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Pepere & Memere Arthur G. Roy, 1932

Jean Nadeau & Rose-Anna Labbe Scovill Mfg Co., Waterbury Connecticut

Married Feb 3 1896, St. Neree, Quebec

Louis Roy dit Leroi circa 1620-1663 married Anne Lemaistre 27-Apr-1638, St.Remi de Dieppe, Normandie France. He is my Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather.

They had a son; Nicholas Roy dit Leroy emigrated from Normandy France, sailed the Atlantic Ocean and arrived to settle in the New World in 1661. Born 1639 @St.Remi de Dieppe, Normandie, France. He married Jeanne Lelievre Feb 1658 @ St.Leonard de Honfleur, Normandie. He died 1691 La Durantaye, Quebec.

They had a son; Jean-Baptiste Roy (or Leroy)   Born @ La Durantaye, Quebec, the first generation born in the New World. Married Claire Cadrin - Leclerc 17-Oct-1701 @ St.Michel, Quebec. Her parents: Nicholas Cadrin-Leclerc & Francoise DeLaunay.

They had a son; Jean-Baptiste Roy who married Marie-Magdeleine Tangue 22-July-1748 @ St.Vallier, Quebec. Her parents: Jean.-Baptiste Tangue & M. Magdeleine Cymar

They had a son; Bazile Roy who married Marie-Louise Boulet 17-Jan-1785 @ St.Francois-Riviere-du-Sud. Quebec. Her parents: Jean-Marc Boule & Marie-Anne Fortier

They had a son; Etienne Roy who married Marguerite LaCroix 12-Aug-1828, @ St Gervais, Bellchasse County, Quebec. Her parents: Pierre La Croix & Marguerite Labrecque

They had a son; Narcisse Roy who married Philomene Couture 9-April-1861 @ St.Raphael, Bellchasse County, Quebec. Her parents: Leon Couture & Adelaide Gonthier

They had a son; Francois Roy who married Odelie Gonthier-Bernard 13-May-1895, St.Raphael, Bellchasse County, Quebec. Her parents: Louis Gonthier-Bernard & Adelaide Theberge

They had a son; Arthur Guillaume Roy Born 6-August-1902, St.Raphael, Bellchasse County, Quebec. Arthur married Rose Aimee Nadeau 6-July-1936, Ste.Appoline de Patton, Montmagny County, Quebec. Her parents: Johnny (Jean?) Nadeau & Rose-Anna Labbe, married 3-Feb-1896, @ St.Neree, Quebec Canada

They had a son; Robert Arthur Roy, Born 19-November-1952, Waterbury, Connecticut USA.

Rose & Arthur Roy Arthur’s 70^th b-day party, 1972, Wolcott

w/son Robert, 1962

"To everything there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die: a time to plant,

and a time to pluck up that which is planted."

- Ecclesiastes 3: 1-2

The above seems to me a very apt thought upon which to dwell as we begin to discuss the following lives of our ancestors. If nothing else, it has a poetic power to remind us of our mortal nature. Essentially, all genealogy has a similar power.

A magazine article which I read recently stated: "A gene is a gift given us by our parents". There is comfort to be found in that assertion if we know definitively that our parents' lives demonstrated "good genes", which is understood to mean long, healthy lives, as well as our eye color.

Jeanne Lelievre Leroy is a long-lived woman in our Roy Family Tree. She lived from 1638 to 1728, an adventuresome 89 years. She was the brave woman who emigrated in 1661 from France to the New World with her husband Nicholas LeRoy and three little children.

They had sailed from the port of Dieppe on the coast of Normandy, aboard a ship of one Captain Laurent Poullet. After an awful two months at sea they found an initial landing at Terre Nueve, now Newfoundland, where they remained for two years in bitter circumstances.

Only in September of 1663 did they finally arrive at Quebec, according to the family historian Edmond J. Roy. (1) He states that this joyous landing was aboard either of two ships, the Golden Eagle, L 'Aigle d'Or, or the Garden of Holland, Jardin de Hollande. In that prosperous colony they were reunited with Jeanne's father, Guilleaume Lelievre, who had emigrated around 1657.

On the 8th of June, 1664, Nicholas officially acquired a land-grant of two arpents in width (about three American acres) by one mile deep at Boischatel, just east of the Falls of Montmorency. There they were neighbors to Charles Garnier, an ancestor of our Gagne cousins of today, in the Seigneurie de Beaupre.

Their eighth and ninth born children, Elisabeth and Jean, were both baptised at nearby L 'Ange Gardien, on the Beaupre coast. However, their tenth and last child, Jean-Baptiste, destined as our next of the Roy line ancestor, was baptized miles away across the wide St. Lawrence River, in the Seigneurie de la Durantaye. He was christened on 20-October-1678, fifteen years after his parents had initially been granted land on the Cote de Beaupre.

