The family today

The Courtien Family

The Courtiens are an American family, French on one side and Irish on the other. The name came out of France, crossed to Canada, and reached New York before the turn of the last century. Five sons of one generation served, in the Army, the Marine Corps and the merchant service. The greatest number of Courtiens are still in New York, with others across the country. They are great Americans in the plainest sense of it: they came with a trade, they worked, they served, and they stayed.

The name

Origin

Courtien is an uncommon name, found chiefly in France. Fewer than a hundred people carried it in the United States at either of the last two censuses, and in France only eighty-one births were registered under it between 1890 and 1990, in two small pockets. One of those is the Sarthe, and that is where this family comes from: Sarce, a village in the country south of Le Mans, where they are in the parish register from 1741. They came to Sarce from Coulonge, a few miles off, by way of Aubigne. The men of those first generations were a winegrower, a mason and a stonecutter; the farming came later. No surname dictionary records what the name means.

From 1763 the French clerks wrote it steadily enough. Courtien in the baptism of that year, in the marriage at Mayet in 1800, in the births at Sarce in 1847 and 1850, and in the Paris death act of 1908, with one act in 1839 adding a t on the end. In America it took sixty years to settle. The same Manhattan household was entered in the censuses as Courtin, Constien, Courteen and Courtier before a census taker wrote Courtien in 1940.

Before 1763 they wrote it both ways. The same man is Courteau in the priest's hand and Courtien in his own, over and over, at Coulonge, at Aubigne and at Sarce. The records that show it are set out in full.

Henri Courtien of the Sarthe is among the names for 1914 on the war memorial at Coulonge, the parish the family had come from two centuries earlier. Whether he was a relative is not known.

Out of Sarce the family went three ways. Paul crossed to Montreal and his son went on to New York. Paul's brother Ariste went to Paris and was a concierge in the faubourg Saint-Honore. Their parents and their sister moved south to Tours.

Sarce, in the Sarthe

Michel and Marie

Michel Courtien was born at Sarce, a village in the Sarthe, at nine in the evening on 4 September 1807, and his father carried him in to register the birth the next day. The first witness was his uncle Jean. His mother was Anne Fontenay, and both his parents were alive in 1839 to consent, before a notary at Mayet, to their son's second marriage.

The elder Michel was baptised at Sarce on 9 September 1763, a son of Jean Courtien and Madeleine Martineau, who had married in the village in 1741. Jean was a mason and later a stonecutter, and nine of their children are recorded at Sarce. He married Anne Fontenay at Mayet on 30 May 1800; she was born at Sarce in 1773, a daughter of Julien Fontenay and Catherine Dufour, and his brothers Jean and Charles stood as witnesses. He farmed at Sarce all his life and died there on 29 April 1841, the death reported by his son, who gave his age as thirty-three. Jean and Madelaine are the oldest Courtiens the family can show a record for.

He married twice. His first wife was Adelaide Louise Legeay, and they had a son, Auguste Ferdinand, in January 1836. She died at Sarce on 23 April 1838. Thirteen months later, on 10 May 1839, he married Marie Tertrain, twenty-five and born in the same village, a daughter of Michel Tertrain and Marie Desnos. Her grandfather, another Michel Tertrain, stood as a witness at seventy-two. The two families had been close for generations: a Michel Tertrain had been godfather to Michel's own father in 1763.

Michel was a merchant in 1836, a weaver by 1839 and a farmer by the time his later children were born. Ariste arrived in June 1842, Paul Ambroise on 4 April 1847 and Justine on 1 September 1850, the second of them registered with two of her Tertrain uncles standing as witnesses, one of them a farrier. By 1869 the family had moved south to Tours, where Michel and Marie were still living when their children married.

France to Canada

Paul and Philomene

Paul Ambroise Courtien was born at Sarce on 4 April 1847 and registered the next day, his father reporting the birth. He became a cook, and by 1871 he was in Montreal, where on 11 October of that year he married Philomene Larocque at Notre-Dame-de-Montreal.

The Montreal register names both sets of parents. His were Michel Courtien and Marie Tertrais, by then at Tours. Hers were Napoleon Larocque and Marie Leblanc Robillard, of Saint-Michel-de-Vaudreuil, west of the city, where Philomene had been born on 1 October 1845 and baptised the same day.

Two years earlier his sister Justine had married Theodore Sorin at Tours, on 8 February 1869. She was eighteen and a lingere, and had been born at Sarce on 1 September 1850. Both her parents were there, and Michel signed the act.

They had six children in Montreal. Three sons grew up: Victor in 1874, Hippolyte in 1876 and Henri-Paul in 1879. Louis George was buried in 1884 and Andrea in 1912, and a daughter, Justine Philomene Marie, was baptised in 1885. Henri-Paul stayed in Quebec and died at Saint-Hyacinthe in 1952.

By the spring of 1901 Paul was living in Hippolyte's household in the Saint-Louis quarter of Montreal, where the census of that year entered him simply as pere. He died on 7 July, and was buried from Notre-Dame two days later. Philomene outlived him by twelve years and was buried from the same church in September 1913, entered in the register as his widow.

The first generation in America

Victor and Ellen

Victor Paul Courtien, the eldest of the three, was born in Montreal on 29 October 1874 and came to the United States about 1890. There is no record of his arrival and there never was one: Washington did not begin recording Canadians who crossed the land border until 1895. He most likely took a train from Montreal and simply stayed. He was a janitor in Manhattan, as his uncle Ariste was a concierge in Paris.

