Three Marriages, One Property
A single woman, named under four surnames across sixty-five years and three marriages, reconstructed through the integration of parish, notarial, judicial, seigneurial, and Crown-taxation records — yielding a documentary density rarely achieved for a non-elite woman of seventeenth-century New France.
The Challenge
Marie Crête appears in the parish register of Notre-Dame de Québec as the daughter of an habitant of Beauport in October 1657. Sixty-five years later she is buried under the same parish on November 10, 1722, with the priest's note that she was the wife of "the said Bellerose." Between those two acts, the documentary record names her successively as Marie Creste, Marie Pepin (wife of Robert), Marie Bridault (wife of Jean), and Marie Jourdain dit Bellerose (wife of Pierre). Four surnames. Three marriages. Three different marital communities of property under three different husbands. One woman.
The Documentary Surface
What the parish register alone yields is a life-frame without a person. Five sacraments (one baptism, three marriages, one burial), two royal censuses, and twelve baptismal sponsorships establish that Marie existed, married three times, and bore twelve children — but the register gives no account of the property that carried through her three marriages, no record of what she did during her two widowhoods, and no resolution of why one source reads her third husband's name as "Soudain" where six others read "Jourdain."
Reconstructing the person beyond the surface requires integrating documentary modes that early Canadian biographies rarely treat together — judicial filings of the Provost's Court of Quebec, notarial protocols of the colony's working notaries, seigneurial-survey records of the Greffes d'arpenteurs, and Crown-taxation receipts of the Domaines d'Occident.
Three Source Conflicts at the Outset
PRDH-IGD #61361: Grisy, eveché de Sées, Normandie. Fichier Origine #380055: Grisy (St-Brice), commune de Vendeuvre, Calvados. Two databases give two different identifications for the same man's natal parish.
Charpentier in the 1687 marriage register and the first four children's baptisms. Bourgeois in the 1698 baptism of Louise Catherine. A social-class transition is documented not by any single act but by the changing designations across eleven years of parish records.
The 1705 marriage contract (Notary Chambalon) has been read by some interpreters as "Soudain." The 1706 church register, the 1707 surveyor's partition signed by the husband himself, the 1712 lots-et-ventes receipt, the 1722 burial of Marie ("wife of the said Bellerose"), the 1723 remarriage of Pierre, and the 1738 burial of Pierre — all six read "Jourdain." A single conflicting reading against six in agreement.
Beyond these three, an additional set of secondary-source corrections required primary-source resolution: the "Josephte" middle name (unsupported, dropped), the spelling Creste/Crête (parish-register original / modern standardization), the Bridault wedding date (Lebel: 24 April 1687 / PRDH: 21 April 1687), the youngest Bridault daughter's name (parish register: Louise Catherine / PRDH normalization: Marie Louise), the Pepin sibling Jacques (Tanguay: son of Robert / verified: son of Antoine Pépin dit Lachance), among others. Eighteen specific source discrepancies were tracked across the research log; each required identification of the authoritative primary record and explicit resolution.
The Breakthrough
The methodological move at the heart of this reconstruction was to refuse the parish-register constraint. By integrating judicial filings (BAnQ Fonds Cour de la Prévôté de Québec, TL5 series), notarial protocols (Vachon, Genaple, Rageot, Chambalon), seigneurial surveys (Greffes d'arpenteurs, CA301), and Crown taxation records (Fonds Intendants, E1) with the parish corpus, Marie Crête's identity becomes reconstructible at a level of documentary density rarely achieved for a non-elite woman of the colonial period.
Three worked sub-cases demonstrate the methodology in practice.
Sub-case I · The Jourdain Proof
Confirmed The surname of Marie's third husband is Jourdain, not Soudain. The reading is established by preponderance of evidence and by the husband's own autographs.
