte. Many Americans use the name Point or La Point. Even if no concrete origin is found for the Dit Lapointe name, it is said that it came from Nicolas who lived on a point of land and to tell him apart from the other Audets he was named Odet de la Pointe.. which progressed to Audet dit Lapointe. At the time of his marriage, Nicolas is not able to sign his name but his wife Magdeleine Després signs her name very nicely so. With no definite proof on the Dit name for the Audets, families such as the Robins, Desautels, Delormes, Tousignants, Simons or Godards also used the name Lapointe when they arrived from France and many of their descendants still use it today.

On the Ste Anne de Ristigouche registers during the years 1842 to 1867, we do not find one single family of Audet or Lapointe. In the 1659 to 1695 registers of the same place we find the following baptisms:
Angelique and Denise daughters of Joseph Audet and Scholastique Leblanc
Augustin, Gabriel, Marie Charlotte and Charles children of Gabriel dit Lapointe and Marie Desnoyer
Felicité daughter of Pierre and Marie Louise Arseneau
Veronique daughter of Gabriel and Charlotte Leblanc.
We also find the marriages of Pierre son of Gabriel Audet and Felicité Aubois to Marie Arseneau daughter of Claude Arseneau et Marquerite Terriot. There is a note to all the records that say they were performed at " La Baie des Chaleurs" and all the children have the name Lapointe, with no mention of the name Audet. So I guess we can safely say that the first Audets dit Lapointe to arrive were baptised by missionaries which were passing through the area of the upper Restigouche river during the years from 1659 to 1695 but none of them were here between 1842 and 1867.

The Carleton registers during the years 1773-1900 contain over 350 entries of either Audet or Lapointe or both. In Campbellton during the years between 1910 and 1930, we find the families of:
Napoléon and Délima Giroux , Martin and Malvina Lagacé, and Zénon and Barbara Ferguson under the name of Audet while under Lapointe we find the families of: Pierre and Jeanne Pentland, Andrew and Lucy Girard, Stanislas and Marie LeBois, Stanislas and Catherine Leclerc, Georges and Marie Stella Mercier, William and Annie Cameron and that of Theophilis and Anastasie Lubert (Loubert).

A very large part of the Lapointes settled in the Jacquet River and Nash Creek area. From 1886 to 1920, Jacquet River registers contains one Audette record and about 230 Lapointe/Lapoint. Nash Creek has one record of Audette and 2 Audet and 137 Lapointe.

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