♀Catherine Journa

Catherine Journa was the wife of Antoine Duvivier, a merchant saddler at Corbeny in Picardy, in northern France, and is known from the Paris marriage contract of their daughter Adrienne in 1646. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Adrienne Du Vivier (1626–1706).

Family

On 13 January 1646 their daughter Adrienne signed a marriage contract in Paris with Augustin Hébert, a tailor of that city and the son of the late Jean Hebert, a merchant of Caen. A modern published abstract of the notarial minute describes the bride as “fille de feu Antoine, marchand sellier”, the daughter of the late Antoine, a merchant saddler at Corbeny in Picardy, and of Catherine Journa. Her sister Antoinette assisted her at the signing. The abstract calls Antoine the late Antoine but uses no such word for Catherine, so she was most likely still living when it was drawn up.

The Fichier Origine, which compiles the documented French origins of Canada’s early settlers, records that Augustin had already served in Canada before the marriage: he crossed in 1637 as a soldier of the garrison at Québec, was among the recruits for Montréal in 1642, the year the settlement was founded as Fort Ville-Marie^W, and went back to France in 1645. The same compilation gives Adrienne’s birth as about 1626 at Corbeny, and records that her daughter Jeanne Hebert (1647–1687) was baptized in Paris in 1647 and that the family then sailed for Canada from La Rochelle. Adrienne was widowed in 1653, married again, and died at Montréal on 20 October 1706.

Notes

The records in hand give no date or place for Catherine Journa’s birth, her marriage or her death. The printed abstract of the contract spells her surname Journa; the Fichier Origine’s entry for Adrienne writes it Journet, and Tanguay’s dictionary of early French-Canadian families, which names her in its entry for Adrienne’s second marriage, gives Journé.