♀Marie Devault

Marie Devault (baptised 3 April 1647 – died before 5 June 1688) was a fille du roi from Nogent-le-Roi who crossed to New France in 1667 and married a soldier of the Carignan-Salières Regiment. The filles du roi were young women whom the Crown sent to the colony to marry its settlers, and she came with goods valued at 200 livres. She was the first wife of Antoine Emery dit Coderre, the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Francois Emery dit Codere (1700–1755), a child of his second marriage.

Early life

Marie was baptized at Nogent-le-Roi, in the diocese of Chartres, on Wednesday 3 April 1647, the daughter of Jacques Desvaux and Louise Poilevé. Yves Landry’s study of the Filles du Roi^W prints the mother’s name as “Folure” and puts Marie’s birth about 1649. Tanguay’s dictionary gives only the year 1647. In 1700 her daughter Francoise’s marriage contract called her “native” of a place written only as Nogent, in the Chartres country of the Beauce; that fits Nogent-le-Roi.

Marriage and family

Landry lists her as arriving in 1667. Other lists of the Filles du Roi date her marriage to Antoine Emery dit Coderre between 1667 and 1669, and Landry prints a marriage contract dated 13 April 1674. The contract is known from Landry’s printing alone, and a later notarial recital that refers to it reads April 167[4/9]. Her surname is written Deveau, Desveaux and “de Vau” in various acts. Her daughters Madeleine and Francoise married at Boucherville in January 1700, and both acts call her deceased (“Deffunte Marie de Vau”).

Death

Tanguay’s dictionary gives her burial on 6 December 1687 at Repentigny, and two Find a Grave entries agree; the burial rests on these sources alone. By 5 June 1688 Antoine was described as a widower when he contracted to marry Marie Anne Favreau. A court catalogue entry for a guardianship of 22 March 1697 describes her as dead about ten years and refers to six surviving children of the first marriage.