Why had Nicholas and Jeanne Leroy decided to leave an apparently successful farm and a good beginning in this area so blessed of scenery? The answer lies in that a crime was committed against them, one that evokes outrage to this day. While several accounts can be found, that of Eugena Poulin, PhD., in her 1998 article "Crime and Seventeenth Century Women in New World" (2) is the most succinct. She wrote:

"Society considered some crimes so heinous that the death penalty appeared insufficient”.

In 1669, the court found Jacques Nourry guilty of raping four and a half year old Marie Leroy. The latter was the daughter of Nicholas and of Jeanne Lievre. Nourry was hanged, his body mutilated, decapitated and his head displayed on a post. The fine added to his punishment amounted to three hundred livres to be awarded to the victim."

Although Ms. Poulin does not recount it, Nourry was a single man of age 29, who farmed land next to the Leroys. Later documents record that his land was confiscated by the High Court of Beaupre, and on September 7, 1669 this farm of Noury was awarded to the above mentioned Charles Garnier.

The family once again prospered at La Durantaye, far from the scene of the crime and its grisly punishment. Having sold his farm at Beaupre in 1679 for five hundred livres, Nicholas acquired twenty arpents of land at Durantaye.

His eldest sons, Louis and Nicholas, would also own land adjoining his acreage. A third son, Noel, would buy land in 1688 in the adjoining Seigneurie de Berthier from Jean Daniau dit la Prise, of La Durantaye. This man is an ancestor of Gerard Daigneault, brother-in-law of this writer.

As for little Marie, she grew up normally due to the love of her parents. On 31-July-1679 she wed Jean Gaudreau, by whom she had three children. Following the loss of her first husband, Marie then rewarded to Jean Fournier, bearing him ten more children.

Nicholas Leroy's passing sometime before October of 1691 was not nearly as well documented as that of his wife, whose 1728 burial record has been termed "bizarre". Here is a translation of that account by the priest at the village of Saint Vallier:

"The year one thousand seven hundred twenty-eight, the 11th of January, has been buried in the cemetery of this parish, by myself, the undersigned priest, missionary of Saint Michael, the body of the late widow Roy, deceased at the age of 88 or 9 years without any illness; she had received a precaution eight days before from the Saint Viatique. All the parish assisted at her internment." Leclair, Priest.

What are we to think of this woman who had visions of a Saint, who told her that her time was near? In our age of unbelief we might regard her as senile. Quite obviously her neighbors of that day admired her Faith and loved her. For myself the real point of interest here is that she had enjoyed good health right up to her last day: "... .decedee a 1 'age de 88 ou 9 ans sans aucune maladie" --- when it was her time to die.

Thus we've seen the dual themes of our opening quote, as the comparison of the "pluck up that which is planted" was to the up-rooting of people who emigrate from the land of their origin. Jeanne and Nicholas sailed from old France to New France, leaving family and friends, familiar places and sights. Surely, this was an emotional parting and a spiritual up-rooting filled with a fear of the dangers ahead.

Essentially, they set an example for all of the Roy generations who followed. If we scan the place names next to each new generation in the Roy Genealogy in Appendix A, we must note that they change. In Quebec, all the Roy sons were farmers, termed in French "Cultivateurs ", who emigrated further westward, seeking fertile lands to farm.

They followed the rivers which were the routes of exploration and easy travel into the interior of Quebec before there were roads. Right up to Theophile Roy, of Generation 8, they lived off the land.

It was Theophile's generation that experienced the Industrial Revolution, that great 19th Century upheaval of society which emptied the farms. He and Astree left Quebec for the U.S. in 1895. However, his leaving at age 43 was a reluctant one, or so it would seem. His older sons had given up on farming, as it no longer provided a good life.

Evidently, they had left Quebec before he and Astree. No doubt, this was a tearing away of roots as well. For not only did they depart from the farm at Saint Cecile de Milton, they left behind their entire culture, their ties to the Quebecois way of life among an extended family, to be "re-planted" in the strange and cold society of Yankee New England where they were a minority.

The story of how our Roy ancestors became assimilated into American society is not without an awareness of the fact that they encountered some prejudices. Just as the Irish, the Italians, and the Polish who arrived at about the same time, they formed their own neighborhoods. They had their "Petit Canadas".

As a key part of telling this history, it has been necessary to study the building of French parishs, an occupation which their priests undertook with a zeal seldom seen. In fact, their organizations became a crusade of a sort, called "La Survivance ", denoting a firm intention to preserve the Quebecois language and culture. Such zeal inevitably raised alarms among the anglophile officials of 19th Century Protestant New England.

In this attempt to write a description of the up-rooting of the lives of our ancestors it was necessary to learn more of the French language. This effort, too, impressed us with a greater realization that our generation had indeed lost our roots.

The four children of Theophile and Astree retained some of their ethnic French-Canadian background by attending French-speaking parishes here in the U.S. However, that tie was commonly severed in the following two generations.

