♂Martin Macé

Martin Macé (fl. 1673–1687) was a locksmith and edge-tool maker in New France, at Sorel and then at Montréal. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Marie-Anne Macé (1684–).

His parents are not known, and neither is his place of origin; a first search of a compilation of French emigrants to Canada found no entry for him. He married Jeanne Ducorps, but their marriage has not been found in the indexed Québec parish registers; it took place before March 1673, when their daughter Marie was baptised at Sorel on 19 March. The index of the 1681 census lists a Martin Massé, aged 35, at Montréal. The family was settled there by 1684: their daughter Marie-Anne was baptised at Montréal on 7 December 1684, and the register calls her father a serrurier, a locksmith. Four daughters of the couple are known. The youngest known, Catherine, was baptised at Montréal on 16 December 1687 and was buried on 12 June 1699, aged twelve. Their daughter Jeanne married Michel Campot at Montréal on 7 January 1696, aged seventeen. A Marie, daughter of the couple, married Jean Pothier there on 24 September 1696; she is probably the Marie baptised at Sorel, although the register’s age of twenty is three years short of that baptism. When Marie-Anne married Guillaume Maillot at Montréal on 16 January 1704, the register named her father a maître taillandier, a master edge-tool maker, a smith who made axes, blades and other cutting tools. Her second marriage, in 1718, again names Martin Macé and Jeanne Ducorps as her parents. When and where he died is not known. His surname is written Macé in the parish registers and Massé in the census.