♀Madeleine Emery dit Coderre

Madeleine Emery dit Coderre (born 1678, by Tanguay’s dictionary) was a daughter of a soldier of the Carignan-Salières Regiment^W and a fille du roi^W. In January 1700, at Boucherville, she married her stepmother’s brother, Mathurin Favreau, as the parish act of that month records. She was the half-seventh great-grand-aunt of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the half-sister of Francois Emery dit Codere (1700–1755), Nancy Jane’s seventh great-grandfather.

Early life

Madeleine’s parents were Antoine Emery dit Coderre, who stayed in Canada when the regiment went home and settled at Contrecoeur, and Marie Devault (1647–1688), one of the filles du roi. She was one of the eleven children of that marriage. Tanguay’s dictionary gives her birth as 13 March 1678. Her mother died before June 1688, and Tanguay gives the burial as 6 December 1687 at Repentigny. By 5 June 1688 Antoine was a widower contracting to marry Marie Anne Favreau dit Deslauriers, the daughter of Pierre Favreau and Marie Benoit. Pierre Favreau had served in the same company of the regiment as Antoine.

In March 1697 Antoine petitioned the court at Montréal for a guardian for six children of his first marriage; the petition gave Madeleine’s age as sixteen, “or thereabouts”. The court’s record of 23 March 1697 names four of them as minors, Louis, Madeleine, Marguerite and Francoise, and appointed Antoine himself their guardian, with his son-in-law Nicolas Bonin, the husband of his daughter Marie, as deputy guardian. Both men declared that they could not write or sign.

Marriage

A compiled genealogy gives Madeleine’s marriage to Mathurin Favreau at Boucherville in January 1700, and the parish act of that month names him as the groom. The register calls her twenty-one and him about twenty-two, names his parents as Pierre Favreau and Marie Benoit, who farmed on Monsieur Boucher’s island there, and records her father among those present, her mother being dead. Mathurin was therefore the brother of Marie Anne Favreau, Antoine’s second wife, and the notarial contract, passed before Marien Tailhandier and dated 15 January 1700, calls Marie Anne the bride’s stepmother. It names Pierre Boucher, sieur de Boucherville, as present for the bride, and sets her portion at 200 livres from her late mother’s estate. In 1701, according to a later recital, Madeleine and Mathurin gave a receipt for 207 livres in full payment of her mother’s property.

A sale, which names him with his wife Madeleine Emery, concerned sixty arpents in the seigneury of Contrecoeur. An index of parish registers gives a burial at Sainte-Famille on 9 June 1760 for Madeleine Emery dit Coderre, wife of Mathurin Favreau dit Deslauriers, with baptisms of children of the couple there.

Notes

The day of the marriage

Tanguay dates the marriage 11 January 1700. The day figure in the Boucherville entry is uncertain in the record, and the contract carries the date 15 January, so the order of contract and wedding is not settled. The contract’s list of the bride’s brothers and sisters also names a “Magdelaine”, most likely a slip for the bride herself.

The year of birth

Tanguay’s 13 March 1678 fits the register’s “twenty-one” in January 1700. The 1697 petition’s sixteen would put her birth about 1681; the same petition gives the younger children ages three or four years under Tanguay’s, and its ages are “or thereabouts”.