Today, most of the Roy descendants born after the Second World War, from about 1945 and later, would acknowledge no French-Canadian ties, recall no name of an ancestral village in Quebec, and have no interest in where their parents' Pepere and Memere originated.

But please don't misread my meaning here. While I wish to honor the lives of those who preceded us, I believe strongly that to them America had what 19th Century Canada did not offer--namely our Heritage of Freedom and Equality.

What needs to be recalled here is simply that we, too, are descended from immigrants to America. In our case, these people came from France by way of Quebec. They were, in fact, among the very first Europeans to colonize the New World, arriving in 1661.

I believe that the descendants of the Pilgrims on the ship Mayflower have very little on us when it comes to arguing who was here first! However, be advised: do not get into any such discussion with those guys who own the new casinos in Ledyard, CT ! Roy Forgit, Worchester Mass.

Roy, Edmond, "Nicholas Roy et ses Descendants", 1897, Chapter 2, p.68.

This is a definitive history of the Roys, in French, of 255 pages. It is in the Library of the

American-French Genealogical Society, Woonsocket, R.I.

Poulin, Eugena, Php, "Crime and Seventeenth Century Women in New France",

Je Me Souviens, the magazine published by the American -French Genealogical Society,

Talbot, Eloi-Gerard, "Genealogie des Familles originaires des Comtes de

Montmagny Islet Bellechasse", 1976, Vol. 14, p.167

My name is Robert Arthur Roy. ( also known as Rob Roy ). I am part of the 8^th generation of Roy’s to be born here in the new world. The information below is compiled from marriage records kept by churches. To help interpret the information appearing below, refer to Number 1 below.

My father is Arthur G. Roy, and my mother is Rose Roy, her maiden name was Rose Aimee Nadeau. My parents were married July 6, 1936 in Ste. Appoline de Patton, Quebec Canada. My Mom’s parents were Jean Nadeau and Rose-Anna Labbe, who married Feb 3 1896 in St Neree. My Dad’s parents were Francois Roy and Odelie Gonthier-Bernard, then go down to Number 2.

We trace back to my father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father, Louis Roy dit Leroi (See number 9) who stayed in France and never crossed the Atlantic. It was number 8, Nicholas Roy dit Leroy, who was born in France, married in France, migrated over to the New world and his son, Jean-Baptiste Roy, was born in La Durantaye, Quebec, and married October 17, 1701.

1.Guillaume-Arthur Roy
   +Rose Aimee Nadeau       m. 6-July-1936, Ste.Appoline de Patton, Montmagny County, Quebec
   (Her parents: Johnny (Jean?) Nadeau & Rose-Anna Labbe, m.3-Feb-1896, @ St.Neree)
   (His parents: Francois Roy & Odelie Gonthier-Bernard)

2.Francois Roy
   +Odelie Gonthier-Bernard m.13-May-1895, St.Raphael, Bellchasse County, Quebec
   (Her parents: Louis Gonthier-Bernard & Adelaide Theberge)
   (His parents: Narcisse Roy & Philomene Couture, of St.Raphael)

3. Narcisse Roy
    +Philomene Couture m.9-April-1861 @ St.Raphael, Bellchasse County, Quebec

(Her parents: Leon Couture & Adelaide Gonthier)
    (His parents: Etienne Roy & Marguerite LaCroix)

4. Etienne Roy
    + Marguerite LaCroix   m.12-Aug-1828, @ St Gervais, Bellechasse Cty.
    (Her parents: Pierre La Croix & Marguerite Labrecque)
    (His parents; Bazile Roy & Louise Boulet)

5. Bazile Roy
   + Marie-Louise Boulet   m.17-Jan-1785 @ St.Francois-Riviere-du-Sud
   (Her parents: Jean-Marc Boule & Marie-Anne Fortier)
( His parents: Jean-Baptiste Roy & Magdeleine Tangue)

6. Jean.-Baptiste Roy
    +Marie-Magdeleine Tangue   m. 22-July-1748 @ St.Vallier
    (Her parents: Jean.-Baptiste Tangue & M. Magdeleine Cymar)
    (His parents: Jean-Baptiste Roy & Claire Cadrin)

7. Jean-Baptiste Roy (or Leroy)                    born @ La Durantaye, Quebec.
    + Claire Cadrin-Leclerc  m. 17-Oct-1701 @ St.Michel
    (Her parents: Nicholas Cadrin-Leclerc & Francoise DeLaunay)
    (His parents: Nicholas Roy dit Leroy & Jeanne Lelievre)

8. Nicholas Roy dit Leroy, 1639-1691, born @St.Remi de Dieppe, Normandie; d. La Durantaye
    + Jeanne Lelievre                          m. Feb-1658 @ St.Leonard de Honfleur, Normandie

9. Louis Roy dit Leroi, circa 1620-1663
   +Anne Lemaistre                          m. 27-Apr-1638, St.Remi de Dieppe, Normandie France