♀Marie Anne Favreau dit Deslauriers

Marie Anne Favreau dit Deslauriers (died before 19 July 1737) was the daughter of Pierre Favreau and Marie Benoit of Contrecoeur, New France. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Francois Emery dit Codere (1700–1755).

Marriage and family

Still a minor, Marie Anne married Antoine Emery dit Coderre, a widower, on 5 June 1688. The marriage contract was drawn up by the notary Michel Moreau; one copy of it locates the signing at Contrecoeur, another at Boucherville, where Moreau practiced, and which of the two is correct has not been settled. No record of a church wedding has been found, only the notarial contract. Antoine had already buried his first wife, recorded variously as Marie Devault, Marie Deveaux and Marie Daneau, and had six children by her. He and Marie Anne went on to have ten children of their own, born between 1690 and 1711, among them François, who later left the colony for the Illinois Country.

Widowhood and death

Antoine died about 1713. On 5 April 1715 Marie Anne, by then a widow, petitioned for guardianship of her ten minor children, naming each of them and giving their ages, from twenty-four down to four. She had herself died by 19 July 1737, when a curator was appointed to act for her son François in settling the estates of “the late Antoine Emery dit Coderre and Marie Anne Favreau dit Deslauriers”; François was named as an heir but was then living in the Illinois Country and could not appear in person. No record of Marie Anne’s own death or burial has come to light; the judicial record of 1737 marks only that she was by then deceased.

Notes

Her parents, Pierre Favreau and Marie Benoit, are named as her father and mother in the notary Moreau’s minute of the 1688 marriage contract, which describes Pierre as farmer of the Saint-Joseph farm belonging to Mr Boucher at Boucherville. In January 1700 the Boucherville register names the same pair, as farmers of Mr Boucher’s island, at the marriage of her brother Antoine Favreau. The 1715 petition also names a full set of brothers and sisters and half-siblings from Antoine’s first marriage; none of them has been entered here.