Wednesday, June 24, 2015

52 Ancestors 2015: #25 Little House on the (Canadian) Prairie

I’m participating in “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2015 Edition” by Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small.

For the 25th week of this challenge, I used the optional weekly theme (The Old Homestead) and chose to write about the prairie home of my parents-in-law Bill and Ann Demoskoff.

Demoskoff family home near Pelly Saskatchewan
Demoskoff family home in late 1952

Bill and Ann lived in the central Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Their house wasn’t an ‘old homestead’, but it was their first home as a married couple. Since the house was purpose-built, I decided to record my husband’s childhood memories and conversations we had with his late father about their Prairie family home.

Before he married, my father-in-law Bill owned some property (two quarter sections, each 160 acres) about ten miles north of Pelly, located in Saskatchewan’s Aspen Parkland region. Since neither land had a house, Bill lived about half a mile away to the north of his quarter sections in a house he shared with a friend.

In the spring of 1952, Ann’s brother Larry asked Bill where he and his sister were going to live after their June wedding. My husband doesn’t know what his father replied, but whatever he said, it seems that Larry had other plans. He and his brothers Fred and Pete decided to build Ann a house as their gift to her. (She was their only sister and the youngest of the family.)

The brothers needed lumber, so they asked around to see if any farmers were allowed to harvest timber. Fred eventually found two loads of green timber and borrowed a neighbor’s portable planer to convert the timber to usable lumber. Larry, Fred, and Pete began by digging out a basement (on one of Bill’s quarter sections) using horses to drag out the dirt. They made forms and poured cement to make a foundation. After they back-filled the dirt to the foundation, they started framing the house. Later on, Larry got more sizes of lumber for finishing work, like cupboards.

My husband thinks the house was about 30’ x 40’. It had five rooms on the main floor: a living room, kitchen, pantry, and two bedrooms. A staircase in the living room led to the upstairs, which was divided in two large rooms that were used for storage. While they were young, my husband and his sister shared a bedroom on the main floor, but when he was about six years old, he moved upstairs where the south-facing room was converted into a bedroom for him. The bathroom (outhouse) was fifty feet down the hill at the back of the property.

The front door faced south towards the highway about fifty feet away. The kitchen, which faced north and east, had a wood-burning stove and a cast iron hand pump for water from the basement well. The house was wired for electricity, but Bill couldn’t afford the cost of residential power in the early years. Instead, a wind generator provided energy for indoor lighting.


My husband and his sister (seen above, ca 1963) and their parents lived here until the summer of 1964. That year, Bill sold his farm and moved with his family to the nearby town of Kamsack.

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Wedding Wednesday: Laronde – Kekijicakoe

Wedding rings with cross and candles

One of the more interesting weddings among my ancestors is that of Toussaint Laronde, a voyageur, and his Native American (possibly Algonquin) wife Marie Kekijicakoe, from whom I descend patrilineally. [1]

Toussaint and Marie seem to have been a couple from about 1812 or 1813 when their first child (daughter Angélique) was born. There were thirteen more children born to them until about 1839. [2] I’ve written about two of those children in Sibling Saturday: Euphrosine and Elisabeth Laronde.

In 1837, Toussaint and Marie married in a Roman Catholic ceremony officiated by Father Pascal Brunet, a missionary priest from Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, now Montebello, Papineau County, Quebec. [3] Toussaint and Marie were granted a dispensation to marry because of their relationship of second degree of consanguinity (they were first cousins). [4]

I searched digitized images of the parish registers of Petite Nation and Buckingham (both in the province of Quebec) and Notre-Dame Cathedral in Ottawa, Ontario for 1836-1837, where some of Father Brunet’s sacramental records are conserved, but didn’t find an entry showing this Laronde marriage. [5]

Before they married, Toussaint baptised (specifically, “ondoyé”) Marie. [6] A spiritual affinity or relationship thus formed between the one who baptised (Toussaint) and the one who was baptised (Marie). [7] Father Brunet was not aware of this baptism and the resulting affinity, an impediment to the marriage.

It wasn’t until a year later that another missionary, Father Louis-Charles Lefebvre de Bellefeuille, a Sulpician priest from Montreal, discovered the impediment. [8] He accordingly granted two dispensations (spiritual affinity and consanguinity) and rehabilitated or ‘ratified’ Toussaint and Marie’s 1837 marriage, making their union canonically valid. [9] The rehabilitation took place on 28 August 1838 at Poste des Allumettes on Ile des Allumettes in Pontiac County, Quebec. [10]

Note that no mention is made in Toussaint and Marie’s 1838 marriage record that they were previously wed in a Native American ceremony or that they received an annulment for such a ceremony. [11]

Finally, here are images from the FHL microfilm showing the marriage rehabilitation record, followed by my English translation of the French text. I originally prepared the translation (Appendix C, further below) on 20 March 2011 when I put together my Laronde research in a 23-page document (“The Family of Toussaint Laronde and Marie Kekijicakoe”); it appears on my blog for the first time.

