Gillette Banne: A Fille à Marier in New France
Gillette Banne
One of the Brave 262
Before the King's Daughters. Before royal dowries and organized recruitment. Before the colony had a plan to populate itself with marriageable women. There were the Filles à marier—the marriageable girls who crossed the Atlantic on their own terms, leaving everything they knew for a wilderness they could scarcely imagine.
Gillette Banne was one of approximately 262 such women. She arrived around 1649, fourteen years before the official Filles du Roi program would begin. She received no dowry from the Crown. She enjoyed no royal protection. What she carried across the ocean was courage—and the resilience to survive widowhood at fifteen, raise seven children, and ultimately face execution at thirty-six for killing the man who beat her daughter bloody.
Shipped across the Atlantic at thirteen. Married at thirteen. Widowed at fifteen with a newborn daughter. A property owner at sixteen. Executed at thirty-six. Gillette Banne's life spans only three and a half decades, but within it lies the full complexity of women's experience in the earliest years of colonial New France.
A Note on Descendant Numbers: According to the Genealogy of French in North America database, Gillette Banne through her parents Marin Banne and Isabeau Boire has between 1,750,000 and 2,170,000 descendants in Québec today, traced through 15 generations and 8,348 documented marriages. Her daughter Marie Chauvin, through whom our line descends, has between 1,190,000 and 1,610,000 descendants across 14 generations.
Argences: A Norman Village
Gillette was born around 1636 in Argences, a parish in the Diocese of Bayeux within the province of Normandy, France. The primary religious site was the Church of Saint-Patrice, which served as the focal point for local baptisms and records. At this time, Argences was part of the Généralité de Caen, the administrative division created to streamline tax collection and royal governance in Lower Normandy.
The Diocese of Bayeux was one of the oldest and most influential in France, home to significant ecclesiastical centers like the Abbey of Saint-Étienne in nearby Caen. The year of Gillette's birth, 1636, was marked by the Thirty Years' War—Normandy faced heavy taxation to fund the conflict, leading to local tensions and the eventual "Nu-Pieds" (Barefoot) peasant revolt in 1639.
The Banne Family
Gillette's father, Marin Banne, and mother, Isabeau Boire (also spelled Bour), were married before 1636 in Argences. Researchers note that there are Bannet families in Champ-Du-Boult, approximately 90 km from Argences, suggesting possible extended family connections in the region.
Around 1649, at approximately thirteen years old, Gillette left France as a devancière (precursor) or fille à marier to settle in New France. The voyage itself was a trial—ships of this era took two to three months to cross the Atlantic, with passengers packed into cramped quarters, surviving on hardtack and salt provisions, vulnerable to storms, disease, and the desperate boredom of endless water.
First Marriage: Marin Chauvin
Upon arrival in 1649, Gillette was quickly married to Marin Chauvin dit Lafortune, a man from the parish of Saint-Mard-de-Réno in Perche, France. According to PRDH records, Marin was baptized March 16, 1625, though Canadian documents do not name his parents—researchers suggest they were Nicolas Chauvin and Catherine Piedgars. An enlistment contract from March 8, 1648, drawn up by notary Choiseau in Tourouvre, reveals that Marin had committed to serve Noël Juchereau in New France for three years at a salary of 40 livres per year—a wage suggesting he was an unskilled laborer.
Marin was twenty-four at their marriage; Gillette was thirteen.
Their daughter Marie was baptized on September 8, 1650, at Immaculée-Conception in Trois-Rivières. Gillette was fourteen years old—a mother in a settlement constantly threatened by Iroquois raids.
The happiness of new parenthood was short-lived. Marin Chauvin died on or shortly before June 7, 1651, when the colonial administrator Monsieur d'Ailleboust granted Gillette one-third of an arpent in the town site of Trois-Rivières, "between Sébastien Dodier on the southwest and the palisade on the northeast, on the condition that she build a house and have it re-enclosed with a good fence."
At fifteen, Gillette was a widow, a single mother, and now a property owner—a remarkable status for any woman of this era, let alone one so young.
Second Marriage: Jacques Bertault
Gillette remained unmarried for approximately two years—a relatively long period for a widow in a colony desperate for families. On July 27, 1653, she married Jacques Bertault, son of Thomas Bertault (a merchant) and Catherine Coulonne, from Les Essars in the diocese of Luçon, Poitou. A marriage contract was drawn up by notary Séverin Ameau. Jacques was approximately ten years older than Gillette, working as a locksmith, mason, and farmer.
