♀Françoise Potardeau

Françoise Potardeau was a Parisian woman of the early seventeenth century, the daughter of an innkeeper and the wife, then the widow, of Jean Canaple, a master glazier of the faubourg Saint-Marcel. She was probably the ninth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Élisabeth Canappa.

Marriage

In 1601 Jean Canaple and Françoise Potardeau, the daughter of the Paris innkeeper Thomas Potardeau, had their marriage contract drawn up in Paris. The couple made their home in the faubourg Saint-Marcel, the suburb outside the southern walls of Paris, where Jean worked as a master glazier. Two daughters are known, most likely both born of this marriage: Élisabeth, who married the master needle-maker Cosme Loupiat of the rue Saint-Honoré before April 1625, and Marguerite, who married Louis Billion, a master glazier like her father.

Widowhood

Jean died on 1 March 1625 at his house in the faubourg Saint-Marcel. On 18 April Françoise, as his widow and as guardian of their under-age children, had a notary draw up an inventory of his goods; Cosme Loupiat attended on behalf of his wife Élisabeth, named as the dead man’s daughter and heir, and as deputy guardian of the younger children. Under the Custom of Paris^W, such an inventory was how a surviving spouse with under-age children settled the property the couple had held in common. The act styles her “honorable femme”, the courtesy given to the wives of respectable tradesmen, and among the papers it lists was a copy, made in 1624, of her 1601 marriage contract. She later married again; the name of her second husband is not known, and no record of her baptism or death is known.

Notes

The records

Françoise is known from the Archives nationales’ summaries of acts in the Minutier central, the archive of the Paris notaries. The inventory after Jean’s death, dated 18 April 1625, was drawn up in the study of the notary Jean Charles; its summary names her as his widow and as guardian of their under-age children, and lists the 1624 copy of the 1601 marriage contract, which names her father as Thomas Potardeau, marchand hôtelier. Her second marriage is known only from a later act in the same study, catalogued as the acknowledgment of a rente (an annual payment) by Jean Canaple’s remarried widow.

Élisabeth’s mother

The 1625 inventory calls Élisabeth the dead man’s daughter and heir, and calls the under-age children the children of Jean and Françoise, but it does not name Élisabeth’s mother. She was already married by April 1625, which fits a daughter born in the first years after the 1601 marriage; a first wife of Jean’s cannot be ruled out. Françoise is therefore most likely, but not certainly, her mother.