Church Record Sunday: Jeanne Petit’s 1733 Burial Record

Born about 1656, Jeanne Petit was originally from Ste-Marguerite parish in La Rochelle, France. [1] She came to New France as a fille du roi in 1672. [2] That September, Jeanne entered into a marriage contract with François Séguin dit Ladéroute, a soldier from Picardie, France. They married the following month in Boucherville, now a suburb of Montreal. [3] Jeanne and François were the parents of six sons and five daughters. [4] Interestingly, I descend from three of those children: Françoise (1674-1751), Pierre (1682-1760) and Simon (1684-1758).

Jeanne died on 29 March 1733. She was buried the next day in the cemetery of St-Antoine-de-Padoue church in Longueuil. For some reason, the attending priest recorded her name as Françoise in her burial record. [5] Many people were present at the funeral: her daughter Jeanne and Jeanne’s husband Charles Patenaude, her son-in-law François Achin (Marie Madeleine Séguin’s second husband), as well as Charles Varri, Charles Truto and others.

Jeanne Petit's burial record (FamilySearch.org)

My transcription of Jeanne’s burial record above (original lineation indicated by /):

L’an de nôtre seigneur mil sept cent trente et trois [...] / 30 mars a eté inhumé dans le cimetière de cette paroisse Le corps de / francoise petit, veufve de defunct Francois seguin Dit Laderoute envi / ron quatre vingt dix ans, decedée de hier, après avoir recu [la?] / penitence et extreme onction, en presence de jeanne seguin, pate / notre fille et fils de la defuncte, de francois achin son gendre [de] charles / varri de charles truto et de plusieurs autres qui [ne?] signent 
j. ysambart pr. cure De Longueuil 

My translation of the record (original lineation indicated by /):

The year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and thirty three [...] / 30 March was interred in the cemetery of this parish The body of / francoise petit, widow of late Francois seguin Dit Laderoute approximately / ninety years old, died yesterday, after having received [the?] / [sacrament of] reconciliation and extreme unction, in the presence of jeanne seguin, pate / notre daughter and son[-in-law] of the deceased, of francois achin her son-in-law [of] charles / varri of charles truto and of many others who did [not?] sign [their names] 
j. ysambart [priest of] Longueuil 

Father Ysambart noted that Jeanne was about 90 years old at her death, but she was more likely about 77 years old.

An epidemic raged in the St. Lawrence valley, including Longueuil, in 1733. [6] Many burial records in St-Antoine-de-Padoue’s sacramental register for that year indicate “picote”, aka “variole” (smallpox), as the cause of death for its parishioners, but Jeanne’s burial record does not mention this disease.

Sources:

1. René Jetté, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1983), 1041. Jeanne’s age (25) on the 1681 census of New France gives her an approximate year of birth of 1656.

2. Peter J. Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663-1673, 2 vols. (Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Quintin Publications, 2001), 2: 451.

3. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 1041.

4. “Dictionnaire”, database, Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) (http://www.genealogie.umontreal.ca : accessed 7 December 2016), Francois Seguin Laderoute – Jeanne Petit, Famille, no. 4015.

5. St-Antoine-de-Padoue (Longueuil, Quebec), parish register, 1731-1767, page no., if any, illegible, recto, entry no. S.18 (1733), Françoise Petit (sic) burial, 30 March 1733; St-Antoine-de-Padoue parish; digital images, “Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621-1979”, FamilySearch.org (https://familysearch.org/ : accessed 7 December 2016).

6. Rénald Lessard, Au temps de la petite vérole: La médecine au Canada aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Québec: Septentrion, 2012), 34.

Copyright © 2017, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Those Places Thursday: Our Maple Street Home

296 Maple Street North – the only home my parents owned.

When I was growing up, my parents lived in various rented apartments or duplexes in the town where I was born, Timmins, Ontario. Some of these places were small like the upstairs apartment on Lincoln Avenue when I was a few months old and where Mom had to share the clothes washer in the basement. Other places were spacious like the three-bedroom duplex on Main Street when I was a young teenager. This house had a main floor, an upstairs, and a nice, cool basement, where I used to listen to my collection of 45s during the summers.