Marriage rehabilitation record of Toussaint and Marie Laronde (page 77 verso and page 78 recto)


Marriage rehabilitation record of Toussaint and Marie Laronde (page 78 verso)


English translation of the marriage rehabilitation record

Sources:

1. Marie’s surname is “Kekijicakoe” in her son François’ baptismal entry. (Her name appears to be spelled Kekiji[cakoe], although it is somewhat difficult to decipher.) To date, this is the only record I have found in which Marie’s Aboriginal surname is explicitly stated. St-Grégoire-de-Nazianze (Buckingham, Quebec), parish register, 1839-1854, p. 35 verso, entry no. B136 (1840), Francis Laronde baptism, 15 September 1840; St-Grégoire-de-Nazianze parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 28 February 2011).

2. “Registres paroissiaux” [Régistres des missions de 19 juillet 1836 au 27 may [sic] 1839], p. 77 verso, no entry no. (1838), Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838; Family History Library (FHL) microfilm 1703968. Toussaint and Marie had fourteen children, according to their marriage rehabilitation record. By 1838, thirteen survived and they were all legitimated by Father de Bellefeuille when their parents married that year in August. (The deceased child is not identified in the record.) The children and their ages appear in the record in the following order: Denis (23), Angélique (25), Marie (22), Toussaint (19), Euphrosine (17), Anne (15), François (13½), Elizabeth (11), Charles (9½), Eustache (8), Louis (7), Paul (3) and Susanne (4 months). According to some online family trees, Toussaint and Marie were the parents of an elder son named Alexander. The marriage rehabilitation record does not mention Alexander, suggesting that he is not Toussaint and Marie’s son.


3. The marriage rehabilitation record of 1838 states that Father Brunet married the couple “l’année dernière” [last year]. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838.


4. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838.


5. Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours (Montebello, Quebec), parish register, 1815-1900, pages 118-130 (1837); Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 28 February 2011). Also, St-Grégoire-de-Nazianze (Buckingham, Quebec), parish register, 1836-1860, pages 1-22 (1836-1837); St-Grégoire-de-Nazianze parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 March 2011). Also, Notre Dame (Ottawa, Ontario), parish register, 1829[-1948], unpaginated, entries no. 19–24 (1836); Notre-Dame parish; digital image, “Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 12 March 2011).


6. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838.


7. “The Catholic Encyclopedia”, New Advent (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ : accessed 18 June 2015), “B: Baptism: Minister of the sacrament: Extraordinary minister”. See also Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, “ASK FATHER: Can a godparent marry a godchild? Confirmation sponsor a confirmand?”, Fr. Z's Blog, 28 October 2014 (http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/10/ask-father-can-a-godparent-marry-a-godchild-confirmation-sponsor-a-confirmand/ : accessed 18 June 2015).


8. Father de Bellefeuille led three missions from 1836 to 1838 to minister to the Christians and Native Americans who lived at Poste des Allumettes and the nearby region of Lake Timiskaming. It was during his last mission in August 1838 that he rehabilitated Toussaint and Marie’s marriage, before his death that October in Montreal. Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada (http://www.biographi.ca/en/index.php : accessed 18 June 2015), “Louis-Charles Lefebvre de Bellefeuille”.


9. A rehabilitated marriage is a non-canonically valid marriage that receives official church recognition. “The Catholic Encyclopedia”, New Advent (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ : accessed 18 June 2015), “V: Validation of Marriage”.


10. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838. Poste des Allumettes, also known as Fort William, was a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post situated on the Ottawa River near Sheenboro in Pontiac County, Quebec.


11. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838.


Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Military Monday: My Carignan-Salières Regiment Ancestors

Carignan-Salieres Regiment Flag

Thanks to Gail Dever of Genealogy à la Carte for bringing to her readers’ attention last week the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Carignan-Salières regiment in New France (First of Régiment Carignan-Salières arrived 350 years ago today).

