♀Therese Mailhot

Therese Mailhot (born 3 March 1708) was a Montréal-born woman, the daughter of an edge-tool maker, who raised a family at Détroit and was a widow at the French post of Vincennes, on the Wabash, by the 1750s. At Vincennes in 1754 she stood as godmother with the commandant of the post, Louis St. Ange, as godfather. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Therese Mallet (born 1735).

Early life

She was born at Montréal on 3 March 1708, the daughter of Guillaume Maillot, an edge-tool maker and blacksmith from Grondines, and Marie-Anne Macé; the date is the one Tanguay’s genealogical dictionary gives in her family’s entry. Several of her brothers and sisters died as infants. Her father was buried at Montréal in April 1718, when she was ten; her mother married Pierre Courault that September and died in 1721, when Therese was thirteen.

Marriage and family

On 11 August 1730, at Montréal, she married Antoine Maillet, born at Détroit in 1706, the son of Pierre Maillet, a merchant, and Madeleine Dufresne. Two days before the wedding, on 9 August, they probably signed a marriage contract before the Montréal notary Nicolas-Auguste Guillet de Chaumont. On 9 September 1733, at Montréal, Antoine, about to leave for the pays d’en haut, the upper country, made her his general attorney before the notary Jean-Baptiste Adhémar, leaving her to manage his affairs there; by 1735 she had joined him in the west. The family later settled at Détroit, where most of their children were baptized. At least ten were born between 1731 and 1743, and six of them died young. Their first daughter, Thérèse, born at Détroit in 1731, was buried at Montréal in January 1734, and the name was given again to the next daughter, born at Détroit on 12 April 1735. Three sons, Louis, François and Antoine, lived to adulthood.

Vincennes

By 1750 she and her daughter Therese were at Vincennes, then a French post in the Illinois country. On 26 October 1750 the banns of her daughter’s marriage to Jean Baptist Renault Deslaurier were published at St. Francis Xavier; the register names the bride’s parents as Antoine Malette and Thérèse “Margotte”, “of the parish of Villemarie”, that is, Montréal, and “therese Maillot” is among those who signed. Antoine Maillet was dead by October 1753, when she stood godmother to her daughter’s first child and the register called her “therese Mallet, widow Antoine Mallet”; she made her mark as “Widow Mallet”. The register always gives her that status from then on.

In August 1754 she was godmother at the baptism of Jean Baptiste, a boy enslaved in the household of Ste. Marie, with St. Ange, “Commandant for the King in this poste”, as godfather. The commandant was the King’s officer in charge of the post, its highest-ranking resident; the records do not say how the widow came to stand beside him. She also witnessed marriages there, signing as “Veuve Mallet” at banns published in October 1759 and early in 1760.

Her daughter was buried at Vincennes in 1763, a year after the birth of her seventh child. Therese’s three surviving sons were also at the post: in 1779 Louis, François and Antoine Mallet were named as uncles at the marriage of her grandson Jean Baptiste Renault.

Notes

Her surname appears as Mailhot, Maillot and, in the printed transcript of the Vincennes register, “Margotte”, which is how the priest heard Mailhot. Tanguay gives her birth as 3 March 1708 in her own family’s entry and as 1707 in her husband’s; the exact date is the one used here. A burial of “therese Mallet” at Vincennes on 19 September 1763 is her daughter’s, not hers: it calls the dead woman a wife, and the register always calls her a widow.

Marriage contract

The Ancestry index Quebec, Canada, Notarial Records, 1637–1935 lists a marriage contract dated 9 August 1730 before the Montréal notary Nicolas-Auguste Guillet de Chaumont, between Antoine Mallet and a bride written “Therese Mayon”; the 1730 marriage register has “Therese Maillot”. Only the index entry is known: the contract itself has not been seen, and its date falls two days before the church wedding.

Death

No record of her death or burial has been found. A list of the inhabitants of the post in 1769 includes a “Mrs. Malle”, which may be her, but the list gives no given names.