The Families Descended from Philippe Diel and Marie Anquetin

The information presented here is an expansion of the work started by Monsignior Emile Yelle in the years from 1920 to 1947. He wrote that his name was originally spelled Diel and that the orthography evolved considerably from one generation to the next following the fancy of vicars and notaries. "We find to this effect: Diel, Dielle, Guiel, Guielle, Guelle, Hyelle, Hielle, and Yelle", he wrote. Dyel and Dyelle should be included and, more recently, Gale.

Philippe Diel and Marie Anquetin (Hanquetin) lived in Ste. Colombe, Diocese of Rouen, in Normandie, France in the early 1600s. The Monsignor states that baptism, marriage, and burial records of the church offer convincing evidence that the Diel family enjoyed a comfortable life in farming and a respectable status in the region. At least one Diel was a knight, and the family were property owners which placed them in the lesser nobility. These records, however, pertain to the Diels who preceded Philippe.

Monsignor Yelle wrote that the 300-year-old records in Ste. Colombe were in very poor condition when he visited there in 1929. Work is in progress today to restore and preserve those same records. Whether they will be more or less complete than what he found remains to be seen, but little is known about Philippe and Marie presently. Their parents are unknown, and it is only by virtue of the fact that they were so listed on Charles Diel's marriage contract with Marie Anne Picard that they are known to be his parents. That document also states that Philippe was a laboureur in life which means he was not of the lower nobility. Laboureurs were ploughmen who, in good times, lived somewhat comfortably as upper class peasants.

However, after the death of Marie Anne Picard, Charles married Marie Francois Simon dit Lapointe. That marriage contract states that Philippe and Marie lived in the St. Remy parish of Dieppe. Both parishes are in the diocese of Rouen, and it's possible that rrecords for both parishes could be found there.

The Monsignor made an assumption, based on incomplete records, that Philippe Diel and Marie Anquetin had two sons, Charles and Guillaume. However, he stipulates that for this to hold true, Marie Anquetin had to have also been known as Marie Lesaunier, because Guillaume's parents were Philippe Diel and Marie Lesaunier, not Anquetin. To my knowledge, there is no evidence that the two Maries were the same woman or that they were married to the same Philippe Diel. There could have been two Philippe Diels married to two different women. Why he made that assumption, I don't know. Charles and Guillaume could have been brothers, half brothers, cousins, or unrelated, but the assumption gained popularity because Monsignor Yelle published his information through the Quebec Genealogical Society. Since the Guillaume in question died upon arrival in Canada and had no children, our genealogy is not affected, and nothing is lost except the historical accuracy of Guillaume's parentage and his true identity. Furthermore, it has since been proven that the Guillaume in question was not Charles' brother.

There is an unbroken line between Philippe and the Diels (and name variations) of today. However, we have not directly connected Philippe to the other Diels or Dyels who lived in his time and in his immediate environment who can be traced back to Robert Dyel who took part in the Second Crusade in 1147. Many of those Diels who descended from Robert maintained noble status up until the French Revolution. Novels were written and movies were made about Jacques Dyel Du Parquet who was Governor of Martinique and owner of several islands of the Lesser Antilles.

There are many possible reasons why no records seem to exist for Philippe and Marie. In addition to natural decay and negligence, records were often intentionally destroyed in wars and civil turmoil. During the religious wars, records of Huguenots or Protestants were removed from Catholic archives and burned. Records of the nobility were destroyed during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Philippe lived before the revolution, but he lived in a time and in an area that was a hotbed of religious warfare.

The Monsignor's rosy picture of Philippe Diel's France is in sharp contrast with recorded history. He gave the impression that there was no religious persecution, as with the Huguenots, economic deprivation, or political turmoil to cause Philippe's son, Charles, to emigrate; but France in Philippe's time was in political, religious, and economic turmoil, and the Thirty Years War, 1618 - 1648, which embroiled most of Europe, was in full swing.

From Fordham Universty, Modern History Sourcebook, this is what historians say of that era:

Social Conditions in 17th Century France

1632

Conditions around Poitiers, France are deteriorating because of the wars, pestilence, and overcrowding.  All the cultivated land is already cut up into very small pieces and the district has few surplus lots to offer.  The second or younger sons had little chance of inheriting a small piece of the family farm or of becoming a craftsman or exercising a trade.  Another pestilence decimated a large part of the population in the district this year but did not relieve the over crowding situation.

The end of the war in 1648 brought little relief for the general population.

