Église de Montignac-le-Coq. Par Jack ma — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8232758

Where were we? Oh, yes, Paul Casti or Caty — for whom the research is still in progress — did leave some hints in the archives for us about his life outside the BMD standards.

Paul was born around 1669, in Montignac-le-Coq, in the department of Charente. He is not cited on Fichier Origine website, but I’m taking this opportunity to talk about him and his wife Geneviève Badeau, whom he married on October 17, 1704, in Québec.

Nicknamed the “Needle”, Paul Casti was a tailor. He was also a cabaret keeper when he lived in Trois-Rivières. A document from December 19, 1714, mentioned that Paul and his wife Geneviève Badeau were fined 50 pounds for having sold alcohol to an Indian named Napens (?) in exchange for his clothes. They would be fined another 10 pounds for having reoffended.

This fine didn’t seem to put an end to Paul’s misconduct since he was once more accused in 1717 of having served alcohol to a few “habitants” and soldiers on Good Friday at the time of mass.

Then, in August 1719, in another document, it is reported that Paul’s house is a place where people misbehave and drink heavily on a daily basis. He sells alcoholic beverages to French and Indians in exchange for clothes.

According to the baptismal records of their children, Paul and Geneviève probably left Trois-Rivières after what appears to be their troubles with the law in that town, since they were in Pointe-aux-Trembles in 1722. Most of their children actually married there as well.

After Paul died in 1749 in Pointe-aux-Trembles, an inventory after death for the couple’s possessions was performed—Geneviève had died in 1745. An 11-page long document, on which the ink has often bled through, will certainly be one of my priority projects when I retire in 2022. You can count on the post afterward for sure!

The letter D will be up tomorrow, don’t miss it!