Jacques Gaudry I (1594-1637): I'm my own grandfather (sort of)!

I managed to sort out Thérèse Maillot (3ggp; 1815-1892) and getting her connected to her ancestors through Drouin (see previous post).


Lately, that means turning distant cousins into great-grandparents because with 22,000+ people on the tree, I'm running into the same people through different branches.     This results in people being related in a few strange ways (and the expression "strange bedfellows" sometimes takes on a new meaning), one of which is that someone can end up being a great-grandparent multiple times.

Even stranger - and it happens more and more the further back you go - is that the same person can be a great-grandparent multiple times but in different generations.   This sets up the weirdness where someone - for example Jacques Gaudry I (1594-1637) is a 9th great-grandfather through one set of people, and an 11th great-grandfather through another!

How this happens is basically a circumstance of one set of people tending to marry earlier than another set, or where by luck one branch tends to have people who were all the oldest kids in the family, while the other has lots of youngest kids.

So in Jacques case - here's tree one though his son Nicolas:

1. 11ggp: Jacques Gaudry I (1594-1637);
2. 10ggp: Nicolas Gaudry dit Bourbonnaire (1621-1669);
3.   9ggp: Marie-Charlotte (Christine) Gaudry (1660-1729);
4.   8ggp: Charles Hamel (1679-1755)
5.   7ggp: Marie-Angélique Hamel (1703-1753)
6.   6ggp: Marie-Angélique Grenier (1729-1767)
7.   5ggp: Marie-Geneviève Choret (1756-1824);
8.   4ggp: Pierre Sévigny II dit Lafleur (1779-1865);
9.   3ggp: Marie-Céleste Sévigny (1809-1870);
10.   2ggp: Alexandre Guimond (1842-1930);
11.   1ggp: Elusippe Guimond (1871-1926);
12.       gp: Anne Guimond (1895-1954) 

Then, through Nicolas' younger brother Jacques Jr.:

1.  9ggp: Jacques Gaudry I (1594-1637);
2.  8ggp: Jacques Gaudry II dit Bourbonnaire (1637-1691);
3.  7ggp: Marie-Angélique Gaudry (1685-1726);
4.  6ggp: Marie-Angélique Tessier (1722-1768);
5.  5ggp: Michel Maillot II dit Laviolette (1742-1816);
6.  4ggp: Jean Maillot (1784-);
7.  3ggp: Thérèse Maillot (1815-1892);
8.  2ggp: Marie-Clarisse Bélanger (1844-1917);
9.  1ggp: Ernestine Vaudreuil (1875-1916);
10.      gp: Anne Guimond (1895-1954).

For the first branch, the average age of the parent at the birth of the child is 27.4, and 33.4 years for the other, which creates quite the gap over ~10 generations!

Note that Ernestine Vaudreuil is the 7th cousin once removed from her husband, Elusippe Guimond.

So - is Jacques Gaudry an 11th great-grandfather, or a 9th?   And is his father (René, c. 1570-1619) a 10th or a 12th?

Here's a chart:

Click for larger image.