This famous regiment of 1200 men left France for Canada between June and September 1665 to “combat the Iroquois threat to the struggling colony of New France”. [1]

I have lines of descent from about 43 of those soldiers. (I haven’t finished adding details to my database, so there might be more.) At least two of those forty-three were part of the first four Companies (Chambly, Froment, La Tour and Petit) that sailed on Le Vieux Siméon and arrived in Quebec on 19 June 1665. [2] They are

Bernard De Niger (Deniger) dit Sanssoucy (ca 1627-before 25 Nov 1700) [3]
Origin: archdiocese of Bordeaux, Guyenne, France
Company: Froment
Rank: Soldier
Spouse: Marguerite Raisin (ca 1651-1700), a fille du Roi, who arrived in 1670. I have three lines of descent (all maternal) from Bernard and Marguerite.

and

Pierre Marsan (Merçan) dit Lapierre (ca 1626-between 1691 and 1693) [4]
Origin: Rouen, Normandy, France
Company: Chambly
Rank: Sergeant
Spouse: Françoise Baiselat (ca 1646-1694), a fille du Roi, who arrived in 1668. I have two lines of descent (paternal and maternal) from Pierre and Françoise.

Reconstition régiment Carignan Sallierres au fort Chambly

Sources:

Image credit: Wikipedia contributors, "Carignan-Salières Regiment," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carignan-Sali%C3%A8res_Regiment : accessed 20 June 2015).

Photo Credit: “Reconstition régiment Carignan Sallierres au fort Chambly [sic]” by Richard Coté (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carignan_Sallierres2.jpg : accessed 20 June 2015).

1. “Carignan-Salières Regiment Lineage Chart”, database, Acadian and French Canadian Genealogy (http://habitant.org/index.htm : accessed 20 June 2015).

2. “Regiment”, database, La Société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan, Inc. (http://www.fillesduroi.org/src/ships.htm : accessed 20 June 2015), “Regiment (Ships)”.

3. René Jetté, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1983), 775. Also, Peter J. Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663-1673, 2 vols. (Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Quintin Publications, 2001), 2: 481.

4. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 332. Also, Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers, 1: 64.

Copyright (c) 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Wedding Wednesday: Saucier – Potvin

Joseph Saucier and Lucille Potvin on their wedding day in 1946

My Dad’s first cousin Lucille (Lou) Potvin married Joseph (Joe) Saucier on 22 June 1946, sixty-nine years ago next week. Father Fernand Faucher, a Dominican priest, officiated at the ceremony in St-Jean-Baptiste church on Empress Avenue in Ottawa, Ontario.

In the photo, Clem and Celia (Vanasse) Potvin stand next to their daughter, while Madame Victor Saucier is beside her son. Joe, who served in WWII, is wearing his army uniform.

I don’t think that my Dad and his family (his parents and his three siblings) travelled from their home in northern Ontario to attend his cousin’s wedding. (None of them appear in other photos I have seen of the wedding.)

Lou sent this photo to her cousin, my Aunt Joan (Dad’s sister). When I visited my Aunt last year, she gave me the picture; it was the first time I saw it. On the back of the photo, Lou wrote (in English and in French) in her distinctive handwriting:

Mum, Dad, Myself
& Joe & his Mum
Juin [June] 46

I don’t know the story of how Lou and Joe met, but maybe they got to know each other during the War. The Potvin family lived in Ottawa, but Joe and his family were from Cornwall, a little over an hour south of Ottawa.

My family and I visited Lou and Joe a few times where they lived in Ottawa. (Later, I visited them on my own when I was a student at the University of Ottawa.) I remember just a little bit about my first visit to their home in the summer of 1969, when their sons Ron and Dennis took me and my sister Marianne to the annual Ottawa Exhibition at Lansdowne Park.

Joe passed away in 1993 and Lou passed away in 2006. They were such nice people and I have fond memories of them.

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Tombstone Tuesday: William Demoskoff



William Demoskoff gravemarker


This past Saturday, June 13, we interred my late father-in-law’s ashes. Pop died earlier this year in January (William Demoskoff (1914-2015)), but we decided to wait until better weather for the committal service.

My husband, his only sister, her husband, their elder son, his wife, and myself gathered for a simple, private graveside ceremony in Grand Forks, British Columbia, on what would have been Pop’s 101st birthday.

We arrived at the Doukhobor cemetery on a bright Saturday morning. USCC (Sion) Cemetery caretakers Walter Hoodikoff and Larry Jmaiff had prepared the site. They also led the committal service that included traditional Russian greetings, recitations and prayers. The ceremony lasted about half an hour.

We replaced the old headstone with a new one that included both names of my parents-in-law.

Bill and Ann’s gravemarker reads:



Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

52 Ancestors 2015: #23 Anne Jousselot, "serial marry-er"

I’m participating in “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2015 Edition” by Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small

For the 23rd week of this challenge, I used the optional weekly theme (Wedding) and chose Anne Jousselot (ca 1659-1743). 