Sources Consulted
- 1705 marriage contract (Chambalon, contested reading)
- 1706 marriage register (Notre-Dame de Québec, reads Jourdain)
- PRDH Marriage #67784 (Jourdain)
- PRDH Individual #37271 (Pierre Jourdain Bellerose)
- 1707 surveyor's partition (signed "Pierre Jourdain" by the husband)
- 1712 lots-et-ventes receipt (Jourdain throughout)
- 1722 burial register (Marie as wife of "the said Bellerose," dit-name attached to Jourdain)
- 1723 remarriage of Pierre (Neuville, Jourdain)
- 1738 burial of Pierre (Notre-Dame de Québec, Jourdain)
- Lebel and Laforest 1979 (secondary, Jourdain)
Conflict Resolution
One source — the 1705 contract — has been read as Soudain. Nine sources read Jourdain, including the husband's own signed autograph on two property records spanning five years. The preponderance reading is adopted; the contested contract reading is provisionally interpreted as a calligraphic error (the lowercase "J" in seventeenth-century French notarial hand can resemble a lowercase "S" when the initial stroke is unusually angular). Re-examination of the original Chambalon protocol via Parchemin remains the open item.
Sub-case II · The Widow's Docket
Confirmed Marie Crête appears in four BAnQ Provost's Court filings between December 1700 and May 1702 — three as named plaintiff, one as recipient of court order. The arc establishes her as an active civil-legal subject during her second widowhood.
The Four Filings
- 4 Dec 1700 — Summons of Henri Delaunay (her own brother-in-law) for 1200 livres tournois (TL5, D277-120)
- 14 Dec 1700 — Lieutenant General's order, three pages, dismissing parties with mutual prohibition against mistreatment and slander (TL5, D277-125)
- 27 Feb 1702 — Default judgment against Gilles Bourret of Bourg-Royal, granted by Provost Judge Lepailleur (TL5, D2788-1)
- 31 May 1702 — Final judgment for six livres and fifteen sols against Bourret (TL5, D2785-5)
The corpus integrates a documentary type — TL5-series Provost's Court filings — that is rarely brought into early Canadian biographical reconstructions. The sequence demonstrates Marie's willingness to sue close kin (her sister's husband), to pursue small-claim debts (six livres fifteen sols) through the full procedural sequence from default to substantive judgment, and to act consistently in her own legal name across two and a half years of court appearances.
Sub-case III · The Hôtel-Dieu Lot
Confirmed An urban Quebec property near the Hôtel-Dieu, on the Rue des Pauvres, traced as a continuous asset across all three of Marie's marital communities — and the cleanest single piece of evidence for the Jourdain reading via the husband's autograph.
Property Stages
- Acquired during the Pepin marriage (1670–1686); enters Pepin marital community
- 14 Aug 1686: Rageot inventory after Robert's death; lot notionally divided
- Marie's half carries into the Bridault marital community (1687–1699)
- Pepin children's half remains separately held
- 10 June 1705: Chambalon arbitration finalizes Pepin estate
- 15 June 1706: Pepin children's half sold to Sieur de Saint-Simon (50 livres each)
- Marie's half carries into the Jourdain marital community (1706–1722)
- 10 June 1707: Surveyor Hilaire Bernard de la Rivière partitions the lot; Pierre Jourdain signs "as husband of the said Crête" (BAnQ CA301, S56, P149)
- 24 Oct 1712: Jourdain & Crête pay 60 livres lots-et-ventes to Crown on additional Arnaud acquisition (BAnQ E1, S4, SS1, D224, P3)
The Result
The integration of the three worked sub-cases — the Jourdain proof, the litigation arc, and the property continuity — yields a coherent reconstruction of Marie Crête's identity across sixty-five years and three marriages. The nine-year-old child of the 1666 Beauport census, the thirteen-year-old bride of the 1670 parish register, the twenty-eight-year-old widow of the 1686 Pepin inventory, the forty-one-year-old widow of the 1699 Bridault hospital burial, the forty-three-year-old plaintiff of the 1700 Provost's Court docket, the forty-eight-year-old bride of the 1706 Jourdain marriage, the fifty-year-old joint owner of the 1707 partition, the fifty-four-year-old taxpayer of the 1712 receipt, and the sixty-five-year-old decedent of the 1722 Notre-Dame de Québec burial — all one woman.
