unknown Kagijonais

  Not a known mother of Radegonde Jeanne Lambert

The first settlers of Acadia arrived in 1604, led by the Sieur du Monts; they established a permanent settlement at Port-Royal in 1605. Over the next ten years or so settlers came and went, all of them male; there were some liaisons with native Micmac or Abenaki women. Our ancestor Jehan or Jean Lambert was born about 1591 - place and parents unknown; but some sources claim he was from Dieppe - and he was in Acadia probably by 1610 (there is a Jehan Lambert on the ship Jonas that year) and certainly by 1612, when his name appears as a witness to an affidavit. There is no record of his marriage, but he had a daughter called Radegonde or Jeanne-Radegonde, born either in 1621 or 1629 (based on her age given in two censuses; 1621 is regarded as the more likely date). She was probably born at Fort Lomeron on the Chebogue River (above), where Jean lived in the 1620s. Jean was dead by 1671; probably well before that.

Circumstantial evidence points to a Mi'kmaq woman as Radegonde's mother. No French women were in Acadia in 1621, and very few in 1629. Most if not all of the women who arrived in the 1620s were already married. We do know for certain that Radegonde married the immigrant Jean Blanchard at Port-Royal in 1642, and that she was still alive in 1700.

Also note that there are Lamberts among the Micmac Indians today (some of whom still live on reservations in Nova Scotia). This suggests that Radegonde may have had brothers.

There is some evidence that this person was a Mi'Kmaq native, bunch DNA testing suggests otherwise, the strain that shows up in later generation is X2b, which is considered European (as opposed to X2a.

Added by Roland Belanger BA BEd Sept 1, 2012 (full article http://newfrancemetis.blogspot.ca/ )

Haplogroup X is relatively sparce across Europe but has some concentrated areas in the middle east today. The origin of mutation hg X would have been somewhere in the middle, south Eurasian continent and moved all the way up to the Scandinavian countries in the north. Tests on 1000 year old skeletons of early Vikings indicated a high concentration of hg X. Present day populations have a higher concentration of hg I than hg X. The introduction of hg X as well as hg I into England and France very likely came from Viking raiders. Archeological evidence, such as the Viking settlement in Newfoundland 800 to 1000 years ago would explain the possible introduction of mtDNA hg X2b into a local Newfoundland indigenous population. It is also very likely that the ancient Viking wanderers introduced haplogroup X more recently than 15,000 years ago in North Eastern Canada. More extensive DNA testing of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia native and Metis residents may verify this postulation. Another possible source of hg X is from the European fishing villages set up during or before 1500 along the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland.

Radegonde Lambert from this perspective would have received her mtDNA haplogroup X or X2b from a European mother who lived 600 - 1000 years ago. She would have had many generations of ancestors among the Mi’kmaq indigenous people!

Member of the Mi'kmaq Indian Tribe.