♀Marguerite Pasquau

Marguerite Pasquau was the wife of Mégny Emery of the parish of Sarrazac, in the old province of Périgord^W in south-western France (now the Dordogne department), where their son Antoine was baptized in 1643. That son crossed the Atlantic as a soldier of the Carignan-Salières Regiment^W in 1665 and spent the rest of his life in Canada. Marguerite was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Antoine Emery dit Coderre (died by 1715).

Family

Mégny Emery and Marguerite Pasquau had their son baptized at Sarrazac on 6 August 1643, entered in the register as Thony Eymery; the godfather, Thony Pascaut, bore the mother’s surname, and the godmother, Hanne Eymery, the father’s. The couple apparently had older children as well, baptized there between 1628 and 1640. Antoine served in the regiment’s company of Contrecoeur and made his home at Contrecoeur, near Montreal, where he raised a large family. His marriage contract with Marie Devault, drawn up before the notary Antoine Adhémar on 13 April 1674, reportedly named him as the son of “Meynie Aymerri” and Marguerite Pasquau, native of the parish of “Sarraza” in the diocese of Périgueux, so that three decades after the baptism his parents’ names were set down on the far side of the Atlantic.

Notes

Her surname

In the 1643 baptism Marguerite’s forename, written Marguarite, is clear, but her surname is worn after its first letters, “Pas…”. The full form Pasquau is the one the 1674 contract and Denissen’s Genealogy of the French Families of the Detroit River Region give; Thomas J. Laforest’s Our French-Canadian Ancestors (vol. 16, 1993) prints it as Pascaut, the spelling the godfather’s name carries, and other transcriptions give Pascaud.

The baptism

The Sarrazac entry of 6 August 1643 begins “Le sixiesme jour du mois d’aoust mil six cent [quarante trois] a esté baptizé Thony Eymery filz de Megny Eymery et de Marguarite [Pas…]”. The day, the month, the child and the father are clear; the words of the year and the mother’s surname are worn. The godparents’ names are those of the published transcriptions. Laforest prints the act as of 16 August 1643 and names the child Thomas; the register has the 6th and Thony. Two versions of a nineteenth-century marker for Antoine in Canada give his birth as 16 August and 6 August 1643.

Sarrazac and the older children

Several places in France are called Sarrazac; this one is Sarrazac, parish of Saint-Hilaire, in the Dordogne. Denissen names the couple as Magny Aymeric and Marguerite Pasquau of the parish of Sarrazac, diocese of Périgueux, and gives Antoine’s birth as 1644. The older children of 1628 to 1640 are listed in the Fichier Origine, the register-based index of French emigrants to Québec. The wording of the 1674 contract comes from a transcription published online; the act itself is among the Adhémar notarial records.

Dates not used

An online family tree gives Marguerite the years 1620–1687 and the couple a marriage on 6 August 1643, the day of their son’s baptism; those dates conflict with the older children baptized from 1628 and have not been used.