AUDOUART dit Saint-Germain, GUILLAUME, secretary of the first council of New France and notary; fl. 1648–63.

Audouart began his career at Trois-Rivières in 1648, as clerk in the court registry and tabellion (“commis au greffe et tabellionnage”). In the autumn of 1649 he settled at Quebec, where until 1663 he was secretary of the first council of New France, an office whose holder was entitled to practice as a notary public. Audouart was in fact the first official notary of New France, his predecessors (secretaries of governors, clerks of court, seigneurs, settlers) having practised the profession of notary only on sufferance. Audouart set about collecting their scattered documents and making them a part of his own registry, which comprises 1067 minutes. He also sat as seneschal judge of the seigneury of Beauport, as well as acting in the capacity of deputy to the seigneurial attorney at Quebec. On 22 Oct. 1663 he signed his last notarial act, and a few days later sold his registry to Pierre Duquet. It is not known whether Audouart ever married, but it was at this period that his house passed into the hands of his creditors. He seems to have returned to France in the autumn of 1663.

André Vachon

AJQ, Greffe de Guillaume Audouart, 1634–63. Jug. et délib., I, passim. Papier terrier de la Cie des I.O. (P.-G. Roy), passim. J.-E. Roy, “Guillaume Audouart Saint-Germain (1648–1663),” RC, XXVII (1891), 213–17. André Vachon, Histoire du notariat canadien, 1621–1960 (Québec, 1962).