♀Marie de Salazar

Marie de Salazar (about 1571 – 1609) was a daughter of a noble family of Champagne, twice married, whose second husband spent much of his life in the fur trade of Acadia. In 1601 she borrowed from her father-in-law to equip her husband for a voyage to Canada. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Charles Saint-Étienne de La Tour (1593–1666).

Early life and first marriage

She was born about 1571, the daughter of Hector Salazar and Antoinette de Courcelles, who lived at Baigneux, near Saint-Just in Champagne. On 15 January 1581, still a child, she stood godmother at Baigneux, entered in the register as the daughter of “Noble Seigneur Hector de Salazar”. About 1586 she married Paul de Verrines, sieur de Vouarces, near Saint-Just. He died about 1590, leaving her with two small daughters, Louise and Marie.

Marriage to Claude de La Tour

About 1592 Marie de Salazar, a young widow of a noble family of Champagne, married Claude Saint-Étienne de La Tour, and the couple settled at Baigneux, near Saint-Just in Champagne. He was the son of a Paris master mason, and as guardian of her daughters he took the title of sieur de Vouarces. They had a son, Charles, born in 1593, and two daughters, Louise and Angélique, born about 1599 and 1602.

Her husband’s road to the New World ran through her own family. Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt^W, baron of Saint-Just and the son of a Jeanne de Salazar, was probably her cousin, and it was with him that Claude went to Acadia. On 11 August 1601 she signed a note for 76 livres owed to her father-in-law, Guyon Turgis; on its back was written that the money was for twelve écus she had given her husband before he left for Canada.

She died in 1609 or a little before. Claude came home to Champagne in the autumn of 1607, and she was dead when her father-in-law’s goods were inventoried on 22 April 1609; he became guardian of their children and of their share of her estate and her mother’s. In 1626 and 1627 her daughters Louise and Angélique claimed those shares from their father.

Notes

Sources

Her life rests on the chapter on her and Claude de La Tour in Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes, tome II (1994), pp. 48-72, a compiled history that quotes the Paris notarial deeds found by Robert Le Blant and the parish registers of Baigneux and Saint-Just. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1, names her as the first wife of Claude de La Tour and the mother of Charles. Lanctôt spells her name Marye de Salazar.

Her death

The note of 1601 is listed in the inventory of Guyon Turgis’s goods taken 22 April 1609, which calls her the woman “qui estoit femme dudict sieur de La Tour”, that is, who had been his wife. Lanctôt puts her death early in 1608, a few months after her husband’s return, when he was named guardian of her children; the inventory shows only that she had died by April 1609.

The first marriage

Lanctôt gives the first marriage about 1586 and Paul de Verrines’s death about 1590; a compiled genealogy by Stephen White gives the first marriage about 1585 and the second about 1592. Lanctôt notes that Charles de La Tour later bore the title of sieur de Saint-Deniscourt, which he takes to have come through the Courcelles family.

The Salazar family

Lanctôt traces the Salazars of Saint-Just to Jehan de Salazar, a Basque knight in the service of Charles VII of France from 1428, and his wife Marguerite de La Trémoïlle; he treats Marie’s father Hector as likely a grandson of the first Hector de Salazar, not as proven. The link above Hector is uncertain, and the longer pedigrees built on it are left out here.