The Documentary Reconstruction
Three Marriages, Documented
- 1670–1686: Robert Pepin, master slate-roofer of Vendeuvre, Calvados — six children
- 1687–1699: Jean Bridault, master carpenter of Montmorency, Paris — six children
- 1706–1722: Pierre Jourdain dit Bellerose, soldier of the Marine, Parisian — no children
Twelve Children, Documented
- Six Pepin (1675–1686): Jean, Robert, two François who died young, Marie Rose Rosalie, Louis
- Six Bridault (1688–1698): Marie Anne (descent line), Marie, Jean Hilaire, Jean Baptiste (died at three weeks), Marie Françoise Jeanne, Louise Catherine
Eighteen Source Discrepancies Resolved
- Robert Pepin's natal parish: Vendeuvre, Calvados (Fichier Origine), correcting PRDH "Sées, Normandie"
- Robert Pepin's birth year: ~1639 (Fichier Origine), correcting PRDH ~1643
- Robert Pepin's occupation at arrival: master slate-roofer (Fichier Origine), absent from PRDH
- Robert Pepin's death window: 13 Feb–11 Aug 1686 (Fichier Origine + Rageot 14 Aug 1686)
- The third husband's surname: Jourdain (preponderance), not Soudain
- Marie's middle name: no "Josephte" — unsupported, dropped
- Marie's surname spelling: Creste (original) / Crête (modern standardization)
- Youngest Bridault daughter: Louise Catherine (register), not Marie Louise (PRDH normalization)
- Jean Bridault's mid-marriage status: charpentier → bourgeois by 1698
- Jean Pepin's role: structural family witness across all three marriages
- The Pepin family count: six children (correcting Lebel's seven, via Tanguay error on Jacques 1674)
- Bridault wedding date: 21 April 1687 (PRDH) reconciled against Lebel's 24 April
- 1688 Marie Anne baptism: descent-line carrier identified
- 1694 Jean Baptiste Bridault: died at three weeks, only Bridault infant loss
- Pierre Jourdain's prior natural daughter: Marie Rose Rosalie Jourdain (b. 1701 Montreal)
- 1707 land partition: north-east half (Jourdain) / south-west half (Saint-Simon)
- 1712 Arnaud acquisition: separate from the Hôtel-Dieu lot
- 1722 mortality cluster: three Crête women (daughter, mother, sister) in seven weeks at the Hôtel-Dieu
The Documentary Corpus
Thirty primary-source documents, two database integrations, and one published secondary reference were integrated:
- 12 baptism register acts (Marie + 11 children)
- 3 marriage register acts (1670, 1687, 1706)
- 1 burial register act (1722)
- 2 marriage contracts (1669 Vachon, 1705 Chambalon)
- 1 posthumous inventory (1686 Rageot)
- 1 notarial arbitration (1705 Chambalon)
- 4 judicial filings (1700 ×2; 1702 ×2)
- 1 surveyor's partition (1707, with hand-drawn map)
- 1 lots-et-ventes receipt (1712)
- 2 royal censuses (1666, 1667)
- 1 Fichier Origine identification (Robert Pepin #380055)
- 1 PRDH-IGD database integration (multiple records)
- 1 secondary reference (Lebel/Laforest 1979)
The Apparatus Behind the Reconstruction
I. Source Hierarchy
Sources were ranked by proximity to the event and by the institutional reliability of the recording authority. The hierarchy applied throughout this reconstruction:
- Primary records, contemporary to the event: parish registers (baptism, marriage, burial), notarial protocols (marriage contracts, inventories, partitions), judicial filings (court summonses, orders, judgments), seigneurial surveys, Crown-taxation receipts, royal censuses.
- Primary records, indexed retrospectively: PRDH-IGD database records (transcribed from parish registers), Fichier Origine identifications (transcribed from French parish registers by FQSG researchers).