Neither Jacques nor Gillette could sign the contract—a common situation in this era and class. The document lists Gillette's first husband Marin Chauvin as deceased, and names both sets of parents.
A 1663 map of Trois-Rivières—titled "Les Trois-Rivières: Le Bourg et Ses Abords en Juin 1663"—shows the property owned by "Gillette Banne, veuve de Chauvin" at the top right of the settlement, near the palisade. Even after remarriage, her earlier land grant remained identified with her first husband's name, as was customary.
The Children of Two Marriages
Including Marie Chauvin from her first marriage, Gillette raised seven children. Between 1654 and 1662, she gave birth to six more with Jacques Bertault:
| Child | Baptism Date | Marriage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marie Chauvin | 8 Sept 1650 | Age 14 (1664) | Our direct ancestral line; married Rollin Langlois, then Jean-Baptiste Denoyon |
| Jacques Bertault | 25 Nov 1654 | — | Died before the 1666 census |
| Marguerite Bertault | 21 Dec 1655 | Age 13 (1668) | Married Denis Véronneau |
| Suzanne Bertault | 18 Dec 1657 | Age 14 (1671) | Married Jean Hiesse |
| Élisabeth-Thérèse Bertault | 23 Jan 1659 | Age 12 (1671) | Married Julien Latouche; witnessed parents' execution |
| Jeanne Bertault | 29 Mar 1660 | Age 20+ (1680) | Married after parents' execution |
| Nicolas Bertault | 26 Feb 1662 | — | Key witness in murder trial at age 10 |
The pattern of marriage ages is striking: under Jacques Bertault's authority, Marie married at 14, Marguerite at 13, Suzanne at 14, and Élisabeth at just 12 years old. Only Jeanne, the youngest daughter who would marry after her parents' execution, waited until she was at least twenty. Was this because of the family's now-notorious reputation? Or because, with her father no longer alive to arrange marriages, she had the freedom to wait?
The Marriage That Changed Everything
On August 12, 1671, twelve-year-old Élisabeth Bertault married Julien de la Touche, called Latouche, a thirty-year-old former soldier. The marriage record at Immaculée-Conception in Trois-Rivières names him as "Julien de la Touche natif de la Rochelle"—a native of La Rochelle—and her as "Elizabeth Thérèse Bertault de la paroisse des 3 Rivières."
Latouche had arrived in New France in 1665 with the Grandfontaine company of the Carignan-Salières regiment. When the regiment was disbanded in 1668, he chose to stay as a colonist rather than return to France. To Jacques Bertault, he appeared to be a reasonable match for his daughter.
But Gillette opposed the union.
A Mother's Opposition
According to later testimony, Jacques Bertault arranged the marriage while Gillette was absent, helping a neighbor who had just given birth. Neither Gillette nor young Élisabeth wanted this union, but in seventeenth-century society, a father's authority prevailed. Élisabeth "did not wish to contradict her father, so she agreed to the union."
The marriage quickly became a nightmare. Latouche proved to be "a lazy, alcoholic, jealous, and mostly a violent man." He drank so heavily that he became physically unable to work, leaving his child bride to beg food from her parents. Worse, he beat Élisabeth "to the point that she bled."
Jacques and Gillette tried repeatedly to help their daughter escape this situation. All their efforts failed. In the eyes of Gillette, her daughter did not like Latouche and he was a very violent man. By May 1672, they were still trapped, watching their twelve-year-old endure beatings from a drunk thirty-one-year-old husband, powerless to protect her through legal means in a society where a husband's authority over his wife was nearly absolute.
May 1672: The Fatal Days
The neighbors heard the violence. Jean Gauthier, his son-in-law Louis Petit, and a man called Bourgainville later testified that Latouche's screams continued for more than an hour and a half. They heard him shouting: "Ah! My God, I am dead, you are killing me, you will be hanged!"
They heard Gillette's voice too, yelling repeatedly: "Kill him! Kill him!"
At some point, Gillette grabbed a hoe. She struck Latouche on the head. She struck him again. He fell. Jacques delivered multiple additional blows. With each stroke, more blood. Julien Latouche died in the barn.
The three carried his body to the Saint-Laurent and threw it in the river.
Investigation and Trial
May 18–19: Discovery
Gillette and Élisabeth fled into the woods. Latouche's friends—suspicious after what they had heard—began searching for him. When they examined the barn on May 19, they found blood everywhere, the bloodied hoe, bloody socks and other items, and human teeth. They alerted the authorities. Jacques Bertault was arrested and put in irons.
