♀Françoise-Madeleine Savard

Françoise-Madeleine Savard (14 September 1650 – 29 October 1704) was a wheelwright’s daughter from Montreuil, near Paris, who came to Canada as a girl and at fourteen married the Rouen sailor Robert Jeanne at Québec. Her widowed mother had her own marriage contract drawn up before the same notary two days before hers. She was probably the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Andrée Angélique Jeanne (1671–1739).

Early life

Françoise-Madeleine is said to have been baptized at Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul in Montreuil, east of Paris, on 14 September 1650, and to have come to Canada in 1662 with her father and her sister Denise. Her parents were Simon Savard, a master wheelwright, and Marie Hordouille. Her father died before January 1665.

Marriage and family

Robert Jeanne and Françoise-Madeleine Savard married at Notre-Dame de Québec on 26 January 1665. Their marriage contract had been drawn up on 14 January before the notary Paul Vachon, two days after the same notary drew up the contract of her widowed mother, Marie Hordouille, with Jean Réaume; mother and daughter are said to have married at Québec on the same day. Françoise was fourteen. Three days before the wedding, on 23 January 1665, Robert received a grant of land from Charles de Lauson.

Their daughter Andrée was baptized at Sainte-Famille on the Île d’Orléans in March 1671, and in March 1680 Robert and his wife made a sale to the fabrique, the churchwardens’ council, of the parish of Saint-Pierre on the same island. By the census of 1681 the family was living in the Lower Town of Québec: Robert, a sailor of forty, Françoise, thirty, and five children, Marie, Andrée, Martin, Jean and a younger Marie, born between about 1668 and 1679. In September 1683 Robert made a further sale, to Michel Marandeau.

Later life

Françoise-Madeleine died at Québec on 29 October 1704, at about fifty-four. Robert outlived her by more than sixteen years; he is said to have died at the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec^W, the city’s hospital, on 9 April 1721, aged eighty-two.

Notes

Sources for her life

Her baptism at Montreuil (Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul) on 14 September 1650, her coming to Canada in 1662 with her father and her sister Denise, her father’s trade of master wheelwright (maître charron) and his death before 12 January 1665, the marriage at Québec (Notre-Dame) on 26 January 1665 and her death at Québec on 29 October 1704 come from the Fichier Origine, the register of the French origins of the settlers of New France. The entries for her brothers and sisters give her baptism as 11 September 1650. Tanguay’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes (vol. 1, p. 543) gives the same wedding date and her burial at Québec on 29 October 1704, but puts her birth in 1644; the census of 1681, which gives her age as thirty, agrees with 1650.

The marriage contract of Robert Jeannes and Françoise Savarre (14 January 1665), the contract of Jean Réaume and Marie Hurdouille (12 January 1665) and the grant from Charles de Lauson to Robert Jeanne (23 January 1665) are listed among Paul Vachon’s acts in the Inventaire des greffes des notaires du régime français published by the Archives de Québec (1942, p. 14), which also lists the sale by Robert Jeanne and his wife to the fabrique of Saint-Pierre, Île d’Orléans (22 March 1680, p. 61) and the sale by Robert Jeannes to Michel Marandeau (21 September 1683, p. 222). Pierre-Georges Roy’s inventory of the marriage contracts of the French régime also lists the 1665 contract under Vachon. The same-day weddings rest on Tanguay (vol. 1, p. 543), who gives the marriage of Marie Hurdouil to Jean Rhéaume at Québec on 26 January 1665.

Andrée’s baptism at Sainte-Famille in 1671 is in the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH), the Université de Montréal’s database of the Québec parish registers. The census of 1681, as printed by Benjamin Sulte, lists in the Lower Town of Québec “Robert Jeannes, matelot, 40 ; Francoise Savart, sa femme, 30 ; enfants : Marie 13, Andree 10, Martin 8, Jean 5, Marie 2.”

Her names

She is written Françoise Savart in the census of 1681 and Françoise Savarre in the notarial inventory; her mother appears as Hordouille, Hurdouille and Hurdouil.

The line to Floyd Amatus Delahorne

The descent from her daughter Andrée runs through Jean-Baptiste Godin, whom Stephen A. White’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes (p. 747) places among the children of Andrée and Gabriel Godin. Bona Arsenault’s list of their children does not name him, so the line is probable rather than proved.