♀Marie-Anne Hardy

Marie-Anne Hardy (baptised 10 October 1633 – 2 January 1726) married the Breton settler Pierre Maillet at Montréal. She is an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) twice over: her ninth great-grandmother through her son Rene Malet, and again through her son Pierre Maillet, whose descendants met and married at Vincennes in 1801.

Life

She was baptized Marie at La Trinité in Angers on 10 October 1633, the daughter of René Hardy and his wife Renée.

She married Pierre Maillet at Notre-Dame de Montréal on 23 October 1662. A marriage contract had probably been drawn up before the notary Bénigne Basset at Montréal on 9 July 1662, months before the wedding. The register of the marriage calls her the daughter of René Hardy, a merchant and master goldsmith (orfèvre), and of Renée Moget, of the parish of La Trinité in Angers, and names the bridegroom as the son of Jean Maillet and Guillemette Ruellan of Saint-Coulomb in the diocese of Dol. Their children were baptized there between 1663 and 1676. The censuses of 1666 and 1667 both list her at Montréal, aged 32.

The register writes her mother’s surname with an M and a second letter that cannot be read with certainty, so it may be Moget or Maget; Tanguay’s dictionary of French-Canadian families prints Moget, and the Drouin Institute’s index gives Noget. Tanguay also gives her birth year as 1634, a year later than the baptism. The register of her son Rene’s marriage in 1689 misspells her name as “Tardy”.

On 7 December 1706 she made her will before the notary Antoine Adhémar at Montréal, naming herself the wife of Pierre Maillet (the act writes Malet). She left her clothes and linen to her daughter Anne, wife of Louis Prigeat, and named as executors her grandsons-in-law Charles de Launay and Gerard Barsalou. The will also gave 200 livres, paid through the Soeurs de la Congrégation, for her burial and for 200 masses.

She was about ninety-two when she was buried at Montréal on 2 January 1726, and she outlived her son Rene, who died before 1721.

Lines of descent

Both lines come down through her sons, and on each she is Nancy Jane Blanchard’s ninth great-grandmother. Her son Rene Malet’s line runs through his son Francois Mallet (born 1701) and Francois’s granddaughter Jeanne Marie Cardinal, born at Détroit in 1756, to Augustus Tougas dit Laviolette. Her son Pierre Maillet’s line runs through his son Antoine, baptized at Détroit in 1706, and Antoine’s daughter Thérèse Mallet to Ellenore Renaud dit Deslauriers. Augustus and Ellenore, both her great-great-great-grandchildren, married at Vincennes in 1801 as fourth cousins, so the two lines meet again in their son Augustin Tougas Lovellette (1809–1866).

Notes

The marriage contract

The date, the notary and the act number (no. 239) come from the notary’s own repertoire of acts, as indexed in a collection of Quebec notarial records.