May 20: First Testimony
Louis de Godefroy, the fiscal attorney in Trois-Rivières, opened the preliminary investigation. The first witness was Nicolas Bertault, only ten years old, who described his parents' departure, his mother and sister's flight to the woods, and his father's arrest. Crucially, Nicolas revealed that he had heard his mother say she would kill Latouche, and that Élisabeth had expressed a wish for her husband's death.
Jacques Bertault initially claimed ignorance, explaining the blood as sturgeon blood from fishing. He refused to respond further.
May 21: Arrest and Confession
Gillette and Élisabeth were found in the woods and arrested. Under interrogation, Gillette revealed far more than her husband had. She described the beatings Latouche had inflicted on Élisabeth, the fight, Latouche biting her and pulling her hair, her striking him with the spade "with the intention of putting an end to the struggle," and the disposal of the body in the river. She showed the interrogators her bitten fingers as proof.
When confronted with his wife's testimony, Jacques Bertault admitted it was true. The case now moved to Québec City and the colony's highest court, the Conseil Souverain.
June 1–3: Québec Interrogations
Under questioning by Sieur Chartier, the three defendants told increasingly detailed—and sometimes contradictory—accounts. Élisabeth confirmed she had not loved Latouche and would rather have died in his place, but maintained she had not participated in the killing. Jacques, seeing himself denounced, attempted to place primary blame on Gillette, revealing the earlier poisoning attempt.
On June 3, Gillette gave her final, most complete confession. She admitted to preparing the poison, to striking the first blow and the second, and—most damningly—acknowledged that "they murdered Julien Latouche maliciously" and that "they had discussed getting rid of him because he mistreated their daughter and was a worthless person."
Verdict and Execution
June 8, 1672: The Verdict
The fiscal attorney recommended death for all three. The court—including MM. Juchereau, De la Ferté, Ruette Dauteuil, de Bermen, Duquet, de Rochebelle, and Simon Denis—showed no mercy to the parents but, in light of Élisabeth's youth (she was still only thirteen), spared her life.
The sentence was elaborate and brutal, designed to serve as public spectacle and warning:
Jacques Bertault would be led from prison to the parish church door, head bare, in his shirt to the waist, with a rope around his neck and a torch in hand, to beg forgiveness of God, the King, and justice. He would then be taken to a scaffold in the public square, laid on a Saint Andrew's cross, have his right arm broken with an iron bar, be strangled to death, then have his left arm and both thighs broken. His body would be displayed on a wheel at Cap-aux-Diamants.
Gillette Banne would perform the same penitential walk, then be hanged and strangled on the gallows.
Élisabeth would be forced to witness both executions with a rope around her neck, naked to the waist in a chemise.
June 9, 1672: Appeal and Execution
Jacques and Gillette appealed to the Conseil Souverain. The Council denied the appeal but modified certain details of the sentence, reducing the fine from 100 to 60 livres—half to go to the Récollet Fathers to pray for Latouche's soul, the remainder plus any confiscated property to go to Nicolas and Jeanne, the minor children of the condemned.
The sentence was delivered in the morning. At four o'clock that afternoon, in the public square of the upper town of Québec City, Jacques Bertault and Gillette Banne were executed as decreed. Their thirteen-year-old daughter watched, a rope around her neck, as required by the court.
Our Connection: Through the Daughter Who Survived
Gillette Banne's direct line to our family does not run through the tragic Élisabeth, but through her first daughter, Marie Chauvin, born in 1650 to Gillette and her first husband Marin Chauvin.
Marie married Rollin Langlois on November 25, 1664, at age fourteen. The marriage record at Trois-Rivières lists her as daughter of "Marini Chausin & Aegidia Banne," with Gillette (#6 on the witness list) noted as "v" for veuve (widow status from her first marriage).
After Langlois's death, Marie married our direct ancestor Jean-Baptiste Denoyon on July 30, 1665, at Trois-Rivières. At the time of her mother's execution in 1672, Marie was living in Boucherville with her husband and children. Whether she witnessed the execution, or even traveled to Québec City, we do not know.
What we do know is that the line continued through her. Marie lived until 1723, dying at Boucherville (Sainte-Famille) at approximately 73 years old—a long life by any standard, and particularly remarkable given the violence that had touched her family.
Direct Lineage: Gillette Banne to The Guilbault Line
Aftermath: The Survivors
Élisabeth Bertault, having witnessed her parents' execution at thirteen, was released. Barely a year later, on November 6, 1673, she remarried—this time to Noël Laurence, a 26-year-old former soldier of the Carignan-Salières regiment (La Fouille Company) who was himself a widower without children. They would have at least six children together, the first not born until November 1, 1676, when Élisabeth was seventeen.