The provinces of Normandy and Saint Quentain, France: We only give breadto those who would otherwise die.  The staple dish here consists of mice, which the inhabitants hunt, so desperate are they from hunger. They devour roots which animals cannot eat.  Not a day passes that at least 200 people die of famine in the two provinces.  Herds of men and women wander the fields between Rheims and Rhetel turning up the earth like pigs to find a few rotten roots. Some live on chopped straw mixed with earth, others on diseased bodies of dead animals.

Notice that Normandy is where Charles Diel, our first immigrant, was from and that he was born in 1652.

Port Royal, France: People massacre each other daily with every sort of cruelty. Soldiers steal from one another, spoil more property than they carry off, they themselves are reduced to starvation.

Starvation, pestilence and war plague France. The peasants are paying a large portion of their crop for local seigneur feudal dues, church tithes, and the king’s taxes.  The average life expectancy is about twenty-five years.  Twenty five percent of children did not live past one year of age.  France at this time is still a patchwork of overlapping and conflicting jurisdictions.  Royal authority is mostly restricted to Paris. Brittany, Provence, and Normandy had their own parliaments, estates, laws, and liberties.  Thirty-five years of religious war left disorder throughout the land.

After Louis XIV revoked The Edict of Nantes in 1685, the Huguenots were once again targeted for full scale persecution.

But what happened on June 11, 1686 in Cany, Pays de Caux, deserves to never be forgotten. The jailer who kept the corpse of a Dieppe woman, a Huguenot, named DIEL decided to charge the people who were gathering in that town a fee to view the body.

He excited the curiosity of the people by inviting them to take a look at the corpse of a damned person . The peasants being credulous expected to see a corpse quite different from the usual, marked by some obvious sign of damnation, and ran in large number to see that new spectacle. At least 700 people attended since the jailer, charging each person only 2 liards made, nevertheless, 17 francs.

In Bergerac the Declaration was executed against so many people of both sexes that the judges got tired of it and refused to accept any more denunciations.

In the absence of official records, the information presented yields many possibilities as to the demise of Philippe Diel and Marie Anquetin. Did they hunt mice for food? Did they starve to death, or did they die due to some plague, pestilence or hostile action? Whatever their fate, it was not the bed of roses portrayed by Monsignor Yelle.

Charles was referred to as an "exile" in a letter to Monsignor Yelle from a priest in Ste. Colombe. He inquired about the mental, moral, and religious condition of the Diels in Canada. He then commented that Ste. Colombe had remained "very Catholic". This was mentioned, I'm sure, because the Huguenot influence in Normandy was very strong; but was there some doubt as to the "Catholicity" of Charles? Were his parents Huguenots? Was Charles taken from his parents and sent to Canada because they were Huguenot heretics? Is that why he was referred to as an "exile"?

Charles Diel

Charles, the first of our line to settle in Canada, was born in Ste. Colombe, France in 1652. He arrived in New France, or Canada, in 1665 with the Carignan Regiment, Company Lafouille. The regiment was sent to protect settlers from the Iriquois Indians. There were also many assumptions made about why Charles at 13 years of age was part of an infantry regiment. It was said that he could have been used as a laborer, an apprentice of some kind, a courier, or as a drummer. Others said he was a cadet who was expected to become a combat-hardened officer by the age of eighteen. He definitely was not a cadet. It is possible that he could have played any of the other roles, but the question remains as to why he was there at that young age. Since his marriage contract dated 1676 states that his parents were already dead at that time, the possibility that Charles might have been an orphan at the time of his recruitment was considered but never proven.

Monsignor Yelle also propagated the false notion that Charles' assumed brother, Guillaume, arrived with the regiment and died shortly after from illness contracted during the voyage from France. Charles' dit name, or military alias, was Le Petit Breton; and, that was enough evidence to prove that Guillaume Le Breton of La Frediere Company was the older brother of Charles Le Petit Breton. This was proven to be false, but only after wrongly convincing many people that Charles and Guillaume Le Breton were brothers.

Charles did arrive with the Carignan Regiment at the age of thirteen in 1665. He was in a group known as supernumeraries who might have had a military obligation but were sent rather to provide skills and labor to stimulate the economy and to populate the colony. The regiment was to serve the dual purpose of subduing the Iroquois as well as providing permanent settlers in New France. The Carignan campaign was a success, and peace with the Iroquois was reached in 1667. In 1668, when Charles was still only sixteen years old, the bulk of the regiment left Canada. However, King Louis gave land grants to a number of Carignan officers who agreed to stay in Canada and help develop the country. The officers then convinced some of their soldiers to stay in Canada to improve a portion of the land grant which the soldier would own after a three year tenancy. The land so granted was doled out in locations that would serve as a line of defense when occupied by the ex-soldiers who formed a kind of militia. Charles is listed as one of the 400 or so soldiers who stayed, but his land concession came from the Jesuits and not from a Carignan officer.

