Many of the Toupin families in Canada trace their ancestry to Pierre Toupin dit Lapierre, a native of Rouffiat, Angoulême, Angoumois, France, who came to Québec in the middle 1600s. He settled at Beauport (near the city of Québec), where he married Mathurine Graton (a native of Aubigny, Luçon, Poitou, France) in 1670. This web site is intended to be a compendium of the research done on them 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 Toupin family and to allow us Toupin researchers and descendants to learn more about our origins and our relatives' contributions to early North America. The best way to separate fact from fiction and to resolve conflicting information is to go back to the primary sources (see Documenting Your Genealogy Research - Guide to Citing Sources). These include records of marriages, births and baptisms, deaths and burials, census listings, 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; it will be modified and (hopefully) improved as more researchers provide input and, most importantly, evidence.
My database currently includes 777 descendants who carry the Toupin surname (or a variant, like Tuper).
Jean Pierre Toupin was born in Beauport, Québec County, Québec in 1723 to Rene Toupin and Genevieve Langlois (who were married in Beauport in 1708). Jean Pierre was a grandson of Pierre Toupin dit Lapierre, who immigrated to Québec from France and married in Québec City in 1670 to Mathurine Graton (one of the Filles du Roi). Marie Madeleine Maillou(x) (her surname in records is written both with and without the "x") was born in Beauport in 1725 to Germain Maillou(x) dit Lasource and Marie Madeleine Giroux (who were married in Beauport in 1724).
Baptism of Jean Pierre Toupin
Baptism of Marie Madeleine Maillou(x)
Jean Pierre Toupin and Marie Madeleine Maillou(x) were married in Beauport in 1748. By 1766, they had 12 children (two of whom had died in infancy). In the following year, they moved from Beauport (just north of Québec City) to Laprairie County (near Montreal), about 170 miles miles farther upstream on the St. Lawrence River. Two more children were born in Laprairie County. Jean Pierre Toupin (a blacksmith and farmer) died in 1809 and was buried at Ile Perrot, west of Laprairie, next to the island of Montreal. His son Pierre (born in 1762) was the parish priest at Ile Perrot from 1797 until his (Pierre's) death there in 1825.
Marriage of Jean Pierre Toupin & Marie Madeleine Maillou(x)
Burial of Jean Pierre Toupin
Their third child, son Francois Toupin, married in Laprairie in 1774 to Marie Catherine Brossard. (Francois and Marie Catherine are my 5th-great-grandparents. Much of the information on this web site concerns their descendants, especially those who came to Michigan in the United States in the 1860s and later settled in Minnesota and Washington.) Another significant branch in the USA is that of Jean Pierre's grandson Pierre (son of Joseph Toupin and Marie Suzanne Dubuc), who (under the name Peter Tuper) settled as a shoemaker in Fort Covington, Franklin County, New York in the 1840s. Many of his Tuper and Tupper descendants live in the northeast USA.
[Note: 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!]
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 Pierre Toupin dit Lapierre & Mathurine Graton
Descendants of René Toupin (#3) & Geneviève Langlois
Descendants of Louise Renée Toupin (#4) & Jacques Barbel
Descendants of Ignace Toupin (#5) & Marie Elizabeth Duprac
Descendants of Jean Baptiste Toupin (#7) & Marie Thérèse Caron
GEDCOM (Toupin, Generations 0-8)
Explanation of Format of Descendant Listings
Index of Names
1851 Québec
1861 Québec
1871 Québec
1881 Québec
1891 Québec
1901 Québec
1911 Québec
California
Idaho
Michigan
Minnesota
Minnesota Land
New York
WashingtonUSA - World War 1 Draft Registrations
USA - World War 2 Draft Registrations ("Old Man's Draft")
See my library of digital images (photos, newspaper clippings, etc.) related to this family.
GenForum - Toupin
RootsWeb - Toupin
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 Toupin 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 Toupin genealogy.
Mark B. Arslan