Looking through my database, I see that some of my ancestors married three or four times, but there’s only one ancestor who married a remarkable five times: Anne Jousselot, my maternal 8x great-grandmother. To paraphrase Amy’s words, Anne is the “serial marry-er in my family”.

French origins

Anne was born about 1659, based on her age (22) on the census that took place in 1681 in the colony of Nouvelle France. [1] She was one of four daughters of Pierre Jousselot and his wife Ozanne Drapeau, who immigrated to Quebec in the 1660s. The family was originally from the parish of St-Pierre in Langon, a commune in the wine-growing region of Bordeaux, in southwestern France. [2]

A marriage contract

On 6 October 1675, Anne entered into a marriage contract with Simon Trillaud, an immigrant from the province of Angoumois, France. Simon was about 32 years old and had been in New France since 1665. They did not make it to the altar, however, because their contract was subsequently annulled and they did not marry. [3]

Quebec from the Ice
“Quebec from the Ice”, by James Pattison Cockburn (1779-1847)*

* Image credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1989-260-6.


First marriage

Within a few months, Anne entered into another marriage contract on 27 December 1676 with Joseph Galois from Poitou, France. This contract was successful; the couple went on to make a public promise of marriage (known as fiançailles) that was recorded in Notre-Dame’s sacramental register. The next step toward marriage was the reading of the banns on three occasions during January 1677 at Anne’s parish church. Finally, Anne and Joseph were married on 9 February 1677 at Notre-Dame in Quebec. Their happiness was short lived, though, because Joseph died a few months later at an unknown date. There were no children by this brief marriage. [4]

Second marriage

Widow Anne married Toussaint Dubeau on 23 May 1678 in Quebec. (A marriage contract was drawn up two weeks earlier on the 8th.) Toussaint, a widower with two teenage children, was a master shoemaker from the archdiocese of Paris, France. The new couple was blessed with eleven children: seven sons and four daughters. (I descend from the younger daughter Marguerite Dubeau, who married Jacques Sigouin in 1712.) Anne became a widow for the second time when Toussaint, who was about 52 years old, died in August 1693. [5]

Third marriage

Anne had seven surviving children, with the youngest one only five months old, to care for in her grief. However, she did not remarry for the next few years. Was this decision by choice or were there no men able to take on a widow with children at this time in the colony’s history? Perhaps a change of location from Quebec to nearby Charlesbourg (now part of that city) helped Anne find a husband, because on 20 July 1698, she entered into a marriage contract with André Duval, who was originally from Savoie, France. They married the next day in Charlesbourg’s St-Charles-Borromée parish church. Unlike her first two weddings, Anne wasn’t attended by her father Pierre (he had presumably died in the interval), but by two nephews, sons of her sister Marie (Jousselot) Gervais. A few months later, Anne was blessed with another child, a son Jacques, in January 1699. Life can be cruelly short in 17th century New France and death came twice to the Duval household in 1699: first, Anne’s husband André died that July at the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec and then her infant son of four months passed away that October. [6]

Fourth marriage

Anne remained a widow for the next thirteen years. On 12 June 1712, she and Jean Maranda entered into a marriage contract and married on the following day in Charlesbourg. Jean was about 50 years old; he was twice widowed and the father of fifteen children. He and Anne didn’t have children of their own when he died in September 1724. [7]

Charlesbourg Quebec village
“In the village of Charlesbourg”, by James Pattison Cockburn (1779-1847)*

* Image credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1989-262-21.

Fifth marriage

In the autumn of 1725, Anne married Claude Dubreuil on 11 October 1725 in Charlesbourg. Claude, originally from Saintonge, France, was a widower with three surviving (adult) children. His union with Anne lasted five years until his death in October 1730 in Quebec. [8]

Death

Anne was about 71 years old when she became a widow for the fifth time. She survived her last husband by twelve years, dying on 13 January 1743. She was buried the next day in Charlesbourg. [9]

Historian and genealogist Cyprien Tanguay stated that Anne’s fifth marriage was “le seul exemple, dans ce siècle, d’une épouse en cinquième mariage” [“the only example, in this century, of a wife in a fifth marriage]. [10]

Sources:

1. René Jetté, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1983), 610.

2. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 610 and “Dictionnaire”, database, Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) (http://www.genealogie.umontreal.ca : accessed 6 June 2015), Marie Anne Jeanne Jousselot [sic], Individu no. 16628.

3. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 1091. Simon entered into a second marriage contract in 1676, but it too was later annulled. He finally married in 1688 in Lachine to widow Marie-Charlotte Jolivet, a paternal ancestor of mine by her first husband.

4. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 460. Also, Notre-Dame (Quebec, Quebec), parish register, 1667-1679, p. 150 (penned)/450 (stamped), no entry no. (1667), Joseph Galois – Anne Jousselot marriage, 9 February 1667; Notre-Dame parish; digital image, “Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 8 June 2015).

5. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 365. Also, Notre-Dame (Quebec, Quebec), parish register, 1667-1679, p. 159 (penned)/459 (stamped), no entry no. (1678), Toussaint Dubau [sic] – Anne Jousselot marriage, 23 May 1678; Notre-Dame parish; digital image, “Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 8 June 2015).

6. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 399. Also, St-Charles-Borromée (Charlesbourg, Quebec), parish register, 1679-1794, p. 22, no entry no. (1698), André Duval – Anne Jousselot marriage, 21 July 1698; St-Charles-Borromée parish; digital image, “Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 8 June 2015).

7. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 761. Also, St-Charles-Borromée (Charlesbourg, Quebec), parish register, 1679-1794, p. 6 recto, no entry no. (1712), Jean Maranda – Marianne Jusselot (written Marianne Jusselot, indexed Marie Anne Jusselot) marriage, 13 June 1712; St-Charles-Borromée parish; digital image, “Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 8 June 2015).

8. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 371. Also, St-Charles-Borromée (Charlesbourg, Quebec), parish register, 1679-1794, p. 9 verso, no entry no. (1725), Claude [Dubreül] – Jeanne Jouselot [sic] marriage, 11 October 1725; St-Charles-Borromée parish; digital image, “Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 8 June 2015).

9. St-Charles-Borromée (Charlesbourg, Quebec), parish register, 1679-1794, page no. (if any) illegible, no entry no. (1743), Marie Anne Juslot [sic] burial, 14 January 1743; St-Charles-Borromée parish; digital image, “Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 8 June 2015). Also, “Dictionnaire”, database, Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) (http://www.genealogie.umontreal.ca : accessed 6 June 2015), Marie Anne Jeanne Jousselot, Individu no. 16628.

10. Cyprien Tanguay, A travers les registres (Montréal, 1886: 122); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/traverslesregis00tanggoog : accessed 7 June 2015). Also, Paul-André Leclerc, “Le mariage sous le régime français (suite)”, Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 14 (1960); online archives, érudit (http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/302029ar : accessed 8 June 2015), 48.


Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sunday, June 07, 2015

Church Record Sunday: Marie-Antoinette Chouart's 1661 Baptism Record

Baptism record of Marie-Antoinette Chouart
Baptism record of Marie-Antoinette Chouart [1]

Three hundred and fifty-four years ago – on 7 June 1661 – my 7x maternal great-grandmother, Marie-Antoinette Chouart, was baptised. She was the fourth and youngest child of Médard Chouart, sieur des Groseilliers by his second wife Marguerite Hayet. 

Although Marie-Antoinette’s baptism record doesn’t state when or where she was born, she was presumably born in Trois-Rivières (on the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec), where she and her elder siblings were baptised.[2] 

Marie-Antoinette’s baptism record, seen above, is in Latin. Here is my attempt at a transcription: 

“Anno Domini 1661, / 7 Junii, Ego Clandius / Joannis Allouez Societatis / Jesu vicut agurs paro- / chi baptizavi cinn cae- / umorrais infantum fae- / mirzam, Medardo Chouart / et Margarita Ayer parem- / tibus. Patrinis fuere Autonius LeMaistre et Maria / Crevier. Marian Antoni / an appellani.” 

I’ve translated the Latin text into English: 

“In the year of our Lord 1661, / 7 June, I Claude / Jean Allouez Society [of] / Jesus residing in this parish / baptised [?] [?] female infant, / Medard Chouart and Marguerite Ayer parents. / Godparents were Antoine Le Maistre and Marie Crevier. [Child named] Marie Antoinette.” 

Sources: 

1. Immaculée-Conception, cathédrale l´Assomption (Trois-Rivières, Quebec), parish register, 1634-1677, p. 290, no entry no. (1661), Marie Antoinette Chouar (written as Chouart dite Desgrozeliers, indexed as Chouar) baptism, 7 June 1661; Immaculée-Conception, cathédrale l´Assomption parish; digital image, “Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 3 June 2015). The baptism, marriage, and burial records that appear in this sacramental register are transcribed copies, according to a note on page 1 of the register. 

2. “Dictionnaire”, database, Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) (http://www.genealogie.umontreal.ca : accessed 6 June 2015), Medard Chouart Desgroseilliers – Marguerite Radisson Ayet [sic], Famille no. 786. 

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.