Françoise-Marthe Barton was baptized on 10 January 1651 in the parish of Saint-Michel at Poitiers in the old province of Poitou, the daughter of Jacques Barton and Renée Pestre.¹ Her mother died when she was still very young.¹
Her father belonged to the administrative elite of seventeenth-century France. He was described as a chevalier — a member of the minor nobility — and seigneur of Montaiguillon and Villenaux, meaning that he held feudal rights over landed estates. He also served as a conseiller ordinaire du roi, a royal councilor who sat in the king’s governing councils, and as an intendant in several provinces, the Crown’s chief administrative officer responsible for justice, finance, and policing.²
Despite this privileged background, Françoise-Marthe left France for Canada in 1670 as one of the filles du roi, the young women whose passage was financed by the Crown to encourage marriage and settlement in New France.³ After her arrival she stayed for a time at the Maison Saint-Gabriel in Montréal, where many of the king’s daughters were received and lodged while their marriages were arranged.³
On 7 October 1670 she married Joseph Chevalier at Notre-Dame de Montréal.⁴ Their marriage contract, drawn up the previous day sous seing privé (a private agreement rather than one passed before a notary), was prepared by the priest Gilles Perrot.³ Several other king’s daughters were present as witnesses.³ Neither bride nor groom signed the document.²
Joseph Chevalier, a maître menuisier (master carpenter), had been born about 1644 in the parish of Saint-Jacques at Dieppe in Normandy, the son of Jean Chevalier and Madeleine L’Heureux.³ He had been in Canada since about 1662 and later served as marguillier (churchwarden) of the parish in 1682.²
The parish registers of Notre-Dame de Montréal record the baptisms of the thirteen children born to the couple between 1671 and 1695:
Marie-Françoise (1671), Pierre (1674), Jean (1675), Jean-Baptiste (1677), Élisabeth (1679), Anne-Angélique (1682), Geneviève (1683), Barbe (1685), Paul (1687), Marguerite (1688), Madeleine (1690), Thérèse (1692), and Joseph (1695).⁴
Several of these children died young. Paul was buried on 7 June 1687, Pierre on 1 June 1694, and the younger Joseph on 1 January 1696.⁴
Françoise-Marthe died at Montréal on 13 August 1699 and was buried the same day.⁴ Her death occurred in a year marked by disease in the colony, and the immediate burial reflects the urgency that often accompanied such losses. Joseph Chevalier survived her by more than twenty years and died on 26 May 1721 at the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal.⁴
From her baptism in Poitiers to her burial at Montréal, the surviving records trace the life of a woman born into a family of rank in France who became in Canada the wife of a skilled artisan and the mother of a large colonial household.
Sources
- Poitiers (Vienne), paroisse Saint-Michel, registre des baptêmes, 10 janvier 1651, baptême de Françoise-Marthe Barton.
- Peter J. Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663–1673 (Pawtucket, R.I.: Quintin Publications, 2000), 73–74.
- Yves Landry, Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle (Montréal: Leméac, 1992), notice de Françoise-Marthe Barton.
- Québec, Registres paroissiaux (Collection Drouin), Notre-Dame de Montréal:
– mariage de Joseph Chevalier et Françoise-Marthe Barton, 7 octobre 1670;
– baptêmes des enfants Chevalier, 1671–1695;
– sépulture de Françoise-Marthe Barton, 13 août 1699;
– sépulture de Joseph Chevalier, 26 mai 1721. - Cyprien Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes, s.v. “Chevalier.”
- Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, entrée pour l’arrivée de Françoise-Marthe Barton, 1670.