The Descendants of Marguerite Berrubey and René Plourde
Together, Damien Berrubey and Jeanne Savonnet had three children who ensured their family lineage. These were two boys, Pierre and Mathurin and one daughter, Marguerite. Having married René Plourde, Marguerite is the maternal ancestor of the family Plourde, which explains why this text appears on the Bérubé website.
Different from the Soucys who are also descendants of Jeanne Savonnet, the Roussels, who are descendants of Geneviève Bérubé1 and the Lévesque’s who happily married into the second generation of Bérubés born here ( in effect, six couples), the Plourdes have no family association or, more precisely, abandoned the one that previously existed, therefore, all the more reason to make place for them on this site. Having said this, these family names that we have just mentioned provide us with a good example of families that are closely allied one to the other, even if they are not totally related.
The Plourde and Bérubé families are linked from the beginning due to the very large piece of land that was obtained by Damien B. at Riviére Ouelle (twelve frontal acres by forty-two acres deep) and which was divided in three parts after the death of Jeanne Savonnet. Therefore, in 1725, seven official second generation owners from the Bérubé side share in Damien’s2 heritage. These are Pierre and Mathurin Berrubey as well as five younger Plourdes. A few years later around 1750-1753, the brothers Pierre and Augustin Plourde share together the five Plourde parcels of the Bérubé3 domain. Furthermore, the Plourde brothers own 8/11 of the farm of Mathurin Bérubé.
It is also these two Plourdes, both married to a Lévesque who were neighbours of Damien Berrubey, that will share a property that René Plourde had obtained in Kamouraska (six frontal acres by thirty acres deep). A third brother, Joseph Plourde, goes to reside in the region of Montréal where he marries Thérèse Dechambre in 1727 but does so under the name of Joseph Bérubé, which confused genealogists for some time. He passed away at a young age and without any known descendants.
In a book which appeared in 2008 and which is entitled The surprising fate of René Plourde, a Pioneer of New France , Anne-Marie Couturier reports the act of marriage of Marguerite and René at page 260 and which is written in olden French (but in English reads) :
On the sixth day of August of the year 1697 and after the publication of three marriage bans on the eighteenth, the twenty-fourth and the twenty-fifth of August in the church of this parish of Notre Dame de Liesse, between René Plourde age 32 and son of the deceased François Plourde and the deceased Jeanne Grémillon, father and mother of the parish of St. Pierre « Eveiché » of Potier on the one part and Jeanne Marguerite Berrubey, age seventeen and daughter of the deceased Damien Berrubey and of Jeanne Savonnet, father and mother of this parish of Notre Dame de Liesse of the other part and having discovered no legitimate obstacle, I, the undersigned Parish Priest of this Parish took their mutual and reciprocal consent and married them and gave them the nuptial blessing according to the church and in the presence of Jean Aiot and Pierre….father witnesses and who all declared after questioning that none was able to write nor sign their names.
Bernard DeRequeleyne P.C.
Although Jeanne-Marguerite died at the young age of 28, she bore six children : René, born on August 17, 1698 (and died shortly thereafter), Joseph, born on August 22, 1699, Pierre, August 5, 1701, Jean-François, August 18, 1703, Marie-Catherine, May 8, 1707 and Augustin in 1708. At her death, there remained four sons and a daughter to ensure her lineage. Today, more than 7000 persons in Québec carry the Plourde family name.
But it is really the brothers Pierre and Augustin who are the origins of this multiplication : the first having fathered 11 children of which 4 were sons and the second with 10, of which 5 were sons. Of these five sons, three married second degree Bérubé cousins, two of Pierre’s daughters, granddaughter of Mathurin Berrubey, Charlotte and Madeleine and Jean’s daughter, Judith, granddaughter of Pierre Berrubey. The small community of Rivière Ouelle was therefore woven together very tightly which is also confirmed by numerous marriages with Bérubés in this period, or Plourdes with Lévesques and also, to a lesser degree, with Hudons (Beaulieu), Mivilles or Ouellet s.
Unveiling of the Bérubé-Plourde Marker on July 20, 2020
Michel Bérubé, president of the Association des familles Bérubé, took
off his mask to say a few words to participants about Jeanne-Marguerite
land inheritance and about his husband René Plourde.
1 Daughter of Mathurin B. and of Angélique Miville, therefore granddaughter of Damien B. and Jeanne Savonnet.
2 SOUCY, Bertrand. From the archives of Notary’s Jeanneau and Dionne concerning the family of Jean Soucy and Jeanne Savonnet and certain documents that cover the period from 1698 to 1756, at Saint-Pascal, April, 2016, p. 23.
3 Idem p. 25.
