Francois Monet / Monette

Biography

François Monet's family contained several men whose repeated names can easily conceal their separate lives. He was the son of François Monet and Marie-Anne Dumas, born at La Prairie, across the St. Lawrence from Montréal in present-day Québec, Canada, on September 4, 1706 and baptized the next day. He later gave his own name to a son. The three generations belong to different chapters of the family's history.

His marriage to Élisabeth Dumontet on May 5, 1732 added another close connection between two households already related by marriage. François's brother Pierre had married Élisabeth's widowed mother two years earlier. When François and Élisabeth established their own family, their siblings and parents therefore occupied overlapping places in the same network of kin.

Their children's births stretch from Jean-Baptiste in 1733 to Joseph-Marie in 1759. Between them were daughters Marie-Anne, Catherine, Charlotte, Élisabeth, and Angélique, as well as the younger François. The span of those entries follows the couple through more than a quarter-century of family life.

François died at Saint-Philippe on June 8, 1762, aged fifty-five, and was buried the following day. The burial abstract names Jean-Baptiste Monet, Jean Monet, and Pierre Monet among those associated with the ceremony. Élisabeth remained a widow until her own death in 1767.