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]
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| “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]
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| “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.
A serial marry-er. That's so funny a title. Poor Anne, the but of a few too many jokes I'm sure.
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