Ellen White came the other way. She was born at Mount Bellew in County Galway on 10 July 1880 and baptised two days later, a daughter of Patrick White and Mary Quinn, with a sister Honor and a brother Thomas. She sailed on the SS Majestic and landed on 8 September 1898, eighteen years old, going to a sister already in America. Her name is White in the Irish records and Whyte in the American ones. So the line is French on one side and Irish on the other.

They raised nine children in Washington Heights, at the top of Manhattan: Mary, Teresa, Margaret, Victor, John, Francis and Helen by 1915, then a gap of five years before Arthur, whom the family called Jimmy, and Thomas.

Ellen died in Manhattan on 12 March 1943, aged sixty-two. Victor outlived her by twenty-four years and died in 1967, aged ninety-two. They are buried together at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, in Westchester.

The next generation

Thomas and Agnes

Thomas Martin Courtien Sr. was the youngest of the nine, born in New York City on 21 December 1921. He went to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, and during the war took a degree in engineering at the US Merchant Marine Academy.

Agnes Anne Lightbody was born in Manhattan in 1923 and grew up in Pelham. Her father Robert died in 1933. She trained as a nurse and was still working as one in 1950.

They met before the war at the Catholic summer camp at Cliff Haven in upstate New York, and married on 7 July 1946 at St. Catharine's Church in Pelham. By 1950 they were in Yonkers with three small children. Ten more followed.

He went to sea for Moore McCormack Shipping and was a lieutenant in the US Naval Reserve, then spent the rest of his working life with the Department of the Navy, latterly as Director of Materials for the Military Sealift Command. He retired in 1981.

Agnes died in 1992, at sixty-eight. Thomas outlived her by eighteen years and died at Mount Vernon on 6 January 2010, at eighty-eight. Of the nine children raised in Washington Heights he was the youngest, and the last. They rest together at Beechwoods Cemetery in New Rochelle, and he left thirteen children, twenty-five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren behind him.

Family tree

The line

1. Jean Courtien and Madeleine Martineau · Sarce, 1741
2. Michel Courtien and Anne Fontenay · Mayet, 1800
3. Michel Courtien and Marie Tertrain · Sarce, 1839
4. Paul Ambroise Courtien and Philomene Larocque · Montreal, 1871
5. Victor Paul Courtien and Ellen Whyte · New York, 1890
6. Thomas M. Courtien Sr. and Agnes Lightbody · Pelham, 1946
7. Thirteen children, and the generations after them

Open the family tree →

Military history

The sons' service

All five of Victor and Ellen's sons have a service record: three in the Army, one in the Marine Corps, and the youngest in the merchant service. Francis enlisted at Camp Upton in August 1941, four months before Pearl Harbor. Thomas served on troop transports in the Atlantic convoys and the Pacific.

Read the military history →

Victor and Ellen Courtien had nine children in Washington Heights between 1902 and 1921. Four were daughters. All five sons have a service record: three in the Army, one in the Marine Corps, and the youngest in the merchant service.

What each record shows, and how much it shows, is not the same. Three of them are in the Army enlistment file with a serial number, a date and a civilian trade. One is an obituary. One is a headstone and nothing else. Each is given below with the document it comes from.

The Army

Francis, John and Victor

Francis went first, and early. He enlisted at Camp Upton, at Yaphank on Long Island, on 22 August 1941, four months before Pearl Harbor. The enlistment file gives his civilian trade as carpenter. He served as a technician fifth grade, a rank created in 1942 for skilled specialists, paid as a corporal and worn as corporal's chevrons with a T beneath them. Technicians were the mechanics, drivers, radio operators and medics of a unit. They held no authority to give orders, which was the point of the rank.

John enlisted on 29 May 1942 and Victor on 30 September, both at Fort Jay on Governors Island, in the middle of New York harbour. Both were office clerks in civilian life. Victor served as a corporal, and his headstone at Calverton names the war outright.

All three are in the Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File at the National Archives, with their serial numbers, their dates of enlistment, their residence and their trades. It is the firmest evidence on this page.

The three of them went in through the two places every New Yorker of that generation passed through. Camp Upton had been built for the first war, closed, and reopened in 1940. Fort Jay had been fortifying the harbour since the 1790s.

The Marine Corps

Arthur

The eighth of the nine, he served in the US Marine Corps and came out a staff sergeant. He is buried at Long Island National Cemetery, beside his wife Mary.

His is the thinnest of the five records, and it is worth being straight about why. He is the one brother absent from the Army enlistment files, because the Marine Corps kept its own, and his headstone gives his rank and his corps but not his war. His three Army brothers have enlistment dates in 1941 and 1942, and Thomas's obituary is explicit. Arthur was twenty-one at Pearl Harbor, which is the plain reading, but the war is not written on the record the way it is for the others.

The merchant service

Thomas

The youngest of them took a degree in engineering at the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point during the war, and served on troop transports first as a cadet and then as an officer, in the Atlantic convoys and in the Pacific. All of that comes from his obituary, published in January 2010, and none of it from a service record.

It was the most dangerous work of the war. One merchant mariner in twenty-six was killed, a higher proportion than any American service; the Marine Corps, the next worst, lost one man in thirty-four. The ships were slow, they were carrying the fuel and the ammunition and the men, and they were what the submarines were hunting.

Kings Point is the only federal service academy permitted to carry a battle standard, and it earned that by its dead. The number on the standard is 142, for the cadet-midshipmen killed, and the ribbons hanging from it are the combat zones its cadets served in. No other academy sent its students into a war while they were still students.

