This web site is intended to be a compendium of the research done on Olivier Michel dit Taillon dit Letardif and Marie Magdelaine Cochon of Quebec and their descendants. Much has been published on this family in various historical books and family histories, some of it accurate, some not so accurate. As is often the case with family histories, once something is in print, it often is considered to be "gospel". It is my hope that this web site will facilitate a critical examination and discussion of the facts, legends, and myths surrounding this family and to allow us researchers and descendants to learn more about our origins and our relatives' contributions to Quebec and the USA. The best way to separate fact from fiction and to resolve conflicting information is to go back to the primary sources (see Understanding Sources, Citations, Documentation and Evaluating Evidence In Genealogy, by Richard A. Pence ). These include records of marriages, birth and baptisms, deaths and burials, census listings, Bible records, tax lists, probate and land records, etc. The information in the descendant listings on this web site will include documentation of the primary sources as much as possible, and transcriptions of many of those sources will be presented in links below. This is a working document and not necessarily definitive, since much of it is based upon information found on the Internet or in published secondary sources. It will be modified and (hopefully) improved as more researchers provide input and, most importantly, evidence.
Our immigrant ancestor Olivier Michel was baptized 2 December 1645 at St-Barthelemi in La Rochelle, Aunis, France, a son of Gilles Michel (master tailor) and Barbe Emard. His baptismal name was Etienne; his twin brother Olivier died and was buried three days later. Gilles Michel left a will dated 10 August 1647 and died not long after. Gilles' widow Barbe Emard (also spelled Aymard/Esmard/Hemard, etc.) remarried on 21 May 1648 in La Rochelle to Olivier Letardif (who was a notable in the early years of Quebec, having been there as early as 1621, serving as an interpreter and chief clerk of the fur trading monopoly Compagnie des Cent Associes). Letardif owned part of the seigneurie (manor) of Beaupre just downriver of the city of Quebec, in what later became Montmorency County.
Olivier Letardif and Barbe left France for Quebec immediately, with Barbe's son Estienne (whose name was changed to Olivier, perhaps in honor of his deceased twin brother and his stepfather). (Barbe had four other children with Gilles Michel who died in infancy.) Olivier Letardif brought some children from his first marriage (to Louise Couillard, who died in 1641). Olivier Letardif and Barbe served as witnesses to a birth in Quebec City on 7 June 1649, as residents of Cap-de-Tourmente (on the Beaupre coast). They had several more children of their own. For several years, Letardif was Provost-Judge of Beaupre. Barbe died around January 1659. (An inventory of her estate was recorded at Beaupre by the notary Guillaume Audouart on 28 January 1659.) Olivier Letardif died and was buried at nearby Chateau-Richer on 28 January 1665. For more on him, see http://www.upperstjohn.com/nellie/d706.htm#P1692.
Olivier Michel married 24 November 1671 in Chateau-Richer to Marie Magdelaine Cochon, a daughter of Jean Cochon and Magdelaine Miville. She was born 16 February 1655 and baptized in Quebec City. Her family was closely associated with Olivier Michel's at her birth, since her godfather was Olivier Letardif.
Baptism of Marie Magdelaine Cochon, daughter of Jean Cochon & Magdelaine Miville; godfather was Olivier Letardif
Olivier Michel appears in records with two different "dit names": Letardif and Taillon. Letardif appears only on the baptism records of two of Olivier's children in the 1670s. That name came from his stepfather Olivier Letardif. The dit name of Taillon first appears on the 1698 baptism of his daughter Therese Dorothee (#F in my database) at Notre-Dame-de-Quebec in the city of Quebec. When his son Francois (#B) was admitted to the Hotel-Dieu hospital in 1700, his surname was given as Taillon. Most of the sons of Olivier Michel and Marie Magdelaine Cochon used the names Michel and Taillon interchangeably throughout their lives. Eventually, the name Taillon became standard for their descendants by the mid-1700s. One branch, that of his great-grandson Louis Charles Taillon (#953), adopted the dit name of Lataille in the late 1700s. (This is the branch from which I am descended. Much of my research has been focused on the Lataille descendants.) When the Taillon descendants came to the United States in the latter half of the 1800s, some of them anglicized the spelling of the name to Dio (phonetically similar to the French pronounciation of Taillon).
Olivier Michel dit Taillon dit Letardif and Marie Magdelaine Cochon had 15 children. The children's baptisms were recorded in several parishes on both sides of the St-Lawrence River in the Beaupre Coast area. By 1690, it appears they settled in or near Quebec City.
Marie Magdelaine (#1) - 1674, Chateau-Richer, Montmorency County
Jean Michel (#2) - 1675, Chateau-Richer, Montmorency County
Guillaume (#3) - 1676, Chateau-Richer, Montmorency County
Joseph (#4) - 1678, Chateau-Richer, Montmorency County
Louis (#5) - 1681, Bonsecours, L'Islet County
Elisabeth Agnes (#6) - 1682, Cap-St-Ignace, Montmagny County
Francoise (#7) - 1684, Cap-St-Ignace, Montmagny County
Marie Anne (#8) - 1685, Cap-St-Ignace, Montmagny County
Pierre (#9) - 1686, Cap-St-Ignace, Montmagny County
Agnes (#A) - 1688, Bonsecours, L'Islet County
Francois (#B) - 1690, Quebec, Quebec County
Jean Francois (or Baptiste) (#C) - 1692, Quebec, Quebec County
Ignace (#D) - 1695, Quebec, Quebec County
Marie Joseph (#E) - 1697, Quebec, Quebec County
Therese Dorothee (#F) - 1698, Quebec, Quebec County
Both Olivier and Marie Magdelaine died within a year of each other (at the Hotel-Dieu hospital in Quebec City) - she on 28 December 1698 (when their youngest child Therese Dorothee was only five months of age) and he on 26 Apr 1699. The entries in the hospital register (below) indicate the places of their birth. Marie Magdelaine Cochon's baptism was recorded (in 1655) in Quebec City, but she was probably born near where the Letardifs lived in Beaupre (as shown in the hospital record). This was before the formation of the parishes of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupre (1657) or Chateau-Richer (1661), so the baptism was performed at Notre-Dame-de-Quebec (formed in 1621).
