Françoise Baiselat Bizelan

The Woman: Françoise Baiselat's Life in Context

To understand the inheritance crisis, we must first understand the woman at its center. Françoise Baiselat was born at Paris, in the parish of Saint-Sauveur, the daughter of Benjamin Baiselat, potier d'étain — a master pewterer — who also served as porte-verge, or bedeau, of that church, and of Claude Prou.

Three Paris acts carry her early life. Her parents' marriage contract of 11 June 1649 shows Benjamin as a widower of Paulette Quinsin, living in the rue Saint-Denis, marrying Claude Prou, daughter of the late Claude Prou and of Élisabeth Olivier, with a dowry of 500 livres, half of it as propre. Benjamin signed the contract; Claude Prou did not. The inventory taken after Benjamin's death, dated 10 February 1662, shows the family living in the rue et paroisse Saint-Sauveur and records that all his children were still minors — including the daughters of his first marriage.

The third act is the most personal. On 27 July 1664, Claude Prou — by then the authorised wife of Pierre Aubry, a mason of Paris, and living in the rue Neuve in the same parish — placed her daughter in service before the notary Louis Giron: "pour le profit faire de Françoise Baiselat, sa fille d'elle et dudit défunt, l'avoir baillée et mise ce jour d'hui en service et allouée durant le temps de trois années, avec Pierre Sellier, maître boutonnier, demeurant rue Montmartre, paroisse Saint-Eustache, absent et acceptant par Marguerite Fournier, sa femme." No payment is recorded. Françoise was about thirteen. The term would have run to the summer of 1667; she sailed the following year.

She arrived at Québec in the summer of 1668, about seventeen years old, as a Fille du Roi. What followed was a quarter century of marriage, childbearing, widowhood, and remarriage that would define her legacy — and create the inheritance crisis that engaged every level of colonial authority.

First Marriage — Laurent Cambin dit Larivière (August 16, 1668): Françoise married Laurent Cambin at Notre-Dame-de-Québec, six weeks after her arrival. He was thirty-two, a sergeant in the company of Sidrac Dugué de Boisbriand, of the Carignan-Salières Regiment, and had been baptized at the parish of Saint-Agricol in Avignon on 1 January 1636. Two days before the wedding, on 14 August 1668, the couple passed a marriage contract at Québec before the royal notary Jean Lecomte — an act examined in Phase 4 below, because its terms were still being litigated twenty-five years later. Their only child, Marie, was baptized on 13 June 1669 at Ville-Marie. Laurent was buried on 5 May 1670 at Notre-Dame-de-Montréal, the record giving his age as thirty-five, naming his company — "sergent de la compagnie de M. du Gué" — and noting that he had been taken from the hospital, "pris à l'Hôpital". By his baptism of January 1636 he was in fact thirty-four. Françoise was left a widow at about nineteen with an infant daughter.

Second Marriage — Pierre Marsan dit Lapierre (September 22, 1670): Four months after Laurent's death, Françoise married Pierre Marsan at Notre-Dame-de-Québec. He came from the parish of Saint-Nicolas in Rouen, and this was his first marriage; both his parents were already dead. The parish register of 1680 calls him "ancien sergent du régiment de Carignan", without naming a company, and the record of Marie Cambin’s marriage in July 1688 — at which both he and Françoise were present — gives his occupation as sergent; the Genealogy of the French in North America places him in the Chambly–La Motte company. Over the next twenty years Françoise and Pierre had ten children — the first two baptized at Notre-Dame-de-Montréal, the remaining eight at Pointe-aux-Trembles — of whom seven survived to adulthood. By the 1681 census the family farm comprised six arpents of cleared land and three head of cattle. Pierre died between 28 April 1691, when his youngest child was baptized, and 4 January 1693, when Françoise remarried as his widow.

Third Marriage — André Corbeil dit Tranchemontagne (January 4, 1693): Françoise married the twenty-six-year-old André Corbeil at Saint-Enfant-Jésus in Pointe-aux-Trembles. The marriage record notes that she was described as widow "in her third marriage" of Pierre Mercan. This marriage would last barely sixteen months.