Merchant mariners were nonetheless civilians in law. They were shut out of the GI Bill, and were not granted veteran status until 1988, forty-three years after the war ended. That is why Thomas's obituary records an honourable discharge from the US Coast Guard rather than from a fighting service: the Coast Guard administered mariners' papers, because the men themselves were not military.

He was also a lieutenant in the US Naval Reserve. Afterwards he went to sea for Moore McCormack Shipping, and then spent the rest of his working life with the Department of the Navy, latterly as Director of Materials for the Military Sealift Command, the organisation that moves what an army needs. He retired in 1981. He had spent forty years in sealift, from wartime troop transports to running the supply of it.

Where they lie

The graves

Calverton National Cemetery, on Long Island, holds Victor, in Section 9, and Francis, in Section 10. Calverton opened in 1978 and is now the busiest national cemetery in the country.

Long Island National Cemetery, at East Farmingdale, holds Arthur, in Section 2P, with his wife Mary in the same grave.

Saint Charles Cemetery, also at East Farmingdale, holds John, in Section 47, sharing a grave with his sister Helen.

Beechwoods Cemetery, at New Rochelle, holds Thomas and Agnes together.

In France

The monument at Coulonge

Henri Courtien's name is on the war memorial at Coulonge, among the names for 1914. Coulonge is not just any village in the Sarthe. It is where this family came from: the Courteaus were baptised, married and buried there from the 1680s, and they were still only a few miles away, at Sarce, a century later. Across those generations their trades were winegrower, mason, stonecutter, weaver and farmer.

Almost every commune in France built one of these after the First World War. Coulonge's is a stone pyramid ringed by four shells, standing at the fork of the roads to Le Lude and Mansigne. It carries twenty-four names from 1914 to 1918, and three more from 1940 and 1941.

Twenty-four men is a great many from a village that size, and it was ordinary. France mobilised more than eight million and lost close to a million and a half of them, something near one man in six. The year on Henri's panel was the worst of the war for the French army. On 22 August 1914 alone, during the Battle of the Frontiers, some twenty-seven thousand French soldiers were killed, the bloodiest single day in the country's military history, and by that winter the fighting had settled into the trench line it would hold for four more years.

The three later names belong to the Second World War, to the German invasion of May and June 1940 that defeated France in six weeks, and to the occupation that came after it.

In France

Roger Courtien, who died at Dachau

A memorial record gives a Roger Courtien, born 17 December 1910 and died 17 March 1945, buried at Konzentrationslager Dachau. The camp was liberated six weeks later.

Nothing has been found connecting him to this family. His parents, his nationality and the reason he was held there are all unknown here, and the surname is rare enough that the question is worth asking and not rare enough to answer it. He is set down because a man of this name died there and the record should say so. The source is here.

Sources

Where this comes from

The enlistment dates, serial numbers and civilian trades are from the Army enlistment file held by the National Archives. The ranks, services and plot numbers are from the Veterans Affairs gravesite records and the national cemetery registers. Everything about Thomas is from his obituary, published in The Journal News on 7 January 2010.

See every source, with references →

Where an archive offers a direct link to the page, it is given. Most French departmental archives do not, so what is given instead is the shelfmark and the view number, which is exactly what you type into the archive's own viewer to reach the same image.

Nothing on this site is asserted without something behind it. Where a link is still unproven the page says so, and anything that could not be corroborated has been left out. These are the records, with their archive references, so that anyone in the family can go and read them.

Images: Archives departementales de la Sarthe, with Archives d'Indre-et-Loire, Archives de Paris and the United States National Archives, reproduced here for non-commercial family history. Commercial reuse of the Sarthe images requires the archive's permission and a fee.

France

Coulonge, Sarce and Tours

1. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, burial of Marguerite Courteau, wife of Vincent Trouillet, 22 February 1695. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R1 (BMS 1598-1695 suite), image 197, third entry on the right page. Examined here. "Le vingt et deuxiesme febvrier 1695 j'ay prestre soubsigne inhume dans le cimetiere de ceans Marguerite Courteau femme de Vincent Trouillet aagee de quarante ans." Forty in 1695 puts her birth about 1655. She is the mother of the twins baptised in 1688, and her son Etienne is called cousin to the groom at the marriage of 1706, which is what makes her very likely a sister of Rene the elder. The act does not say so.
2. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, two baptisms to Adrien Cou[rte]au and Marie Chauvin: Magdelaine, 17 April 1692, and Adrien, 25 March 1695. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R1, images 183 and 197. The surname is genuinely hard in both, and has also been read Courtray and Coustean. If Adrien is a Courteau he may be another brother of Rene the elder, but no act says so and he is not placed in the tree.
3. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, marriage of Rene Courteau and Marie Metaireau, 4 May 1706. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R2, image 87. Examined here. "Rene Courteau fils de Rene Courteau et de deffuncte Marthe Hunot age de vingt cinq ans, assiste de sondit pere, de Jacques Courteau son frere, Etienne Trouillet son cousin"; and "Marie Metaireau fille de deffunct Jean Metaireau et de Marie Regnard agee de dix neuf ans", attended by her mother, her uncle and her brother Guy Metaireau. He signed his own name. The mother-in-law's surname reads Hunot here, though the hand is awkward and it has also been read Hanot. Etienne Trouillet being called Rene's cousin is what makes Marguerite Courteau, Etienne's mother, very likely a sister of Rene the elder.

