Josephte-Angélique Lemaire

Biography

Josephte-Angélique Lemaire lived in the Great Lakes communities of Michilimackinac and Sault Ste. Marie. Katherine Piché-Nadeau’s scholarly reconstruction and Dominique Deslandres identify her as an Odawa woman. Her baptism at Michilimackinac on September 29, 1737 records her as about twenty, suggesting a birth around 1717. Her original Indigenous name, parents and birthplace remain unknown.

Michilimackinac stood on the mainland at present-day Mackinaw City, Michigan, beside the straits joining Lakes Michigan and Huron. Its French fort, mission and trading settlement developed alongside an established Odawa community. Josephte’s husband, Jean-Baptiste Dulignon, also called de Lignon or Lamirande, worked as a voyageur in the canoe-based fur trade. Their marriage is probably the one dated September 30, 1737 in the damaged marriage list and later reconstruction; the bride’s name is missing from that surviving list.

Children appear in de Lignon’s household before that date. Louis Josué was about two at his baptism on November 30, 1736, and Françoise Michelle about one at hers on September 29, 1737. Those early entries name their father; identifying Josephte as their mother also relies on the later family reconstruction.

Thérèse, later known as Marie-Thérèse Dulignon or Lamirande, was born on November 19, 1738 and baptized on July 14, 1739. Angélique followed on April 25, 1740, with baptism on May 19. Paul was born at Sault Ste. Marie on October 31, 1742 and baptized at Michilimackinac on July 17, 1743. An annotation records his death at the Sault the following autumn. Françoise Marianne was born on August 4, 1744 and baptized the next day.

On July 11, 1745 Josephte stood as godmother to Marie Charlotte, an adult Ojibwe woman described in the register as Sauteux. The other sponsor was Charles du Plessis de Morampont, commandant at Kaministiquia.

By June 1747 the family was living at Sault Ste. Marie, beside the rapids of the St. Marys River between Lakes Superior and Huron, along today’s Michigan–Ontario border. Josèphe Marguerite had been born there in early May. Her June 17 baptism at Michilimackinac names both parents and their residence at the Sault. These records connect the household with both communities, without documenting every family member’s journey. A scholarly reconstruction lists eight children, including another daughter, Marie Josèphe; some reconstructed names differ from the register’s forms.

Josephte died at Michilimackinac on September 4, 1748, aged about thirty-one. A later annotation to her baptism preserves that date. Her children were still young. Louis Josué married Élisabeth Lacroix at Saint-Michel, on the St. Lawrence’s south shore near Québec city, in November 1750; the record’s maternal name Angélique Fafard is correlated with Josephte by Piché-Nadeau. In 1756 her daughter Angélique was a free domestic servant in Montréal, under an agreement made by her father for service until age twenty-two. Marie-Thérèse married Joseph Laurent Bertrand at Notre-Dame in Montréal on August 31, 1762; that marriage index names her mother as Marie Josephte Lemaire.