Marie Charlotte Séguin dit Ladéroute
Marie Charlotte Séguin dit Ladéroute
She was five when her father died owing more than he left, eleven when the notary counted what remained of the household in a rented room on the Place Notre-Dame, and twenty when she married at a mission on the Lake of Two Mountains. She bore fourteen children there and buried six of them as infants. She outlived her husband by five years and died too suddenly for the last sacraments.
| Baptized | 6 March 1723, Sainte-Famille de Boucherville; born the day before |
| Parents | Jean-Baptiste Séguin dit Ladéroute (1688–1728) and Geneviève Barbot |
| Married | 27 January 1744, mission of L'Annonciation, Lake of Two Mountains (Oka), to Jean-Baptiste Larocque (1720–1791) |
| Children | Fourteen, 1744–1764 |
| Residences | Boucherville; Chambly; Montréal; the Lake of Two Mountains; Vaudreuil; the rivière du Nord, seigneurie d'Argenteuil |
| Died | 5 December 1796; buried 7 December 1796, Saint-Michel de Vaudreuil, as Louise Charlotte Seguin |
Charlotte
Charlotte was one of ten children of Jean-Baptiste Séguin dit Ladéroute and Geneviève Barbot. The priest gave her a single name. Marie is added to it in her marriage record; Louise at her burial.
The family worked other men's land. When her brother Joseph was baptized in November 1717 the curé described the parents as fermiers de M. Giasson, tenant farmers, and his godfather was their uncle Joseph Séguin dit Ladéroute. Her brother Jean was baptized in March 1722, the year before her, with Jean-Baptiste Cicot as godfather; a Cicot stood for Charlotte too. Her godparents could not sign their names, and neither could her parents.
What Her Father Left
By 1726 the family had moved to Chambly, where her youngest sister was baptized in June of that year. Jean-Baptiste Séguin died at Montréal on 13 May 1728 and was buried the next day at Notre-Dame. Charlotte was five.
Her mother remarried, to Philippe-Charles Rolland, a buttonmaker, and the family stayed in Montréal. On 8 March 1734 the notary Joseph-Charles Raimbault came to une chambre en une maison on the Place Notre-Dame to inventory what Jean-Baptiste had left, in the presence of his brother Simon, the children's subrogate guardian. Everything in the room was valued at 56 livres 10 sols. Seventeen debts came to 187 livres 10 sols. The first of them was 40 livres owed to the Sisters of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame for the rent of the house. One line of the inventory says only that Geneviève's own bed was left out of the valuation, with the guardian's consent.
Charlotte was eleven. The inventory lists a small child's bed, seven pewter plates, six pewter spoons and six straw chairs.
The Larocque House
Her brothers went west. Louis married Marie-Anne Raizenne at the mission of the Lake of Two Mountains in April 1736. She was a daughter of Ignace Raizenne and Élisabeth Nims, both taken captive as children in the Deerfield raid of 1704. Charlotte's brother Jean-Baptiste married Marie-Anne's sister Catherine.
In February 1739 her brother Pierre agreed to marry Marie-Joseph Mallet of the seigneurie of Vaudreuil. The contract was drawn up by the missionary priest of Sainte-Anne, at the west end of the island of Montréal, and deposited a month later with the notary Adhémar. It describes Pierre as de la paroisse de Villemarie — Montréal. His mother's name was written among the witnesses and struck out; she was not there. His brother Louis signed.
The bride's stepfather was Philibert Larocque. At the foot of the contract he bound himself to take the young couple into his own house:
Philibert Larocque was the brother of Louis Couillaud dit Larocquebrune, the miller of the upper island. Five years later Louis's son Jean-Baptiste married Charlotte.
Married at the Mission
The groom's family were habitants de cette paroisse; the bride came from Montréal. Charlotte was twenty, Jean-Baptiste twenty-three. The wedding is known only from a typed transcription of the mission register made for the Public Archives of Canada; the original volume for these years has not been located.