   Used on Rene Courteau, Jacques Courteau

4. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, baptism of Jean, son of Rene Courteau and Marie Metaireau, 8 February 1710. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R2, image 126.

   Used on Francois Courteau

5. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, marriage of Joseph Courteau and Jeanne Martineau, 1711. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R2, image 137. Not known to be related to this family. It is here because the priest wrote Courteau and the groom, aged over sixty, signed "joseph courtien". A Coulonge Courteau was writing his own name Courtien thirty years before Jean appears at Sarce.
6. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, baptism of Pierre, son of Rene Courteau and Marie Metaireau, 17 December 1712. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R2, image 155. Jean's younger brother. Gives the father's trade: "rene courteau vigneron".
7. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, baptism of Charles, son of Rene Courteau and Marie Metaireau, November 1715. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R2, image 192. A younger brother of Jean, and the Charle named as present at the Aubigne marriage of 1738.

   Used on Charles Courteau

8. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, baptism and burial of Marie, daughter of Rene Courteau and Marie Metaireau, 30 January and 6 May 1718. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R2, images 227 and 229. She lived three months. The baptism is partly covered by an archive stamp; the burial is clear.

   Used on Marie Courteau

9. Coulonge (Sarthe), parish register, burial of Joseph Courteau, marchand, aged seventy-three, 17 June 1720. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1026 R2, image 244. Almost certainly the Joseph who married in 1711 and signed himself courtien. His relationship to Rene is still unknown.
10. Sarce (Sarthe), parish register 1700-1750, marriage of Jean Courtien and Madeleine Martineau, February 1741. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1029 R2, image 319. Read in full. The MARGIN reads "jean courtien" plainly. The body does not: the surname there is hard to resolve, and reads something closer to "Jean Couti[ai] ... fils de Rene Couti[an] present et de deffunte Marie Meterreau". An earlier reading of ours gave the body as "Courtien" and that was wrong. The act also gives him as thirty or thereabouts, of the parish of Aubigne, with a certificate from that cure, and the bride as "Madelenne Martineau agee de 20 ans ou environ, fille de Jacques Martineau et de Madelenne Royer". The banns were read at Sarce and, on a likely but not certain reading, at Coulonge.

    Used on Jean Courtien

11. Sarce (Sarthe), parish register 1751-1792, burial of Magdelaine Royer, widow of Jacques Martineau, 7 October 1754. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1029 R2, image 32. THE ACT THAT SHOWS ONE MAN UNDER BOTH NAMES. The priest lists her sons-in-law and writes "jean courteau de Sarce"; Jean signs the act himself, "jean courtien". It also gives Madeleine Martineau's parents.
12. Sarce (Sarthe), parish register 1751-1792, burial of Marie Courtien, daughter of Jean and Magdelaine Martineau, 14 March 1755. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1029 R2, image 35. Written Courteau by the priest, signed Courtien by her father, who was present.

    Used on Marie Courtien

13. Sarce (Sarthe), parish register 1751-1792, baptism of Michel Courtien, 9 September 1763. Archives departementales de la Sarthe, 1MI 1029 R2, view 110. Reads "a ete baptise Michel Courtien fils legitime de Jean et de Madelaine Martineau".

    Used on Michel Courtien

14. Mayet (Sarthe), etat civil, mariages, act no. 14, Michel Courtien and Anne Fontenay, 30 May 1800. Archives de la Sarthe, 5Mi 201_12, view 370. He thirty-seven, son of the late Jean Courtien and Madelaine Martineau; she twenty-seven, born at Sarce 13 March 1773, daughter of Julien Fontenay and Catherine Dufour. Witnessed by his brothers Jean and Charles.

    Used on Jean Courtien, Charles Courtien, Marie Courtien

15. Sarce (Sarthe), etat civil, deces, act no. 8, death of Michel Courtien, registered 30 April 1841. Archives departementales de la Sarthe, 5Mi 362_8-9, views 241 and 242. Gives him as about seventy-nine, husband of Anne Fontenay, son of the late Charle Courtien and Magdelaine Martineau. The death was reported by his son Michel, thirty-three. The father's name here is wrong: the two acts above give Jean, and Charles was Michel's brother.

    Used on Michel Courtien, Auguste Ferdinand Courtien

16. Sarce (Sarthe), etat civil, naissances, act no. 15, birth of Michel Courtien, registered 8 September 1807. Archives departementales de la Sarthe, 5Mi 362_4-5, view 122. Names his father Michel Courtien, farmer, and his mother Anne Fontenay.
17. Sarce (Sarthe), etat civil, mariages, act no. 4, Michel Courtien and Marie Tertrain, 10 May 1839. Archives de la Sarthe, 5Mi 362_8-9, views 52 and 53. Gives his trade as weaver, his first wife as Adelaide Louise Le Roy who died at Sarce in April 1838, and her parents as Michel Tertrain and Marie Desnos.
18. Sarce (Sarthe), etat civil, naissances, act no. 14, birth of Paul Ambroise Courtien, born 4 April 1847 and registered the next day. Archives de la Sarthe, 5Mi 362_7, view 95.

    Used on Paul Ambroise Courtien

19. Sarce (Sarthe), etat civil, naissances, act no. 5, birth of Justine Courtien, 1 September 1850. Archives de la Sarthe, 5Mi 362_7, view 115. Witnessed by her uncles Louis and Alexis Tertrain.
20. Paris, 8th arrondissement, etat civil, deces, act no. 1356, death of Ariste Jean-Baptiste Courtien, 3 July 1908. Archives de Paris, 8D 129, image 12. Sixty, a concierge, born at Sarce, living in the faubourg Saint-Honore and died in the rue Pollet. Names his parents as Michel Courtien and Marie Tertrain, both of whom had died by then, which is a third independent record of that couple's children.