The Guardianship Petition

Before any inheritance could be divided, the law required that guardians be formally appointed for the minor children. Antoine Galipeau — husband of Marie Cambin, Françoise's eldest daughter from her first marriage — initiated the process. His petition to the Lieutenant général de l'Isle de Montréal is a remarkable document, badly damaged by water and age but still legible in its essential details.

The petition identifies Galipeau as a "habitant de la paroisse de la Pointe-aux-Trembles en cette Isle, gendre de deffunte françoise Bistolay" — son-in-law of the late Françoise. He then recites the chain of three marriages: his wife Marie is the daughter of "deffunt Laurent Cambin dit La Rivière" (first husband), Françoise was widow of "deffunt Pierre Mersan dit La Pierre" (second husband), and third wife of "André Gourbeille dit Tranchemontagne, le dit Gourbeille."

Galipeau states the death occurred "sept ou huit jours" ago — seven or eight days — and that Françoise left "plusieurs enfants mineurs" who need guardianship "pour avoir leur biens" — to secure their property. He explicitly requests the appointment of "tuteur et subrogé tuteur" for the minor children.

Judge Juchereau granted the petition, ordering an assembly "pardevant nous en la chambre de l'audience aujourd'huy cinq heures" — at the audience chamber at five o'clock that very day. In the proceedings that followed, the assembled family and community members elected Gilles Marin as tuteur — Marin was married to Françoise Marsan, the eldest Marsan daughter — and designated André Corbeil as subrogé tuteur specifically for his infant son François. The document names the minor children: Antoinette, Jeanne, François, Jean Baptiste, Joseph Marsan, and François Gourbeille.

The signatures on the final page tell the story of who held authority in this community: Juchereau (judge), de Deschambault, Séguenot (curé), gillemarin (the new tuteur), and Adhémar (the notary who would oversee the subsequent transactions).

The Three-Family Transaction

With the guardianship formally established, the three families assembled before the royal notaries Bénigne Basset and Claude Maugue at Ville-Marie on 7 June 1694. The cover sheet — "Transaction entre les héritiers feu Cambin, Mersan et Françoise Bizelan," No. 2226 — announces the scope of what follows: not one inheritance but three, intertwined across twenty-six years of colonial life.

The act identifies the parties with care. André Gourbeil appears as widower of the late Françoise Bizelan, in his own name and holding power for François his infant son. Antoine Galipeau and Marie Cambin appear for the first marriage, in their own name and for their minor daughters. Gilles Marin appears for his wife Françoise Mersan, and Jean-Baptiste Dufresne acts for the five minor Marsan children — Antoinette, Jeanne, François, Jean and Joseph. All are assisted by Messire François Seguenot, priest of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice and curé of the parish, and by Antoine du Fresne.

They transacted, the act says, "pour éviter [et] prévenir les procès qui pourroient naistre dans leurs familles, à cause qu'il [y a des enfants] de ses trois mariages et de chacun d'iceux" — to avoid and forestall the lawsuits that might arise within their families, because there are children of her three marriages and of each of them.

The settlement. The transaction first confirms that the accord of 28 September 1693 shall have its full force, following the appraisal of the Cambin habitation made "par arbitres et gens à ce connaissance" at three hundred and fifty livres. The three hundred livres remaining was then divided in three equal portions among Jeanne, François, Jean and Joseph Mersan and the infant François Gourbeil, payable on New Year's Day of 1695, 1696 and 1697, "en argent monnoyé, ou bled froment bon, loyal et marchand, au prix commun des marchands habituez en ce lieu" — in coined money, or in good, lawful and merchantable wheat at the common price of the merchants established in this place.

Two provisions deserve notice. Gilles Marin, for his wife Françoise Mersan, renounced her share outright, declaring himself content with what he had received from the deceased when he married her in 1685 — direct evidence that Françoise had portioned her eldest Marsan daughter in her own lifetime. And the meadow at the prairie called d'Archambault, or Sainte-Anne, which Pierre Mersan and Françoise had acquired together, was ceded to the fabrique of the parish church in payment of her burial dues and funeral service, accepted by the Seigneur in the name of the churchwardens.

