From the desk of Stephen White....
                     regarding brothers Jean-Baptiste & Jean-Baptiste Chiasson

The gentleman looking to sort out the Chiassons has hit upon a difficult case, but fortunately we already have found a solution to it. What confuses things is the fact that Jean-Baptiste Chiasson and Marie-Anne Boudrot had one son named Jean and another named Jean-Baptiste. Well, there is no accounting for taste, but John and John the Baptist were indeed two quite different and distinct saints. Be that as it may, the problem is made worse by the French Canadian fascination with the latter. This fascination is perhaps what explains the fact that both boys were actually baptized Jean-Baptiste, the elder at St-Denis-sur-Richelieu on Aug. 26, 1762, and the latter at St-Antoine-sur-Richelieu on Oct. 30, 1767. The elder brother was the one who was normally known as Jean. He married Marie-Josèphe Brunel dit Beaufort at St-Hyacinthe on Sept. 29, 1783. He eventually wound up in New York state, and died at Coopersville on May 6, 1846. The younger brother, who went by the name Jean-Baptiste, married Félicité Dion (or Guyon) at St-Charles-sur-Richelieu on Feb. 11, 1793. I do not know when or where this brother died, but his death occurred sometime before Oct. 15, 1833. The fact that there were actually two brothers is made most clear by the fact that these two couples were both having children at the same time, after the second brother married in 1793.

These Chiassons apparently were known as Les Gource (or Gousse). The father of these brothers is sometimes called Jean Gource in the records. He was a son of Abraham Chiasson and Marie Poirier (DGFA p 351). His wife was a daughter of Anselme Boudrot and Marguerite Gaudet (DGFA p 195). Jean-Baptiste and Marie-Anne were married sometime between the census of Jan. 1752 and the end of 1753; their eldest known child, Marie-Charlotte, was twenty-three years old (or in her twenty-third year) when she married Félix Bourgeois at St-Antoine-sur-Richelieu on Jan. 13, 1777. Marie-Anne's parentage is made obvious by her selection of godparents for her children, and it even says in the case of her son Louis-Étienne that his godfather was his uncle Étienne Boudrot (Rg St-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, Sept. 11, 1766). On the Chiasson side the evidence is less obvious. It is basically a choice between Abraham Chiasson and his brother Jean-Baptiste, who married Madeleine Boudrot and later Marie Pitre (DGFA pp 357-358). You will notice that the latter did have a son Jean, whose spouse I have listed as unidentified. This is because in the census of the winter of 1754-1755 this Jean appears at Aulac right after his father Jean-Baptiste, and the census actually shows that he was the latter's son by calling him Jean Chiasson fils. This Jean was married by this time all right, but he had no children. In the same census there is another listing for a Jean Chiasson with his wife and one daughter, at Pont à Buote. This must be your correspondent's ancestor, because we know that he had one daughter at that time, his daughter Marie-Charlotte, whose marriage I mentioned above. So, this Jean is someone other than Jean-Baptiste's son, and in the context the only other alternative is for him to have been Abraham's son. Thus the link is re-established.

Father Bergeron appears to have confused the Jean-Baptiste Chiasson who married Madeleine Boudrot with his nephew Jean-Baptiste Chiasson who married Marie-Anne Boudrot.