    Used on Ariste Jean Baptiste Courtien

21. Tours (Indre-et-Loire), etat civil, mariages, act no. 55, Theodore Sorin and Justine Courtien, 8 February 1869. Archives departementales d'Indre-et-Loire, 6NUM8/261/244, view 42. archives.touraine.fr The act that first placed the family at Sarce.

    Used on Justine Courtien

Pages that cite these records Anne Courtien, Marie Magdelaine Courtien, Francoise Courtien, Magdelaine Courtien, Michel Courtien

France

Aubigne, the intervening parish

Jean came to Sarce from the parish of Aubigne, and his elder brother settled there. These are the acts that tie the Courteaus of Coulonge to the Courtiens of Sarce.

1. Aubigne (Sarthe), parish register, marriage of Rene Courteau and Anne Hurteloup, 3 June 1738. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R3 (BMS 1717-1739), images 313-314. THE ACT THAT JOINS THE TWO PARISHES. "Rene Courteau fils de Rene Courteau et de deffunte Marie Metaireau" marries "Anne Hurteloup fille de deffunt Pierre Hurteloup et de Anne Hardouin". Present: "Rene Courteau son pere", and "Pierre et Charle les Courteaus ses freres". The father signs "R courtien" while the priest writes Courteau. The parents are the same pair named at Jean's baptism in 1710 and at Jean's marriage in 1741. Something written after "ses freres" is struck through and cannot be read.

   Used on Rene Courteau

2. Aubigne (Sarthe), parish register, baptism of Rene Charles Magdelon, son of Rene Courteau and Anne Hurteloup, 8 March 1739. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R3, image 329. The father is given as "bordager des Chaussees". This son is very likely the Rene Courteau who stood godfather at Sarce in 1758, described there as a young man, cousin paternel, of the parish of Aubigne.

   Used on Rene Charles Magdelon Courteau

3. Aubigne (Sarthe), parish register, burial of Pierre Courteau, aged about twenty-five, 25 July 1739. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R3, image 334. He died on the 24th. Present: "Rene Courteau pere, Rene Courteau fils". This is the Pierre baptised at Coulonge in December 1712, whose stated age here runs a little low.

   Used on Pierre Courteau

4. Aubigne (Sarthe), parish register, marriage of Michel Fouquere and Magdelaine Hurteloup, 2 June 1750. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R3 (BMS 1740-1756), image 211. The priest writes "Rene Courtien son beau-frere et Rene Courtien son neveu", and a witness, "Jean Courtien", signs the act himself. Here the Aubigne priest writes Courtien outright, with no Courteau anywhere in it.
5. Aubigne (Sarthe), parish register, marriage of Mathieu Chauvigne and Magdelaine Courtien, 19 July 1746. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R3 (BMS 1740-1756), image 118. She forty-five, so born about 1701, "fille de deffunct Noel Courtien et de deffuncte Marie Brunau", widow of Pierre Maudet. The mother's surname is hard to read: it has also been read Bourreau. A Noel Courteau stood godfather at Coulonge in 1688; whether he is this Noel is not known.
6. Aubigne (Sarthe), parish register, marriage of Etienne Le Houx and Catherine Courtien, 1 August 1746. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R3, image 118. "Catherine Courtien agee de trente ans fille de deffunct Francois Courtien et de Perrine Robin, assistee de Perrine Robin sa mere, de Jacque Courtien son frere, d'Anne Courtien sa soeur, de Rene Courtien son oncle." The priest writes Courtien throughout the body of the act. A Rene Courtien is therefore uncle to the children of a Francois Courtien, which puts the two men in one family. Catherine being thirty, her father was born before about 1695, so he cannot be the Francois baptised at Coulonge in 1708 who lived six days.
7. Aubigne (Sarthe), parish register, marriage of Francois Mahieu and Anne Courtien, 30 January 1753. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R3, image 269. "Anne Courtien fille majeure de deffunct Francois Courtien et de Perrine Robin", with "Jacque Courtien son frere" and, among her brothers-in-law, Etienne Le Houx. Le Houx had married her sister Catherine in 1746, which ties the two acts to one household.
8. Aubigne (Sarthe), parish register, burial of Rene Courtien, 27 September 1754. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R3 (BMS 1740-1756), image 303, fourth entry on the left page. Indexed at 1MI 1025 R1, Tables BMS 1580-1790, image 143. THE ACT THAT SETTLES THE DESCENT. "Le vingt sept septembre mil sept cent cinquante quatre le corps de Rene Courtien decede d'hyer age d'environ soixante douze ans a ete par nous ptre habitue soussigne inhume dans le grand cimetiere de cette paroisse en presence de Rene, Charles, et Jean les Courtiens ses fils, et de Marie, et Francoise Courtien ses filles, autres parents et amis qui ne signent fors le soussigne." The one person at the graveside who could write signed it: "jean courtien". This names Jean as a son of Rene and a brother of Rene and Charles. About seventy-two in 1754 puts Rene's birth about 1682, against the twenty-five he was given at his marriage in 1706.

   Used on Rene Courteau, Francoise Courteau, Marie Courteau

9. Aubigne (Sarthe), Tables BMS 1580-1790. Archives de la Sarthe, 1MI 1025 R1, images 130, 131 and 143. The indexes for 1738, 1739 and the burials of 1754, which is how the acts above were found.

