Jeanne-Louise Lemire

Biography

Jeanne-Louise Lemire's baptism brought together an unusually well-documented circle of witnesses. Born and baptized at Québec city, on the St. Lawrence River in present-day Québec, Canada, on October 16, 1691, she was the daughter of Joseph Lemire and Jeanne-Françoise Normand. Her godfather was the baron de Lahontan; her godmother was her aunt Jeanne-Isabelle Lemire, whose husband, Pierre Glaumont, was also present. These names preserve a small but distinctive scene from the beginning of her life.

At eighteen, Jeanne-Louise married Jean Choret. Their contract was drawn up before Noël Duprac on March 2, 1710, and the church ceremony followed the next day at Notre-Dame in Québec. Jean already held land at Bonsecours, granted by his father two years earlier. Marriage joined her Québec family to a household taking root on the south shore.

Their children included Pierre-Antoine, Jean-Robert, and Marie-Françoise. The family also lost a little daughter, Marie-Angélique, in 1730. The children's entries trace a long period of motherhood, continuing well beyond the couple's first years together.

Jean's death in 1758 began Jeanne-Louise's widowhood. Her own burial took place at the community now called Louiseville, in the area near the north shore of the St. Lawrence’s broad Lake Saint-Pierre, on June 4, 1767, when she was seventy-five. The surviving chronology thus carries her from her baptism at Québec through married life with the Chorets and, finally, to a different parish farther upriver.