♀Marie Chapacou

Marie Chapacou (baptised 29 December 1658) was a French-born settler of New France, baptised at Néré in Saintonge and buried three-quarters of a century later at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade on the St. Lawrence. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Guillaume Maillot (1680–).

She was baptised in the parish of Saint-Pierre at Néré, in Saintonge in western France, on 29 December 1658. She was the daughter of Simon Chapacou and Marie-Vincente Pacaud. A compilation of French emigrants to Canada records that the family reached New France in 1663, and that two notarial acts there described her father as a mute man, “incapable” of making a legal act for himself. It also names three older brothers baptised at Néré. In New France she married René Maillot, called Laviolette, a habitant who was 44 at the 1681 census of Grondines; no record of their marriage has been found. Their son Guillaume was born at Grondines on 31 December 1680 and baptised there the next day. She was buried at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade on 25 December 1733, and her burial record names her husband as René Maillot Laviolette.

Notes

Her son’s baptism names her Marie Chapacou, but his marriage at Montréal in 1704 records his mother as Marie “Pacaud”. Pacaud was her own mother’s surname, not a form of hers. Her burial gave her age as 79, a few years more than her 1658 baptism allows.