Death of Olivier Michel
Death of Marie Magdelaine Cochon
At least nine of the children of Olivier and Marie Magdelaine married and had families of their own. Some remained in Chateau-Richer. Others settled upriver in Richelieu County or near Montreal. One son settled downriver in Kamouraska County.
I trace my ancestral line to this couple through their son Pierre (#9), who married 9 Nov 1716 in St-Nicolas, Levis County to Marie Jeanne Baron (daughter of Jacques Baron and Marie Catherine Mesny). Their son Louis (#95) settled in Sorel, Richelieu County (on the St-Lawrence River between Quebec City and Montreal), where he died in 1790. His son Louis Charles (#953) (my 5th-great-grandfather) took the dit name of Lataille. Louis Charles' great-granddaughter Marie Rose de Lima Lataille (#953145) married Francois St-Martin in the mid-1860s. They soon left Richelieu County for Massachusetts and Rhode Island, returned in the early 1870s to Richelieu County for a few years, and then finally settled northern Minnesota (USA). Their son Francis St-Martin is shown with his wife Stephanie Gaudette and their children in the photo below. My grandmother Celestine "Sally" is the oldest living daughter on the far left, second row.
On this web site and in my records, I have chosen to omit the correct French accent marks (e.g., grave, acute, circumflex) since I am not fluent in the French language and am using an American English keyboard. My apologies go out to my French-Canadian cousins! I have decided not to hyphenate given names, compound (Jean Baptiste or Rose de Lima) or otherwise (Pierre Antoine or Marie Madeleine). These given names rarely appear hyphenated in the parish registers or censuses.
Until the late 1900s, church registers in Quebec served as civil and vital records in that province. Throughout the years a second copy of church records, from all denominations, was sent annually to the appropriate courthouse. During the 1940s the vital record collections in courthouses throughout Quebec were filmed by the Institut Généalogique Drouin.Consequently, this filmed set of records became known as the Drouin Collection. This set of images of the Quebec parish registers is now available on Ancestry.com.
I have transcribed images of the Drouin Collection registers for all entries relating this Michel-Taillon-Lataille family up to 1759, the year of the English conquest of the French in Quebec. In the descendant listings that follow, you'll see that I have enclosed some of the places (such as births or deaths) with parentheses and a question mark. This is because in the baptismal and burials entries the records rarely state where the actual birth or death, respectively, took place. In the case of infant baptisms, I have usually made the assumption that the birth took place in the same parish as the baptism. Sometimes in the early 1700s (when parishes covered a large geographical area), I have used the place of residence of the parents as the place of birth, when the place of residence was different than the place of baptism and was stated in the records. In later years, I stayed with the place of baptism, even if the residence of the parents was elsewhere. I figure that this approach will be accurate most of the time. For burial entries in the registers, I have put the place of death as tentatively the same place as the burial, indicating this with parentheses and a question mark. My reasoning is that a person who dies a few counties or parishes away (perhaps while traveling) will probably be brought back to the home parish for burial. In the case of infant deaths (within one month after birth), I have used the place of burial as the place of death (i.e., without the parentheses and question mark).
In Quebec, as in other places, county and administrative boundaries formed and changed frequently. For simplicity, I have tried to be consistent in using the county boundaries that were in existence at the time the Drouin Collection was created (the 1940s). However, I have used the contemporary parishes (at the time of the given event).
Here are listings of known descendants (through eight generations):
[Note: To view the Adobe Acrobat files, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. This can be downloaded free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. You can download the files to your disk to view them, or use your web browser with the appropriate plug-ins.]
Children of Olivier Michel dit Taillon dit Letardif & Marie Magdelaine Cochon
Descendants of Jean Michel Michel dit Taillon (#2) & Marie Forget dit Depatie
Descendants of Guillaume Michel dit Taillon (#3) & Anne Gagnon
Descendants of Joseph Michel dit Taillon (#4) & Marie Anne Lebel
Descendants of Pierre Michel dit Taillon (#9) & Marie Jeanne Baron
Descendants of Jean Francois|Baptiste Michel dit Taillon (#C) & Marie Antoinette Charles dit Clement & Marie Josepht Briere
GEDCOM (Michel-Taillon-Lataille, Generations 0-8)
California
Massachusetts
Rhode IslandWorld War 1 Draft Registrations
World War 2 Draft Registrations
GenForum - Michel, Taillon
RootsWeb - Michel,
Taillon,
Lataille
French-Canadian & Acadian Genealogy Sources
If you find this information useful and would like to contribute a small (or bigger) amount to help fund this research, please consider selecting one of the options below. This helps me pay for subscriptions to web sites (e.g., Ancestry.com), reference materials (maps, books), supplies (paper, ink, binders, folders), time, and travel.
If you would like to comment on any information contained within, or wish to correspond with me about this family, please send me an e-mail message at: contact@arslanmb.org. Additions and corrections are greatly appreciated. I am especially interested in receiving information obtained from primary sources (census listings, Bibles, cemeteries, vital records, probate and land records, etc.) and photographs and digital images relating to this branch of the Michel-Taillon-Lataille family so that I can incorporate them into this page. Also, I would like to provide links to other pages on the Internet that deal with Michel-Taillon-Lataille genealogy.
Mark B. Arslan