Anne LeLaboureur

Biography

Nine children were listed with Anne LeLaboureur and Jean Normand in the 1681 census. The eldest at home was twenty; the youngest was seven. The household at Petite-Auvergne, near Charlesbourg in what is now Québec city, also had twelve cattle and twenty-five arpents under cultivation. Anne was recorded as fifty-two, after a quarter-century of marriage.

She had come from Caen in Normandy, in northern France, a daughter of Thomas LeLaboureur and Marguerite Bardin. In July 1656 she and Jean made their marriage contract before Guillaume Audouart. Their wedding followed at Notre-Dame de Québec on July 18. Jean, a carpenter from the Perche, was nineteen; Anne was approximately seven years older.

Their first years together included two infant deaths. A daughter Marie, born in July 1657, was buried within days. Another daughter, Anne, died in infancy in 1660. A second Marie survived, followed by sons and daughters whose baptisms continued into the 1670s.

The censuses catch the family at different stages. In 1666, five children were counted with the couple in the Notre-Dame-des-Anges area, from eight-year-old Marie to the infant Jacques-François. Fifteen years later, younger children including Jeanne-Françoise, Geneviève and Louis had joined the household, while the oldest daughter had married Pierre Lambert.

Anne was buried at Notre-Dame de Québec on December 11, 1700. Her marriage had lasted more than forty-four years. Jean survived her, remarried in 1703 and was buried in 1706.