- Published secondary references: Lebel and Laforest, Our French-Canadian Ancestors, Volume 3, Chapter 22 (1979); Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique, Volumes 1 and 7. Treated as research aids, not as authoritative for conflicts with primary records.
Where database extracts conflict with the underlying parish register (as in the Louise Catherine / Marie Louise case, where the register is authoritative over PRDH's family-level normalization), the register prevails. Where two databases conflict with each other (as in the Robert Pepin origin case, where Fichier Origine reads Vendeuvre/Calvados while PRDH reads Sées/Normandie), the more carefully researched record prevails — in that instance, Fichier Origine, whose researchers had direct access to the Calvados departmental archive.
II. The GPS Five Criteria Applied
The Board for Certification of Genealogists' Genealogical Proof Standard was the analytical framework throughout. Each of the five criteria was applied to the major biographical assertions of this reconstruction:
Criterion 1 — Reasonably Exhaustive Search
For each major assertion, primary records were consulted across the parish, notarial, judicial, seigneurial, and Crown-taxation modes; database records were checked against the underlying primary sources; secondary references were checked against the primary records they cite. The Jourdain proof draws on ten distinct primary sources; the litigation arc draws on the full TL5 series for the 1700–1702 period; the property arc integrates the 1686 inventory, the 1705 arbitration, the 1707 partition, and the 1712 receipt.
Criterion 2 — Complete and Accurate Source Citations
All sources are cited by full archival reference: parish register (parish, date, page), notarial protocol (notary, date, where available), judicial filing (BAnQ fonds, series, dossier and piece number — e.g., TL5, D277-120), seigneurial survey (BAnQ Greffes d'arpenteurs, CA301, S56, P149), Crown-taxation record (BAnQ Fonds Intendants, E1, S4, SS1, D224, P3), royal census (LAC, Archives des Colonies, Série G1, Volume 460), and database record (PRDH-IGD or Fichier Origine with database identifier).
Criterion 3 — Skillful Analysis and Correlation
Identity continuity is established by correlation across record types: the Marie Crête who is named in the 1657 baptism register is the same woman who is named in the 1666 census, the 1669 marriage contract, the 1670 marriage register, the twelve children's baptisms (1675–1698), the 1700–1702 court filings, the 1705 marriage contract, the 1706 marriage register, the 1707 surveyor's partition, the 1712 receipt, and the 1722 burial register. Each record-to-record correlation rests on convergent identification (name, age, spouse, parish residence, naming patterns of children) and on absence of competing candidates in the same place at the same time.
Criterion 4 — Resolution of Conflicting Evidence
Where conflicts arose — the Pepin origin (Vendeuvre vs Sées), the Jourdain surname (vs Soudain), the youngest Bridault daughter's name (Louise Catherine vs Marie Louise), the date of the 1687 wedding (21 April vs 24 April), the Pepin sibling count (6 vs Tanguay's 7) — the conflict was identified explicitly, the conflicting sources catalogued, and the resolution justified by appeal to source hierarchy, preponderance of evidence, or convergence of multiple independent witnesses.
Criterion 5 — Soundly Reasoned Coherent Conclusion
The integrated identity reconstruction — Marie Crête, daughter of Jean Crête and Marguerite Gaulin, born at Beauport in October 1657, married three times to Robert Pepin (1670), Jean Bridault (1687), and Pierre Jourdain dit Bellerose (1706), mother of twelve children of whom eight reached adult marriage, plaintiff in four Provost's Court filings between 1700 and 1702, joint owner of an urban Quebec property near the Hôtel-Dieu across her three marital communities, and decedent at Notre-Dame de Québec on 9 November 1722 — is the conclusion that the documentary corpus supports without internal contradiction.