From 1746 the Aubigne priest writes Courtien in the body of his acts, not only in the signatures, and at least three Courtien households appear in the parish: Rene, who married Marie Metaireau; Noel, who married a Marie Brunau or Bourreau; and Francois, who married Perrine Robin. The same three first names, Rene, Noel and Francois, appear at Coulonge under Courteau. The 1746 act makes a Rene Courtien uncle to Francois's children, so those households were kin to one another. How Noel and Francois join the line in this tree has not been shown, and they are not placed in it.

Not yet opened: the Aubigne baptism index for 1719, 1MI 1025 R1 image 113, carries an Etienne and a Jacques whose surname reads as Court[in]. A Jacques Courtien is named in 1746 and 1753 as the brother of Catherine and Anne, the children of Francois Courtien and Perrine Robin, and this may be his baptism.

Searched without result: Coulonge 1719-1725, no further Courteau baptisms, so the family had left for Aubigne by then. Rene's own baptism, about 1682, is not in the Coulonge film, which has gaps from 1682 to 1685 and in 1691. Eliminated as similar names but not this family: a Rene Caveau buried at Aubigne in 1748, aged fourteen, and a Francoise Couliard on the same page.

Quebec

Montreal

1. Notre-Dame-de-Montreal, registre des mariages, entry 619, Paul Courtien and Philomene Larocque, 11 October 1871. Drouin Collection, indexed in LaFrance, GenealogyQuebec.com. Names Michel Courtien and Marie Tertrais at Tours, and Napoleon Larocque and Marie Leblanc Robillard at Saint-Michel-de-Vaudreuil.
2. Census of Canada, 1901, Montreal (Cite), Saint-Louis quarter, page 9, lines 43 and 45. Drouin Genealogical Institute index, GenealogyQuebec.com. Hypolite Courtien as head of family; Paul Courtien, his father, in the household.

   Used on Hippolyte Ariste Courtien

3. Cimetiere Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, Montreal, burial register. Paul Ambroise Courtien, died July 1901, plot M00772; and the Courtien burials in plot M03513.
4. Nos Origines, compiled Quebec genealogy, profiles 1544617 and 1544680. Compiled, not a register. Used only where it is corroborated, and flagged where it is not.

Pages that cite these records Reginald Courtien, Jeanne Courtien, Irene Courtien, Cecile Courtien, Francoise Courtien, Lucienne Courtien, Justine Philomene Marie Courtien, Louis George Courtien, Andrea Courtien

United States

New York

1. Obituary of Thomas M. Courtien Sr., The Journal News, White Plains, New York, 7 January 2010. legacy.com The source for his parents, his schooling, his war service, his marriage and his thirteen children.
2. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, New York County, New York. NARA microfilm T627, roll 2676, images 115 and 116. The whole household on one page.
3. United States Census of 1950: Kings County, ED 24-3778, sheet 7; Westchester County, ED 74-60, sheet 19; New York County, ED 31-1690, sheet 75. 1950census.archives.gov The New York County sheet records Victor Courtien, seventy-five, a widower, birthplace Canada.
4. New York City birth index, Manhattan: certificate 2458 of 1905, 22464 of 1906, 43341 of 1909. New York City death index: certificate 6233, Ellen Courtien, 12 March 1943. Free and open through NYC Open Data.

   Used on Victor P. Courtien

5. Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, 1938 to 1946, National Archives Access to Archival Databases. Serials 32171326 (Francis), 32345600 (John), 32515217 (Victor). aad.archives.gov

   Used on Francis J. Courtien, John H. Courtien

6. Nationwide Gravesite Locator, US Department of Veterans Affairs. gravelocator.cem.va.gov Ranks, services and plot numbers at Calverton, Long Island National and Saint Charles.

   Used on Helen B. Courtien, Arthur James Courtien

7. Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorne, New York, interment register, Section 48, Lot 114, Grave 13. Victor is entered there as Courtier.

Pages that cite these records Victor Paul Courtien, Teresa Courtien, Margaret K. Courtien, Mary Courtien

Obituaries and death notices

What the family published at the time

An obituary is written by people who knew the person, usually within a day or two of the death, and it names relatives no register ever will. It is also unverified: it records what the family said, and families misremember. Each one is given here in full so its claims can be weighed.

1. Obituary of Thomas M. Courtien Sr., The Journal News, White Plains, New York, 7 January 2010. legacy.com The single richest document on this family. It gives his parents as Victor Courtien and Ellen Whyte Courtien; his birth at New York on 21 December 1921; DeWitt Clinton High School; the US Merchant Marine Academy and service on troop transports in the Atlantic convoys and the Pacific, with an honourable discharge from the US Coast Guard; his career with Moore McCormick Shipping and then the Department of the Navy, latterly as Director of Materials for the Military Sealift Command, retiring in 1981; his marriage to Agnes Lightbody of Pelham at St Catharine's on 7 July 1946, having met at the Catholic summer camp at Cliff Haven; his death at Mount Vernon on 6 January 2010 at eighty-eight; and burial at Beechwoods Cemetery, New Rochelle. It names all thirteen children in order: Ellen, JoAnne, Thomas, Paul, Denise, Patricia, Robert, Chris, Teresa, Katherine, John, Mark and Peter, with twenty-five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Two statements in it do work elsewhere on this site: "Agnes predeceased him on July 6, 1992", and "Mr. Courtien is predeceased by 8 brothers and sisters", which is how we know his eight brothers and sisters had all died by January 2010 and that there were nine children, not ten.