It was on such a tract of land "of 4 by 20 arpents" in LaPrairie near Montreal that Charles settled when he married Marie Anne Picard on 31 August 1676 in Montreal. She was the daughter of a "Pioneer", Hughes Picard. After Anne died in 1696 or 1697, Charles married Francoise Simon dit Lapointe on 8 May 1702.

Marie Anne Picard

Marie Anne Picard was born in Montreal on 3 November 1663. She was the daughter of Jacques Hughes Picard dit LaFortune and Marie Antoinette Liercourt. At the age of thirteen, she married Charles Diel in Montreal on 31 August 1676. She had her first of ten children in 1678 when she was not yet 15 and died in Laprairie on 4 February 1696 or 97 at the age of 33 or 34 years. She evidently had two sisters, Michelle and Marguerite. Michelle married Mathieu Gervais on the same day that Marie married Charles, and Marguerite married Jean Pare in 1681.

Francoise Simon dit Lapointe

Francois Simon dit Lapointe, widow of Etienne Godeau, married Charles Diel in Montreal on 8 May 1702. She was born in Ile de Montreal on 18 January 1671 and married Etienne Godeau on 03 December 1694?. She was buried 6 March 1757 in Saint Anne de Bell, Quebec. She had at least two children with Charles Diel, Jean Francois and Marie Francoise.

Children of Charles Diel and Anne Picard:

Marie Marguerite was born 18 APR 1678 in Monreal and died 26 JUL 1715 in Hotel-Dieu, Montreal. She married Pierre Perras 18 NOV 1696 in Laprairie. After Pierre's death, 1 AUG 1699, she married Julien Baritau dit Lamarche in Laprairie on 13 May 1700. Marie died in the Hotel-Dieu, Montreal on 26 JUL 1715. Julien was found dead on the edge of the St-Lambert River in Laprairie on 14 JUL 1736; he had been married to Catherine Suprenant since April 12, 1717.

NOTE: This was reported by the University of Montreal Program of Research in Demographic History. A note was added that there was confusion concerning Marie Marguerite's date of marriage to Julien, but that the associated contract of 11 MAY 1700 agreed with the time when she was widowed from Pierre Perras, 1 AUG 1699. Her date of marriage to Bariteau is elsewhere shown to be 13 MAY 1699.

Michel Langlois' Dictionnaire Biographique des Ancetres Quebecois states that there were ten children and that Charles was providing for the Perras and Bory children in 1716. This indicates that Bariteau would have rejected the Perras children after Marie Marguerite died in 1715.

If two sisters married Perras and Bariteau rather than one woman, that would account for the tenth child of Charles and Anne Picard. Some say another Marie was born in 1680, possibly a twin of Pierre, who married Baritault.

Pierre, was born 24 NOV 1680 in Montreal. (Marie's twin?) He was captured by the Iroqouis when he was about eight years old. He lived with them thereafter, eventually forgetting the French language. He returned in 1739 and again in 1742 to settle contracts in which he sold his inheritance rights.

Jacques was born 2 MAR 1683 in Laprairie. Nothing more is known.

Marie Anne was born 7 MAY 1684 in Laprairie; she died seven months later on 9 DEC 1684.

Marie Anne was born in 1685 and died 15 MAY 1708. She married Francois Bory dit Grandmaisson 27 October 1704. They had one or more daughters who died in infancy. Francois Bory died in "en filibust" or an attack on the English in 1711 which is why Charles was caring for their children in 1715.

Charles was born 5 August 1688 in Laprairie and married Jeanne Boyer on 17 February 1716. More to follow on Charles.

Marguerite was born 14 JUN 1691 in Laprairie. She married Jean Lacombe 03 FEB 1711. There must have been another given name to distinguish her from her sister, Marie Marguerite above.

Jacques was born 02 February 1693 in Laprairie and married Marie Anne Crepin on 13 July 1715. Jacques had a son, born 25 DEC 1713, out of wedlock with Marie Duclos before his marriage to Anne Crepin. Jacques refused in court to marry Marie Duclos so the boy was named Jacques Duclos. Jacques and Marie Anne Crepin also had a son named Jacques 26 September 1721.

Catherine, the last child, was born 9 August 1695 and died the following day.