The same typed page shows how closely the families were bound. The day after the wedding the mission buried a month-old Jean-Baptiste Poirier, the son of the groom's sister Marie. In February it baptized a son of Charlotte's brother Jean-Baptiste and Catherine Raizenne, and in May a daughter of her brother Louis and Marie-Anne Raizenne.
Fourteen Children
Her children were born at the mission over twenty years. The twins Louis-Amable and Marie-Anne were born together in April 1748 and buried together two months later. Four more sons died within days or weeks of birth. Paul, born in May 1757, was buried two days later across the lake at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. From 1753 the family is described as habitants de Vaudreuil, and at Joseph's baptism in 1764 the surname is written Larocquebrune.
| Child | Baptism | Marriage | Death |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pierre | 19 Nov 1744 | ||
| Charles-Amable | 30 Jan 1746 | m. Vaudreuil 1778, Marie-Anne Zacharie | d. Rigaud 1824 |
| Jean-Baptiste | 9 Jan 1747 | m. Oka 1770, Marie-Josephe Brabant; 1793, Marguerite Georgeteau | d. Rigaud 1818 |
| Louis-Amable | 28 Apr 1748 | buried 28 Jun 1748 | |
| Marie-Anne | 28 Apr 1748 | buried 28 Jun 1748 | |
| Pierre-Amable | 2 Jun 1750 | buried 12 Jun 1750 | |
| Pierre-Paul | 29 Jun 1752 | buried 2 Jul 1752 | |
| Hyacinthe | 17 Oct 1753 | m. Vaudreuil 1779, Marguerite Denis dit St-Denis | d. Rigaud 1836 |
| Paul | 5 May 1757 | buried Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue 7 May 1757 | |
| Marie-Charles-Suzanne | 29 Sep 1759 | m. Oka 1788, Pierre-Louis Georgeteau dit Jolicoeur | d. Montréal 1827 |
| Louis | about 1760 | m. 1784, Marie-Madeleine Michel dit St-Michel | d. St-Benoît 1815 |
| Thomas | 22 Dec 1761 | m. Oka 1786, Marie-Josephe Georgeteau dit Jolicoeur | |
| Joseph | 17 Apr 1764 | m. before 1788, Marie-Josephe Georgeteau dit Jolicoeur | d. Rigaud 1815 |
PRDH-IGD family 23822 records fourteen children; the thirteen named here are those it lists with a date. Baptisms before 1786 are known from the typed transcription of the mission register.
North of the Lake
By the 1780s the family had moved north of the Lake of Two Mountains to the rivière du Nord, in the seigneurie of Argenteuil, which Pierre-Louis Panet had bought in 1781. When their son Thomas married in October 1786 the priest called his parents habitants du nord.
Three of Charlotte's sons married three daughters of their neighbours Louis Georgeteau dit Jolicoeur and Catherine Lemay: Thomas in 1786, Joseph before 1788, and the widowed Jean-Baptiste in 1793. Two of those daughters had been baptized with the same name, Marie-Josephe, which makes the two households hard to tell apart in the records. Her daughter Marie-Charles-Suzanne married a Georgeteau son in 1788.
Two Burials
Jean-Baptiste Larocque died on 5 November 1791 and was buried at Vaudreuil two days later, with the sacraments of the Church. The priest recorded him as seventy-five; he was seventy-one.
Charlotte survived him by five years. She died on 5 December 1796 and was buried at Vaudreuil on the 7th. She had time to confess, and nothing more: une mort trop subite l'ayant privée des autres — a death too sudden had deprived her of the other sacraments. The priest wrote her age as seventy-one. She was seventy-three. The witnesses were Louis Sauvé and Balthazard Belleville, the parish beadle, who witnessed other burials on the same page. None of her children is named.
The Researcher's Line of Descent
Charlotte is the third generation of the Séguin dit Ladéroute line in this series, and the daughter-in-law of Louis Couillaud dit Larocquebrune.
Case Study: Other Men's Farms → Louis Couillaud dit Larocquebrune → Three Brothers, Three Sisters →