   Used on Thomas Martin Courtien Sr., Michael Courtien

2. Find a Grave memorials under the surname Courtien, nineteen in all. Find a Grave. Consulted in September 2026. They supply exact dates for Agnes Anne Lightbody Courtien (2 October 1923 to 7 July 1992, at Mount Vernon), for Mary Theresa Courtien, wife of Arthur (15 February 1926 to 29 November 1997), and for Michael Courtien (1951 to 2017). The same search turned up no memorial for any of Thomas's thirteen children, which is some reassurance that the site is not describing as living anyone who has died, though it is not proof of it.

Not found: any obituary for Mary, Teresa or Margaret Courtien, the three eldest daughters, whose deaths are known only from their brother's obituary saying they had died before him. Not read here: the Montreal death notices behind the Quebec burials, which are cited from the burial registers rather than from the notices themselves.

Standard of evidence

Examined directly, or reported

These are handwritten registers, some of them three hundred years old, and a single misread word can create a person who never existed. It therefore matters which acts have been examined directly and which rest on a transcription supplied to us.

Twenty-eight acts are published here as images, in the documents gallery, running from 1687 to 1850, across Coulonge, Aubigne and Sarce. Anyone may compare the wording on this site with the page it came from.

Fifteen of them have been examined here, and what this site says about the people in those acts comes from the image rather than from a transcription: the nine Sarce acts running from 1763 to 1850, and from the older registers the Coulonge burial of 1695, the Coulonge marriage of 1706, the Aubigne marriage of 1738, the two Aubigne marriages of 1746, the Aubigne marriage of 1753 and the Aubigne burial of 1754. The remaining thirteen carry a reading made in the archive viewer by the researcher working on this line, with the image published beside it.

One further image records a search that found nothing, and is published for the same reason as the rest.

The remainder rest on transcriptions supplied to us. The Coulonge acts of 1710, 1711, 1712, 1715, 1718 and 1720, the Sarce marriage of 1741, the Mayet marriage of 1800, the Tours marriage of 1869, the Montreal marriage of 1871 and the Paris death of 1908 have all been transcribed by a researcher working in the archives, and the wording quoted here is theirs. It is careful work and it has been right every time it could be checked against something independent, but it is not the same as examining the act.

Four readings are uncertain in the act itself, and are marked that way wherever they appear: the surname as written in the body of the 1741 marriage, which does not resolve cleanly; the second parish the banns of 1741 were read in, which looks like Coulonge but cannot be insisted on; the exact day of Henri-Paul's Paris entry in 1911; and whether Ariste's Paris act of 1908 calls him a widower or a husband.

One correction belongs here rather than buried in a footnote. This page once quoted the body of the 1741 marriage as reading "Jean Courtien fils de Rene Courtien". On a full re-reading it does not. The margin reads jean courtien plainly; the body does not, and the surname there is hard to make out. The quotation has been corrected and the act is treated as weaker on the spelling than it first appeared.

The join between the Jean Courteau baptised at Coulonge in 1710 and the Jean Courtien married at Sarce in 1741 was for most of this research an identification rather than a fact, and this page said so at length. It is now settled, by the burial of their father at Aubigne on 27 September 1754. That act was written in the presence of "Rene, Charles, et Jean les Courtiens ses fils", and Jean signed it. It names him as a son of Rene and a brother of the Rene whose own marriage of 1738 gives the same parents, Rene Courteau and the late Marie Metaireau, as Jean's baptism of 1710 and Jean's marriage of 1741. The ages agree: about seventy-two at the graveside in 1754, against about twenty-five at Coulonge in 1706.

What is still open no longer touches Jean. Rene's own baptism, about 1682, has not been found; the Coulonge film has gaps from 1682 to 1685 and in 1691. The two other Courtien households at Aubigne, Noel's and Francois's, may be his brothers' and are not placed in the tree because nothing read so far shows it. The baptisms of Marie and Francoise, named as his daughters in 1754, have not been found. And the surname in the body of the 1741 marriage still does not resolve cleanly, though that act no longer carries any weight on its own.

Family records

Records held within the family

Two things here rest on a relative's word rather than on a document, and are marked that way on the pages they touch.

1. Arthur's nine children. Reported by a member of the family, 2026. Arthur James Courtien, called Jimmy, and Mary Theresa had nine children, seven sons and two daughters. Three of the sons have since died and are named here at the family's word: Michael, James and John. The other six are living and are not named. No document has been read for any of it, and no dates are known here for James or John. Before this was reported, the site showed Arthur with one child, because only Michael had a record.

   Used on James Courtien, John Courtien

2. Ellen White's Irish birth and baptism. Held by a member of the family and not read here. Born at Mount Bellew, County Galway, on 10 July 1880 and baptised on the 12th, a daughter of Patrick White and Mary Quinn. This supersedes the 20 July 1882 given by a compiled record.

Some of what is here comes from a relative's own research rather than from a register read directly: Irish birth and baptism records, Ellis Island passenger manifests, and New York State census entries, reported by the family member who holds them. That is not the same as an act, and it is marked as such on the people it touches.

It is treated as good evidence for three reasons. It is attributable, not an anonymous online tree. It names specific documents with specific dates, ships and certificate details, all of which are checkable. And where it overlaps with something established independently here, it has agreed every time: Ellen's parents, her birthplace, her age at death, Victor's trade, the size and shape of the household, and the dates of Agnes's parents.

