52 Ancestors: #43 Marie Louise Rochon of Deux-Montagnes County

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has issued herself and her readers a challenge for 2014. It’s called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”, and as Amy explains, the challenge is to “have one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It could be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem — anything that focuses on one ancestor”.

For the 43rd week of this challenge, I chose Marie Louise Rochon (1781-1835).

Marie Louise is my paternal 4x great-grandmother and is number 79 in my ancestor list.

She was born on 24 December 1781 and baptized that day “sous condition” in St-Eustache, north of Montreal, in York, later Deux-Montagnes, county. [1] Her baptism record mentions the name of her godfather (Augustin Rochon, presumably her grandfather), but there’s a blank space where her godmother’s name ought to be.

Marie Louise was the eldest child of Augustin Rochon and his wife Marie Louise Cadieux. She had nine brothers and four sisters, including two sets of fraternal twins.

On the morning of 6 January 1800, eighteen year old Marie Louise and twenty-two year old Joseph Poirier dit Desloges and family members arrived at the study of notary Pierre-Rémi Gagnier in St-Eustache. [2] The young couple, who declared they could not sign their names, entered into a marriage contract. One week later, on 13 January, they married in the parish church of St-Benoît, near St-Eustache. [3]

"Carte du comté des Deux-Montagnes dans la province du Québec" [1888]
(Library and Archives Canada)

On the above map of the county of Deux-Montagnes, St-Eustache, lined in blue, lies in the southeast corner, while St- Benoît, lined in red, appears in the centre left of the county.

Marie Louise started married life on her husband’s property in St- Benoît – “une terre de trois arpens de front sur environ trente quatre arpens de profondeur sise au dît lieu du grand Brulé” (a land of three arpents wide by about thirty-four arpents deep located at said site of grand Brulé). [4]

Nine months later, she was blessed with the birth of her first child, a daughter who was named Marie Louise like her mother, her maternal grandmother and her maternal great-grandmother. Over the next sixteen years, Marie Louise had a further six sons and three daughters: Joseph, Hyacinthe, Reine (my ancestor), Jean Baptiste, Marc Alexandre, François, Marie Françoise, Antoine, and Marie Henriette.

Life in St-Benoît must have suited Marie Louise and her family, because not only were all her children born in this rural village, but they (other than three children who died young) also married there.

Marie Louise died on 27 October 1835 in St-Benoît; she was almost 54 years old. Father Chartier noted in her burial record that she had received the ‘sacraments and comfort of the Church’. [5] Her funeral was held two days later there in the presence of family and friends.

Sources:

1. St-Eustache (St-Eustache, Quebec), parish register, 1779-1786, p. 49, entry no. B.300 (1781), Louise Rochon baptism, 24 December 1781; St-Eustache parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 19 March 2010).

2. Archives des notaires du Québec, database and digital images, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/notaires/ : accessed 21 October 2014), actes de notaire, Pierre-Rémi Gagnier, 6 January 1800, no. 2980, Contrat de mariage de Joseph Poirier et Marie Louise Rochon.

3. St-Benoît (St-Benoît, Quebec), parish register, 1799-1805, p. 2 verso, entry no. M.2 (1800), Joseph Poirier – Marie Louise Rochon marriage, 13 January 1800; St-Benoît parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 7 March 2008).

4. Archives des notaires du Québec, database and digital images, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/notaires/ : accessed 21 October 2014), Contrat de mariage de Joseph Poirier et Marie Louise Rochon. Joseph’s property was about 2.5 acres wide by 28.7 acres long, according to an online conversion calculator. (Convert arpent to acres - Conversion of Measurement Units (http://www.convertunits.com/from/arpent/to/acres : accessed 22 October 2014).)

5. St-Benoît (St-Benoît, Quebec), parish register, 1835, p. 54 recto, entry no. S.116, Louise Rochon burial, 29 October 1835; St-Benoît parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 19 March 2010).

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.