♀Francoise Deshaies

Francoise Deshaies was the wife of Charles Tougas, of the parish of Fatouville, in Normandy, and is named in the parish register there in 1673 as the mother of Raulin Tougar at his marriage. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Guillaume Tougas (1648–1677).

No record of her parents has been found. Family trees give her birth as 1630 at Fatouville and her death there on 12 May 1648, but neither date has been found in a register, and the birth year cannot be right: a genealogical file of French emigrants to Canada, compiled for her grandson Guillaume, lists Charles Tougard and Francoise Deshaies as married about 1630. The surviving Fatouville parish register begins only in 1664, so it bears on none of those dates.

The same file names five children: Raulin, Guillaume, Thomas, Jean and Marie. The first parish record to name her is Raulin’s marriage to Marie Helot at Fatouville on Sunday 15 October 1673, where the register calls the groom the son of Charles and of “Françoise Deshayes”. The word written just before her name may be feue, “the late”, which would mean she had died by then, but the word is not clear. Raulin died at Fatouville on 27 August 1685, said to be forty-five to fifty years old, and was buried the next day. Guillaume, through whom the line descends, and his wife Marie Labbe had a son Guillaume baptized at Fatouville in August 1674, who later went to Canada as a soldier.

Notes

On 26 January 1671 the Fatouville register names a Charles Tougard and a Marie Labbesse as the parents of a daughter, Charlotte, who lived twenty-four hours. The records do not show whether her husband had married again by then or whether the priest wrote Charles for their son Guillaume, whose wife was Marie Labbe.