One item of it resolved a problem rather than merely matching one. The census indexes carry a James in the Manhattan household and no Arthur, which had looked like a tenth child. The family knew Arthur as Jimmy. That explains an anomaly found here separately, which is the kind of agreement that is hard to fake.

Still unread by anyone here: the passenger manifests themselves, the Irish parish records, and the 1915 New York State census sheets.

Reference

The surname and the war records

1. United States Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2000 and 2010. Lists every surname reaching a hundred bearers. Courtien is in neither file.
2. French birth registrations compiled from INSEE. Eighty-one Courtien births between 1890 and 1990.
3. American Merchant Marine at War. usmm.org One mariner in twenty-six killed, against one Marine in thirty-four. Figures for the merchant service vary between sources and between the periods they measure; this is the one most commonly cited.
4. United States Merchant Marine Academy, on the Cadet Corps battle standard and the 142 cadet-midshipmen killed. usmma.edu
5. Patrimoine et lavoirs en Sarthe, transcription of the war memorial at Coulonge. lavoirs-en-sarthe.fr A single photographic transcription. The French ministry database that would corroborate it could not be searched.

Open questions

Questions that remain open

1. Settled: Jean of Sarce was Jean of Coulonge. This site carried the join as probable, then as about ninety-five per cent, for as long as it rested on matching names and ages. The burial of their father at Aubigne on 27 September 1754 names "Rene, Charles, et Jean les Courtiens ses fils" and Jean signed it. The earlier hedging is left in the record above rather than quietly removed, because it was the honest position at the time.
2. Roger Courtien, who died at Dachau. A memorial records a Roger Courtien, born 17 December 1910 and died 17 March 1945, buried at Konzentrationslager Dachau, six weeks before the camp was liberated. Find a Grave, memorial 250037908, consulted September 2026. Nothing has been found connecting him to this family, and the surname is rare enough that the question is worth asking and not rare enough to answer it. His parentage, his nationality and the reason he was held there are all unknown here. He is recorded on this page rather than in the family tree because no act places him in it.
3. Paul's age. The Sarce register has him born 4 April 1847. His Montreal burial makes him fifty-eight in 1901 and that year's census has him born in 1837. The register is followed: both parents' names match it exactly, and Michel did not marry Marie until 1839, so a son born to her in 1837 is impossible.
4. Philomene's parents. The 1871 register names Napoleon Larocque and Marie Leblanc Robillard. A compiled Quebec record gives Simeon Larocquebrune and Marie-Louise Robillard. The register is followed.
5. Settled: nine children, not ten. A compiled list separated a James, born about 1920, from Arthur James, which would have made ten. The family knew Arthur as Jimmy, which is why the census indexes carry a James in this household and no Arthur. Seven children by 1915, then Arthur in 1920 and Thomas in 1921, which is nine and agrees with the obituary's eight brothers and sisters.
6. Victor's arrival cannot be found, and there is a reason. The United States did not record Canadians crossing the land border until 1895. He came about 1890, the census suggesting between 1890 and 1892, most likely by train from Montreal. Twelve years of searching in the family has turned up nothing, and probably nothing exists.
7. Arthur's war. All five of Victor and Ellen's sons have a service record. Four of them are documented in the Second World War by an enlistment date or, for Thomas, by his obituary. Arthur's Marine Corps service is on his headstone, but the war is not, and the Marine Corps records are not in the Army enlistment file the others appear in. He was twenty-one at Pearl Harbor. His service record from the National Personnel Records Center would settle it.
8. Henri-Paul's marriage act is missing, and the reason is instructive. The Paris 17th arrondissement decennial table lists him under 1 December 1911, but the register for that day holds one act and it is a divorce between other people. The table entry is marked as a TRANSCRIPTION, which in French practice means a marriage celebrated abroad and copied into the French register at the couple's address here. The wedding was most likely in Montreal. The Paris archives' remote search service could trace the copy from the table entry.

   Used on Henri-Paul Joseph Courtien

9. Ariste's birth year. His Paris death act of 1908 gives his age as sixty, which puts his birth about 1848. An index gives 24 June 1842. His brother Paul was born in April 1847, so 1848 would be tight. His birth act in the Sarce register would settle it.
10. Settled: the father was Jean, not Charle. The 1841 death act names Michel's father as Charle Courtien. His 1763 baptism and his 1800 marriage both name Jean, and the marriage shows why the slip happened: CHARLES WAS HIS BROTHER, and stood as a witness at the wedding. The earlier acts are followed.
11. Settled: the uncle and aunt. A widely copied tree makes the Michel born in 1807 a son of Jean Courtien and Anne Jeanne Fontenay. That Jean was his uncle, a brother of the Michel born in 1763, and the 1800 marriage act names him as a witness at forty-two. His wife was buried in 1836 as his widow, which is why she cannot be the mother who consented to a marriage in 1839.
12. Anne or Jeanne Fontenay. The 1807 birth act writes Anne, the 1839 marriage act writes Jeanne. An ordinary variation of the same name.
13. Agnes's death. Her husband's obituary gives 6 July 1992; her own memorial and the cemetery record give 7 July 1992. The second of those would be their forty-sixth wedding anniversary to the day, which is either a remarkable thing or a clerk copying the marriage date. No obituary for her has been found; the Journal News of 1992 predates the online archives.
14. Ellen Whyte's birth at Mountbellow, County Galway, on 20 July 1882. From a compiled record. No register has been read.