♀Catherine Camus

Catherine Camus (died before October 1678) was a Frenchwoman from Blois who married Charles Gautier at Québec in 1656, at a wedding witnessed by the governor of the colony, Jean de Lauson^W. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Marie Gautier (born 1660).

Marriage

She married Charles Gautier at Québec, in the parish of Notre-Dame, on 1 August 1656. The parish register describes her as single, from the parish of Sainte-Solenne at Blois, in France, and the daughter of Hector Camus and Jacquette Mondy. The groom, also single, was written Charles Gautier Boisverdun, the son of the late Philippe Gautier and Marie Pichon; Boisverdun was a dit name^W, a second surname of the kind many families in New France carried alongside their own. The witnesses were the governor, Jean de Lauson, and Jean Bourdon^W, and the priest was Joseph Poncet. The governor was the king’s chief officer in the colony, so his name stands out among the witnesses to a settler’s marriage.

Origins and death

She was baptised at Blois, in the parish of Sainte-Solenne, in November 1633, the daughter of Hector Camus and Jacqueline Mondy; her godparents were Adrien Arrondeau and Magdelaine Camus, who both signed the entry. The day is hard to read in the register: the Fichier Origine, a register-verified compilation of immigrants’ origins, gives 23 November, while two older compilations give 22 November. The Fichier Origine describes her father as a master mason and tiler. Tanguay’s genealogical dictionary gives her birth as about 1635, which the Blois register corrects.

The Fichier Origine gives her death in Canada on 1 March 1673, but the parish register contradicts it. When her daughter Anne married Jean Picart at Québec on 12 October 1673, the entry named “Charles Gaultier et Catherine le Camus” as the bride’s living parents, of the parish of Sillery, with no sign that the mother had died. She had died by 17 October 1678, when she was called “the late” at her daughter Marie’s wedding, so her death falls between those two dates.

The Fichier Origine also records that her elder sister Claude Camus, baptised at Blois on 11 October 1623, married Claude Charron there on 11 October 1649, and that both became settlers in New France.

Children

The index of the parish registers lists at least six children of the couple baptised between 1657 and 1669, at Québec, at Château-Richer and at Sainte-Famille on the Île d’Orléans. Among them was Marie, born and baptised at Québec on 2 May 1660; the godparents named were a Claude Camus and a Claude Charron, most likely her sister and brother-in-law. When Marie married François Quintal at Québec on 17 October 1678, the register named her parents as Charles Gautier and the late Catherine Lecamus, so Catherine had died by then. No record of her burial has yet been read.