One evening in late winter of 1972, my parents and I went to see a house they were thinking of buying. It was newly built, awaiting its first buyers. We walked in the front door into a large living room with a roomy kitchen beyond it. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom on the main floor and a small back entrance with stairs that led to an unfinished basement. From the back bedroom window, I saw a large yard. To my amazement, I realized that the snow in the yard was almost as high as the window!

My parents bought this house at 296 Maple Street North and we moved in March 1972, 45 years ago this month. Since it was winter, Dad asked one of his friends who had a front-end loader to ‘shovel’ our backyard. Mom and Dad got the front bedroom, I got the middle bedroom (but no view because my window faced the house next door) and my sister and baby brother shared the back bedroom.

Mom and Dad in our living room, New Year's Eve, 1973

It was exciting to move to a brand new house that was all ours, but there were some adjustments to make. For example, instead of belonging to our parish church on Commercial Avenue, we were now parishioners of the Cathedral in downtown. My sister Marianne changed elementary schools, but I opted to stay at my old school, St-Gérard. However, that decision meant I needed to take a city bus to get to the other side of town for school. There were only three months left in my Grade 8, so it was a small price to pay, and I got to be with my friends and teachers until the end of the school year.

Marianne and Raymond in our kitchen, ca 1974

In time, Dad made improvements to our house. He and friends built a one-car garage in the backyard (it was handy to the back lane) one summer. He also finished the basement with a family room (panelled in fake knotty pine, no less) and a workshop for himself.

Raymond in the front yard next to the evergreen Dad planted, 1974

Other improvements included putting up a white picket fence around the front yard and planting a small evergreen tree in the yard. (Mom used to say, “We planted that tree when Raymond was three.”) For her part, Mom, who loved wallpaper, papered the kitchen (her favorite patterns included ivy), parts of the living room and our bedrooms. She also put in green-patterned wall-to-wall carpeting in the kitchen, because Dad didn’t like the cold linoleum floor when he got up early in the mornings.

Cementing part of the backyard, summer of 1977

One winter, Dad decided he had enough of paying high costs in heating, so he got a back issue of Popular Mechanics (Dad was a big reader of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines) from the public library. From the instructions in the magazine article, Dad fabricated a wood-burning stove using sheet steel. Since he was a welder by trade, it was a do-able project for him. He ran a line through the stove that fed the water heater, which heated our home’s hot water. In fact, that wood stove heated our house so efficiently that Ontario Hydro came to our house one day to see if something was wrong, because our bills were so low. One look at that wood stove convinced the hydro fellow that we had a legitimate heat source for our home.

Front yard, winter 1978. Dad was a CB enthusiast and he
installed a tower in the backyard (seen above the roof). 

We lived on Maple Street from 1972 until the summer of 1979. That year, we moved to British Columbia when Dad decided to give up working as a welder and start a road-building business with his younger brother Ray.

In May 2014, my husband, our son and I visited Timmins. I wanted to see the places where I lived, so one day we drove to as many of the homes that I could remember. The first house we drove by was 296 Maple Street North. It looked about the same as it did when I lived there.

Our old house (front yard), 2014

The fence in the front yard was gone, though, and there was brick siding on the house and a new living room window. The backyard had a fence, but Dad’s garage was still there. By the way, that little evergreen sure grew, didn’t it?

Our old house (back yard), 2014

Copyright © 2017, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Famous Relatives: Justin Trudeau

Recently, I was looking for my 6x great-grandmother Barbe Cartier’s burial record. When I did a Google search for other details about her life, I came across Justin Trudeau and his family tree. I noticed the surnames Lalonde and Bray in his ancestry and decided to see if they tied in with my ancestors by those names. They did.

Here is a tree showing how Justin Trudeau, the 23rd and current Prime Minister of Canada, is my sixth cousin once removed through our common ancestor Marie Barbe Dazé, younger daughter of Barbe Cartier (1678-1705).

Copyright © 2017, Yvonne Demoskoff.