♀Élisabeth Le Camus

Élisabeth Le Camus (about 1645 – buried 20 July 1680) was a Parisian who married the clog-maker Louis Guertin at Montréal in New France in 1659 and was buried there some twenty years later. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Louis Guertin (born 1668).

Origins and marriage

Louis Guertin and Élisabeth Le Camus were married at Montréal, in the parish of Notre-Dame, on 26 October 1659. The index of the marriage record gives her origin as Paris and names her parents as a merchant written only as Lecamus, with no forename, and Jeanne Charas. Tanguay’s dictionary dates the marriage 26 January 1659, which is wrong; the register has 26 October. It also names her parents as Pierre Le Camus, a physician, and Jeanne Charles, where the register index has a merchant and Jeanne Charas. The records used here do not say when she came to Canada.

Her age comes only from later records: Tanguay’s dictionary gives her birth as 1645, and her age at burial points to the same year. If that is right, she was about fourteen when she married. Her husband, a clog-maker from Daumeray near Angers, had come to Canada as a hired man in 1653.

Children and death

Tanguay’s dictionary lists eleven children of the marriage, the first baptised in February 1661. At the baptism of their son Louis at Montréal on 3 January 1668 she is written Camus in the register, and her husband is described as an habitant^W, a settler working his own land.

Élisabeth Le Camus was buried at Montréal on 20 July 1680, according to Tanguay’s dictionary; the index of the parish registers gives her age at burial as 35. Her husband outlived her by seven years and died at Pointe-aux-Trembles in 1687.