One researcher notes with quiet hope: "I like to think that maybe Noël Laurence had compassion for her and what she had been through."
Nicolas Bertault, the ten-year-old whose testimony helped convict his parents, received the remaining family property along with Jeanne. What became of him, and how he carried the weight of his role in their conviction, the records do not say.
Interpretation: A Complex Legacy
How do we understand Gillette Banne across three and a half centuries? The bare facts are these: she attempted to poison, and then participated in beating to death, her daughter's husband. She was convicted of murder and executed. By any legal standard of her time or ours, she was guilty.
And yet.
"Just imagine Gillette's life, put on a ship at only 13 for the miserable crossing to New France, alone, married off as soon as she arrived, pregnant at 14, widowed at 15. Imagine her giving birth to these daughters and seeing her husband selling them off to be married as soon as he could, even to a man she saw for the human detritus he was. Imagine her rage when this deal is concluded behind her back, and the new son-in-law turns out every bit as awful as she had suspected, when she sees this feckless bully brutalise her young daughter. I too would have made special soup for this pig."
— From analysis of the caseThis does not excuse murder. It contextualizes it. Gillette Banne lived in a world where women and children had almost no legal protection from male violence, where a father could marry off a twelve-year-old over her mother's objections, where a husband could beat his wife with near-impunity. When the law offered no refuge, she made her own justice.
She paid with her life. So did Jacques. But Élisabeth survived—traumatized, certainly, but alive to remarry and bear children of her own. And Marie Chauvin, safely in Boucherville, carried the line forward through the centuries to us.
A Final Resting Place
Although Gillette Banne was executed for murder, her remains were later placed in the ossuary of the Cathedral Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec. In New France, condemned individuals who expressed repentance and were reconciled to the Church were granted Christian burial. The transfer of her remains reflects later cemetery reorganization rather than social honor, and indicates that she died reconciled to the Church.
Today, she rests among the founders of Québec—not as a celebrated figure, but as one of the many whose bones were gathered during centuries of cemetery consolidation. Whatever her crimes, the Church granted her this final mercy.
Document Gallery
Sources
Primary Sources — Vital Records
"Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621-1979," FamilySearch, Trois-Rivières, Immaculée Conception, Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1634-1749. Baptism of Marie Chauvin, September 8, 1650.
"Trois-Rivières (Québec: district judiciaire). Notariat, Notarial Records," Feb 2, 1651–Nov 11, 1694. Marriage contract of Jacques Bertaut and Gillette Banne, notary Séverin Ameau, July 27, 1653.
Baptism records for Jacques (1654), Marguerite (1655), Élisabeth (1659), Jeanne (1660), and Nicolas (1662) Bertault, Trois-Rivières, Immaculée-Conception.
Primary Sources — Legal Records
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Criminal trial of Jacques Bertault, Gillette Banne, Elisabeth Isabelle Bertault, 19 May–8 June 1672, pages 1-63. Microfilm No. 1846 (M3/2), Cote: TP1,S777,D110. ID 398771. https://advitam.banq.qc.ca/notice/398771
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Sentencing, 8 June 1672. Microfilm n° 0-6224 (M67/1), Cote: TL5,D98. ID 387001. https://advitam.banq.qc.ca/notice/387001
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Appeal and final judgment, 9 June 1672. Microfilm M9/1, Cote: TP1,S28,P760. ID 400638. https://advitam.banq.qc.ca/notice/400638
Database Sources
Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH-IGD), Université de Montréal. Individual #7116 (Marie Gillette Banne), #15679 (Marin Chauvin), Family #652, #782, Marriage Contract #94132, Marriage #89064.
Genealogy of French in North America (Denis Beauregard). Marin Banne & Isabeau Boire [#4281]: 1,750,000–2,170,000 descendants. Chauvin dit Lafortune & Gillette Banne [#4868]: 1,190,000–1,610,000 descendants.
Published Sources
Gagne, Peter J. The Filles à Marier, 1634–1662: Before the King's Daughters. Rhode Island: Quintin Publications, 2002.
Trudel, Marcel. Catalogue des Immigrants, 1632–1662. Cahiers du Québec Collection Histoire. Montreal: Editions Hurtubise HMH, 1983. Entry for Gillette Baune, age 18, arrival 1649.
Bérubé, Robert. "Nouvelle-France 1672: Gillette Banne a Murderous Mother-in-Law." Robert Bérubé Genealogy and Other Stories.
Tanguay, Cyprien. Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes. Volume 1. Montreal, 1871.
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