Marie Jeanne Oudin was born in 1643 in the parish of Saint-Merri in Paris, the daughter of Antoine Oudin and Madeleine de La Rusière.¹
She came to New France in 1657 and married François Gariépy at Québec on 13 August 1657.² Her arrival, marriage, and the baptism of her first child the following year place her among the filles à marier — women who immigrated to the colony before the beginning of the royal program in 1663 and married soon after their arrival.
Peter J. Gagné identifies her as a native of Saint-Merri and states that she likely arrived on 27 May 1657 aboard La Vierge. On 22 June 1657 she entered the Ursuline boarding school at Québec at the request of François Gariépy, who arranged lodging and a pension for her prior to their marriage. Their marriage contract was executed before the notary Audouart on 15 July 1657. Gagné also notes that François Gariépy was a master woodworker from Montfort-en-Chalosse in Gascony and that Marie Jeanne Oudin appears in the records of the Hôtel-Dieu of Québec in 1692 and 1710.³
The couple settled on the Côte-de-Beaupré, and the parish registers of Québec, Château-Richer, and L’Ange-Gardien record the baptisms of their children over a period of nearly thirty years:
- Marie-Ursule, baptized 8 July 1658 at Québec
- Marguerite, baptized 22 March 1659 at Château-Richer
- Charles, baptized 1661
- Louise, baptized and buried in 1664
- François, baptized 11 March 1665
- Jacques, baptized 26 March 1667
- Marie-Geneviève, baptized 13 July 1669
- Marie-Madeleine, baptized 1672
- Louis, baptized 19 November 1673
- Catherine, baptized 1677
- Jean, baptized 1679
- Alexis, baptized 23 April 1681
- Pierre, baptized 14 November 1685 at L’Ange-Gardien⁴
These records document the family’s presence in that section of the colony as settlement expanded along the St. Lawrence River during the seventeenth century.
François Gariépy died at Château-Richer on 25 April 1706.⁵ Marie Jeanne Oudin died on 29 March 1721 and was buried at Château-Richer.⁶
Her life in New France is traced through the parish registers from her marriage at Québec in 1657 to her burial on the Côte-de-Beaupré in 1721.
Sources
- Parish register of Saint-Merri, Paris, for the baptism of Marie Jeanne Oudin; parentage also given in Peter J. Gagné, Before the King’s Daughters: The Filles à marier, 1634–1662 (Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Quintin Publications, 2002), 239.
- Québec (Canada), Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), marriage of François Gariépy and Marie Jeanne Oudin, 13 Aug 1657.
- Gagné, Before the King’s Daughters, 239.
- Québec (Canada), Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), baptisms of the children of François Gariépy and Marie Jeanne Oudin, 1658–1685.
- Québec (Canada), Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), burial of François Gariépy, 25 Apr 1706, Château-Richer.
- Québec (Canada), Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), burial of Marie Jeanne Oudin, 29 Mar 1721, Château-Richer; see also Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes, s.v. “Gariépy.”