III. Defensible Language Framework
Following BCG standard practice, biographical assertions are stratified by evidentiary strength. The framework applied throughout the published biography and case study:
| Tier | Definition | Example from this case |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | Established by multiple primary sources in convergent agreement; no competing reading remains plausible. | Marie's three marriage dates; the twelve children's baptisms; the four 1700–1702 court filings. |
| Proven | Established by primary source with corroborating secondary support. | Robert Pepin's master-slater trade (Fichier Origine + Lebel chapter). |
| Suggestive | Implied by primary source but not directly established; a probable reading awaiting confirmation. | Robert Pepin's birth year ~1639 (Fichier Origine vs PRDH 1643, awaiting parish-register verification). |
| Exploring | Working interpretation pending further documentation; uncertainty acknowledged in published prose. | The 1705 contract reading of "Soudain" pending Parchemin verification of the original Chambalon protocol. |
IV. Discrepancy Resolution Summary
Eighteen specific source discrepancies were tracked across the working research log; fifteen have been resolved by primary-source examination; three remain in working status pending the next research session. The full discrepancy resolution table — including each conflict's identification, the sources catalogued on each side, the rule of resolution applied, and the citation supporting the final reading — is maintained in the chronological research log and will be made available on a companion methodology page (in development).
Three categories of discrepancy bear particular methodological note:
- Database vs. primary record: When PRDH's family-level normalization conflicts with the underlying parish register (e.g., Louise Catherine vs Marie Louise), the register prevails.
- Database vs. database: When two reference databases give different identifications (e.g., Fichier Origine's Vendeuvre/Calvados vs PRDH's Sées/Normandie for Robert Pepin's origin), the more carefully researched record prevails. Fichier Origine — built on direct examination of the French departmental archives by FQSG researchers — is preferred over PRDH's transcription from the immigrant's Quebec marriage record.
- Secondary vs. primary record: When Lebel and Laforest (1979) or Tanguay (Dictionnaire) attribute children, dates, or names that the primary record does not support (e.g., Tanguay's "Jacques Pepin 1674" attributed to Robert, who was actually the son of Antoine Pépin dit Lachance), the primary record prevails.
V. Open Research Items
Pending Verifications
- The 1705 marriage contract reading. Direct re-examination of the Chambalon protocol via Parchemin is recommended to confirm the Jourdain reading against the contested "Soudain" interpretation. The preponderance of evidence in the surrounding nine documents makes the Jourdain reading authoritative for present purposes, but contract-level autograph verification would close the residual uncertainty.
- The 1699 Bridault death inventory. Jean Bridault died at the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec on 7 June 1699. The marital-community inventory that should have followed has not yet been retrieved — likely in the protocol of Vachon's successor or in a parallel notarial protocol. This document would clarify the financial stakes of the 1700 Delaunay litigation.
- The 1686 Rageot inventory. The Lebel chapter cites this as drawn on 14 August 1686; the original protocol has not yet been retrieved from BAnQ. Retrieval would close the dating of Robert Pepin's death.
- Robert Pepin's burial register entry. Not yet located in the surviving Notre-Dame de Québec sepultures for 1686. Probable record loss; absence noted in the published biography.
- The 1707 Saint-Simon purchase of the Pepin children's half. The 1707 partition references a 1706 sale to Saint-Simon. The sale instrument itself has not been retrieved.
VI. Methodological Contribution
The principal methodological contribution of this reconstruction is the demonstration that integrating judicial, notarial, seigneurial, and Crown-taxation records with the parish corpus yields a documentary density rarely achieved for a non-elite woman of seventeenth-century New France. The Provost's Court of Quebec (TL5 series) is rarely brought into early Canadian biographical reconstructions, despite its availability at BAnQ; the seigneurial-survey records (Greffes d'arpenteurs) are similarly under-integrated. Marie Crête's documentary footprint demonstrates what these record types add when treated as full members of the source corpus rather than as supplemental annotations.
The Jourdain proof additionally demonstrates the value of the husband's autograph as a high-priority identification of his own name. In seventeenth-century New France, where many habitants — and the majority of women — could not write, the survival of a husband's signed signature on a property record is methodologically equivalent to a confirmation in the man's own hand. The 1707 partition and the 1712 receipt, both bearing Pierre Jourdain's autograph, are the cleanest single sources for the Jourdain reading and the most resistant to calligraphic misinterpretation by later interpreters.