♀Marie Charlotte de Poitiers

Marie Charlotte de Poitiers (born about 1641) was a woman of New France who was already the widow of Joseph Hébert when, in 1667, she married Simon Lefebvre, with whom she later settled at Pointe-aux-Trembles, now Neuville, on the St. Lawrence west of Québec. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Charlotte Lefebvre (1679–1755).

First marriage

She was the daughter of Pierre Charles de Poitiers, sieur du Buisson, and of Hélène de Belleau, of the diocese of Amiens; both were dead by her wedding. On 2 May 1660, when she was about nineteen, she made a marriage contract with Joseph Hébert before the notary Audouart, and on 12 October 1660 they were married at Notre-Dame de Québec. Joseph is said to have been a grandson of the apothecary Louis Hébert^W, who had brought his family to Québec in 1617, and a son, Joseph, is said to have been baptized at Québec on 16 October 1661. By January 1667 she was a widow.

Second marriage and family

On 10 January 1667 Simon Lefebvre and Marie Charlotte de Poitiers, the widow of Joseph Hébert, made their marriage contract before the notary Gilles Rageot at Québec, and they probably married there the next day. They had eight children between 1667 and 1685: Louis, Marie Françoise, Jean Baptiste, François, Marie Madeleine, Charlotte, Antoine and Simon. The elder children were probably baptized at Québec, as Jean Baptiste was on 3 April 1672, but by February 1679 the family had moved upriver to Dombourg, the seigneury^W at Pointe-aux-Trembles, and Charlotte was baptized in its chapel on 9 February. The priest who baptized the child was the missionary Germain Morin^W, the first priest born in Canada, who is said to have been a half-brother of Marie Charlotte’s first husband.

In the census of about 1681 the family was at Pointe-aux-Trembles: Simon, a habitant^W aged 38, and Marie Charlotte, aged 40, with six children, the eldest fourteen and the youngest two. Two more sons, Antoine and the younger Simon, were baptized there in 1681 and 1685. Three of their daughters married at Pointe-aux-Trembles between 1690 and 1699, Charlotte the last, to Pierre Hardy on 26 January 1699. Marie Charlotte is said to have been buried on 9 February 1717.

Notes

Parentage and first marriage

The parish register of Notre-Dame de Québec has the marriage of 12 October 1660, which names her parents as the late Pierre Charles de Poitiers, sieur du Buisson, and Hélène de Belleau, who was also dead by then, both of the diocese of Amiens. Cyprien Tanguay’s^W dictionary, in its entry for Joseph Hébert, gives the same parents, calls the father a captain of infantry, gives the mother as of Amiens in Picardy, and gives the baptism of her son Joseph. Both of her marriage contracts, before Audouart on 2 May 1660 and before Gilles Rageot on 10 January 1667, are listed in the inventory of the colony’s marriage contracts compiled by Pierre-Georges Roy^W; the second calls her the widow of Joseph Hébert. The census of about 1681 gives her age as 40, and Tanguay gives her birth as 1641. The records do not say where she was born or when she came to Canada.

Her first husband’s family

Tanguay makes Joseph Hébert, born in 1636, the son of Guillaume Hébert, a son of Louis Hébert, and of Hélène Desportes. Guillaume died in 1639, and in 1640 his widow married Noël Morin at Québec; among their sons were Germain Morin, born in 1642 and ordained in 1665, and Jean-Baptiste Morin, who married Catherine de Belleau in 1667. The act of Charlotte’s baptism in 1679 names Germain Morin, missionary, as the priest. The godmother of Marie Charlotte’s son Jean Baptiste in 1672 was a Catherine Belleau, most likely the same woman, though the entry does not name her husband.

Her death

Tanguay gives her burial on 9 February 1717, without a place; another family tree gives 1718 for her death.