♀Marie-Vincente Pacaud

Marie-Vincente Pacaud was a woman of Saintonge^W, in western France, who married Simon Chapacou at Néré in 1651 and came with him to New France in 1663. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Marie Chapacou.

Her parents are not known. A genealogical dictionary of Québec families calls her Vincente Pacaud and gives her birth as about 1624. She married Simon Chapacou, a man from Saintes, in 1651 in the parish of Saint-Pierre at Néré. A compilation of French emigrants to Canada lists four children baptised at Néré, three sons and then a daughter, Marie, baptised on 29 December 1658, and records that Simon came to New France in 1663 “with his wife and two children”. The dictionary lists further children born in the colony from 1665 onward. Two notarial acts there described her husband as a mute man, unable to make any legal act for himself. He died at Longueuil, near Montréal, on 3 June 1690; the dictionary gives no date of death for her.

Her surname turns up in one later record: when her grandson Guillaume Maillot married at Montréal in 1704, the register named his mother “Marie Pacaud”, giving Marie Chapacou her mother’s surname rather than her own.