♀Marie Pichon

Marie Pichon (born about 1600 – buried 4 May 1661) was a native of Paris who died at Québec in New France, the wife first of Philippe Gautier and then of Charles Sevestre, and the mother of Charles Gautier. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Charles Gautier (1628–1703).

Origins and first marriage

The Fichier Origine, a register-verified compilation of the origins of the settlers of New France, gives Marie as born at Paris about 1600, the daughter of Philippe Pichon, a master wood-turner, and Médarde Vaquemoulin, whose marriage contract it dates 28 December 1588. It gives her marriage to Philippe Gautier, a master printer, at the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris on 10 June 1618, after a contract of 27 May 1618. Philippe was buried at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont on 13 August 1631.

Second marriage and Québec

According to the same compilation she married Charles Sevestre at Paris in February 1632, and two Sevestre daughters followed: Denise, born at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont on 29 October 1632, and Marguerite. Tanguay’s genealogical dictionary dates the marriage to 1627, which conflicts with the compilation and would fall before Philippe’s burial in 1631 if that date is right. It gives Sevestre’s burial at Québec on 9 December 1657, and the index of the parish registers lists that burial at Notre-Dame de Québec on the same day.

The compilation says she came to New France in 1636 with her husband and children: Guillaume, Charles and Catherine Gautier, and the Sevestre daughters. She died at Québec on 3 May 1661 according to the compilation, and the index of the parish registers lists her burial at Notre-Dame de Québec on 4 May 1661.

When her son Charles Gautier Boisverdun, single, married Catherine Camus at Québec, in the parish of Notre-Dame, on 1 August 1656, the register named him the son of the late Philippe Gautier and Marie Pichon: Philippe had died by then, while Marie is not called the late.

In Tanguay’s dictionary

In her first husband’s entry Tanguay’s dictionary writes her name Plichon, calls him sieur de Comporté, of the parish of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris, and lists three of her Gautier children: Catherine, who married Denis Duquet at Québec on 13 May 1638; Guillaume, called Gautier de la Chenaye, who married Esther de Lambourg at Québec on 19 October 1648 and was buried on 26 July 1657; and Charles, whom it gives as born in 1622, six years before the baptism the compilation records. These entries have not been checked against the registers.