♀Marie Minaud

Marie Minaud was a woman of the Île d’Orléans, in New France, who married Jean Mourier at Ste-Famille in 1678 and had children baptised at St-Jean on the island. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Marie Mourier (born 1688).

Marriage and children

Jean Mourier married Marie Minaud at Ste-Famille on the Île d’Orléans on 29 October 1678. The index of the act writes the groom’s name Morier, describes both as single and of the island, and names the groom’s parents as Jean Morier and Anne Caron and the bride’s as the late Jean Minaud and Jeanne Caillé. Her father was therefore dead by the date of the marriage. The 1681 census of Ste-Famille lists her, aged 18, as Marie Mineau, which puts her birth at about 1663.

The St-Jean parish register records the baptisms of eight of their children. Marie Madeleine was born on 24 April 1682 and baptised on 10 May. Marie was born on 6 July 1685 and baptised on 10 July. Twins, Jean Baptiste and Marguerite, were born on 4 August 1687 and baptised the next day; Jean Baptiste died on 20 September 1687, aged six weeks. Marie Mourier, written Jeanne Meurier in the register, was baptised on 31 August 1688; she married Pierre Galien at St-Jean in 1704. Claire Françoise was baptised on 19 October 1690 and buried on 14 April 1691. Jean was baptised on 12 November 1692, and Gabriel on 6 September 1696; Gabriel died on 17 May 1703.

The register also records the marriages of four of the children. Marguerite married Michel Chiasson of Port-Royal, Acadia, at St-Jean on 30 June 1706. Françoise married Louis Grifar at St-Jean on 17 November 1710. Jean married Marie Marthe Laviolette at Québec on 17 February 1716, when both his parents were recorded as dead. Mathurin married Françoise Choret at Beauport on 17 November 1721. No baptism has been found for Françoise or Mathurin.

On 3 January 1683 the St-Jean burial record entered the bones of Marie, aged five, and Marie Madeleine, aged one, daughters of Jean Mourier and Marie Minaud, together with a son of Pierre Mourier. The record states that the children had been consumed by fire on 27 December 1682. A daughter aged five in January 1683 would have been born before the couple’s marriage in October 1678, and no baptism of her has been found, so either her age or her parentage is uncertain. The dictionary of Cyprien Tanguay^W lists ten children of the couple and notes the two daughters burned in the fire.

Widowhood, remarriages and death

Tanguay’s dictionary gives her husband’s burial at St-Jean on 18 August 1705, and adds that she married Jean Rabouin at St-Jean on 6 July 1706. A son, Nicolas Rabouin, was buried at Québec on 6 September 1709, aged 14 months; the entry names Jean Rabouin as the deceased father and Marie Minau as the mother, so her second husband was dead by then. She probably married a third time, to Pierre Hérodeau dit Larose, between that date and March 1711; no marriage act has been found in the index. The burial of Marie Minaux, aged 46 and married to Pierre Érodeau Larose, is entered at Québec on 20 March 1711, with her death on 19 March, and it is probably hers. When Pierre Hérodeau remarried at Charlesbourg on 7 January 1712, the entry names his late wife as Marie Mino. The children’s baptisms, burials and marriages come from the St-Jean parish registers, as indexed by the Drouin Institute, and the fire burial was read on the register page itself. Her later marriages and death rest on Tanguay’s dictionary and the index of the Québec parish registers; those register pages have not been read.