Marie-Marguerite Bessette

Biography

Marie-Marguerite Bessette’s married life belonged to the La Prairie region, across the St. Lawrence from Montréal in present-day Québec, Canada, where her family took root near the Rivière de la Tortue and the St. Lawrence. The Poissant family history locates the home she shared with Jacques Poissant dit Lasaline along that river frontage. Their children were born in the seigneury during the opening decades of the eighteenth century.

She was the daughter of Jean Bessette dit Brisetout and Anne Seigneur. Her birth is usually placed around 1681, though neither its exact date nor its location is firmly established in the consulted record summaries. Her marriage to Jacques had taken place before July 20, 1700. Later accounts suggest Chambly, but the precise wedding place remains uncertain.

Jacques died in 1734. Two years later their son Pierre married Marie-Angélique Giroux at La Prairie; the record summary names his father as deceased and identifies Marguerite as his mother.

A burial at Montréal’s Hôpital général on July 8, 1760 is attributed to Marguerite, although the identification remains uncertain. The reproduced entry describes a woman under the married-name form Dessaline, from La Prairie. Its reported age and a competing January 1763 death claim leave her final chronology unresolved.