♀Catherine Catelle

Catherine Catelle was a woman of Marans, a town north of La Rochelle in the old province of Aunis^W in western France, whose daughter Françoise later crossed the Atlantic to New France. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Françoise Bouet.

Her husband was Pierre Bouet. Their daughter Françoise was baptized in the parish church of Saint-Étienne at Marans on 4 October 1624, and the register names her as the daughter of Pierre Bouet and Catherine Catelle. Nothing more is recorded of the couple: their own parents, births, marriage and deaths are not known. Françoise married Jean Roy and settled with him at Montréal, where their first child was baptized on 11 December 1660.

Notes

The baptism of 1624

The baptism is entered in the register of the parish of Saint-Étienne at Marans for the years 1623 to 1629, now held by the Archives départementales de la Charente-Maritime. The entry of 4 October 1624 names the child “Françoise fille de Pierre Bouet & de Catherine Catelle”, with François Texier as godfather and Jaquette Briand as godmother. The godparents’ surnames are uncertain, and a blot obscures the first letter of Bouet.

Françoise in New France

The Fichier Origine, a register of the French origins of emigrants to Québec, has an entry for Françoise, written Bouhet, that gives the same baptism at Marans on 4 October 1624 and the same parents, Pierre Bouet and Catherine Catelle, and names her second husband, Alexis Buet. Through that second marriage the entry ties the child baptized at Marans to the Françoise Bouet of Montréal and Lachine. Tanguay’s genealogical dictionary, a compiled work, spells her name Bouer and gives her birth as about 1630, six years after the baptism.