In consideration, André Gourbeil undertook all the debts of the succession and kept the habitation, its building and the community's moveables as his own, subject to the ceded meadow and to a mortgage retained by Galipeau, Marin and Dufresne over everything he owned. The act was to be homologated in the royal jurisdiction within eight days. Only three men signed — Seguenot, Gilles Marin and Nicolas Senet; the rest declared they could not write.

The Raudot Ordonnance: A Grown Child Challenges

Twelve years after his mother's death, François Marsan — now twenty-three and about to marry Marie Élisabeth Desroches — reopened the settlement. He demanded a fresh appraisal of the village lot granted to his mother on 4 March 1693, and a review of his share.

The case reached the highest colonial authority, and it took the Intendant three ordonnances to finish it. The last of the three, of 25 June 1706, recites the other two and lays out the financial history as he examined it.

31 May 1706 — the conditional order. The Intendant ruled that if the habitation André Corbeil had given Archambault in exchange — "laquelle avoit été cedée aud. andré Gourbil pour la somme de trois cens cinquante livres et à la charge de païer les dettes de la succession de françoise Bezelan et de deffunts Laurent Cambin et Pierre Mersan" — proved to be worth more than that three hundred and fifty livres together with the debts he had discharged, then Corbeil was to pay François Marsan whatever share fell to him.

9 June 1706 — the condemnation. The valuation came in above the figure, and the Intendant condemned Corbeil to pay the children of Françoise Bizelan one hundred and fifty livres — the amount by which the habitation was now estimated beyond the three hundred and fifty at which he had taken it on.

The land exchange. On 18 November 1698, in the house of Laurent Archambault in the bourg of Pointe-aux-Trembles, André Corbeil exchanged his habitation there with André Archambault for a property at Rivière-des-Prairies. The habitation he gave up is described in the act as "soixante arpents de terre" — three arpents of frontage by twenty deep — fronting the St Lawrence, bounded behind by Corbeil's own land and at one side by Pierre Jannot. The balancing payment was five hundred livres, and the act divides it: "savoir trois cents livres aux enfans mineurs deffunts" Pierre Marsan and Françoise Bizelan, in satisfaction of what Corbeil owed them under the transaction of 7 June 1694, "et le surplus de lad. somme de deux cents livres sera payée aud. Gourbeil" — with two minots of wheat besides. The children's three hundred was to be paid to them, not to him; the two hundred was the only part he saw.

Corbeil's defence. Corbeil came back with an accounting. Under the first ordonnance he was to be credited with the debts of the three successions he had already paid, and on top of those there were the forty-two livres he had paid the children "suivant l'acte du sept[ièm]e juin quatre vingt quatorze" — the transaction of 7 June 1694. Set against that, he had paid them more than the hundred and fifty already: on his reckoning the whole balance still owing to them came to thirty-four livres, one sol and six deniers. He asked to be discharged.

The ruling. The Intendant went through it — "tout veu, considéré, et toutes les pièces des parties bien examinées" — and found for Corbeil: "Nous Dechargeons led. Gourbil du paiement de lad. somme de cent cinquante livres portée par notre d. ordonnance dud. jour neuf de ce mois," the rest of the 9 June order to stand. It is dated "à Montreal ce vingt cinq juin mil sept cens six" and signed J. Raudot. Copies went out to both parties that same day.

The ordonnance survives in a notary's papers because Corbeil put it there. On 25 June he carried the Intendant's order to Antoine Adhémar's study at Ville-Marie and had it entered "au rang de mes minuttes" — lodged among the minutes, where it has stayed for three hundred and twenty years. Asked to sign the entry, he declared, as he always did, that he could not write.

François Marsan's challenge failed. The original settlement stood. Twelve years of colonial justice had run their course, and the man who began with nothing — an illiterate soldier of twenty-eight with no money — had met every obligation the system imposed.