♀Madeleine Dufresne

Madeleine Dufresne (about 1673 – before 11 September 1738) was a French Canadian woman who was already the widow of François Pelletier when, on 9 January 1698 at Montréal, she married the merchant Pierre Maillet; eight years later she bore a son at Détroit, the young French post founded there in 1701. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Antoine Maillet (1706 – before 1753).

Family and first marriage

She was born about 1673, the daughter of Félix Dufresne, probably a surgeon settled at Batiscan on the St. Lawrence, and of his wife, Elisabeth Lefebvre. The 1681 census of Batiscan lists a girl of nine named Marie in her father’s household, and that year she was confirmed at Batiscan, aged eight.

On 2 May 1690, at Champlain, she married François Pelletier, of Sorel, when she was about seventeen. A son of the marriage, Jean François, was baptized at Sorel on 15 August 1691. Her first husband’s death is not dated; she was his widow by 9 January 1698, when the marriage record gives her age as twenty-four.

Marriage to Pierre Maillet

On 9 January 1698, at Montréal, she married Pierre Maillet (1676–1738), a merchant and a son of Pierre Maillet, a settler from Saint-Coulomb in Brittany, and Marie-Anne Hardy. The couple had six children on record: a daughter, Marie Catherine, and five sons, Pierre Antoine, Antoine, François, Paul and Jean-Baptiste. Antoine was baptized at Détroit on 16 August 1706, five years after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac^W established the fort and trading post there.

A compiled directory of Détroit residents for 1701 to 1710 lists her there as the wife of Pierre Maillet, and a biographical dictionary entry gives her husband a lot inside the palisade of the fort, granted in 1707. François was baptized at Montréal on 29 July 1708 and was buried there in November 1716; Jean-Baptiste was baptized there on 25 October 1712. Antoine married Therese Mailhot at Montréal in 1730 and raised his family at Détroit.

Death

Madeleine died before 11 September 1738. By 6 August 1739 the royal court at Montreal had opened a curatorship for the minor children of the late Pierre Mallet, described as a voyageur, and of his wife, named there by her family’s surname as Madelaine Tune. The curatorship, to elect a guardian for the children, was requested by the merchant François-Marie Soumande Delorme, a creditor of the estate; no place is given for her death.

Notes

Her birth year

Her birth is given as about 1673, from three records of her age: the 1681 census of Batiscan, which lists a girl of nine named Marie in her father’s household; the confirmation of that year, which gives her age as eight; and the marriage record of 9 January 1698, which gives her age as twenty-four. Together they put her birth about 1672 to 1674. The identification with the census girl rests on her age and her father’s household; the census entry also leaves out her sister Elisabeth, then about fifteen, so the household list is not complete. Older printed works give other years: Tanguay’s dictionary gives 1676 in two places, in its fifth and sixth volumes, and Burton’s work of 1896 gives 1669. Those dates are not followed here.

Names

Tanguay’s dictionary, which gives her family in two separate entries, calls her father Pierre-Félix Dufresne, a surgeon settled at Batiscan, and names her mother Elizabeth Lefebvre, where this account has Elisabeth. The same work notes that the Dufresne name was also carried with the by-names Turcot and Frêne. In the parish registers her father’s family name is Tune, with Dufresne as a by-name, and he appears as a surgeon at Batiscan who was buried there on 27 July 1683.

Her marriages

The Champlain act of 2 May 1690 (PRDH and LAFRANCE act 7013) names the bride as Madeleine Tune, of Batiscan, daughter of Félix, and the groom as François Pelletier dit Antaya, of Sorel. Tanguay’s sixth volume, a 1903 journal and Denissen print 1689 for the same day; the register’s entry has 1690, the year given above. The dictionary does not date his death; it gives only that she was his widow by January 1698. The baptism of their son Jean François at Sorel on 15 August 1691 (PRDH act 83377) names both parents; a second baptism of a Jean François Pelletier at Sorel in 1691 belongs to another couple.

The 1698 marriage to Pierre Maillet is in Tanguay’s dictionary, a nineteenth-century compilation from the registers, and in the register act numbered 47703. Tanguay gives it the same date and place under her husband’s family and under her father’s, so the two entries agree.

The Détroit residence

The Burton directory of residents at Détroit for 1701 to 1710, a compiled list, gives her as ‘Dufresne, Marie Magdelaine. Wife of Pierre Mallet’, and again as ‘Tune, Magdeleine, wife of Pierre Malet’. Her husband’s grant of lot 43 inside the palisade, dated 10 March 1707, with farm grant no. 1 and garden no. 2, comes from Nasatir’s entry under MALLET (Maillet, Mailhet, Malet), PIERRE ANTOINE. That entry gives the husband the name Pierre Antoine; Pierre Maillet is the name used here.

In 1704 she was one of the witnesses at a marriage at Lachine (Sts-Anges), with four others, among them Pierre Cardinal; the record’s summary does not name the couple (PRDH act 14348).

Another woman

Many online trees confuse her with Marie-Madeleine Crépeau, born in 1675 on the Île d’Orléans, who married a Pierre Dufresne in 1692 and died in 1748. That woman was a Dufresne by marriage, while Madeleine was a Dufresne by birth, and the two had different fathers, husbands and marriages.

Her death

Her death is cited to the Kaskaskia Manuscripts digest of Lawrie Cena Dean (1981) and to the Montreal court notice of 6 August 1739 (BAnQ CC601,S1,SS1,D1114), which names ‘les feus Pierre Mallet voyageur et Madelaine Tune’ and the minor children of the two. The place is not stated.