Marguerite Rosée

Biography

Marguerite Rosée migrated with a family already shaped by both births and bereavement. She came from Jauzé, in the Sarthe area of western France, and married Pierre Gasnier around 1639. Two sons, Jean and Jacques, died before the family left France. In 1653 Marguerite and Pierre crossed to New France with Louis, Pierre and Nicolas. A daughter, also named Marguerite, was baptized in the colony that September.

The household first belonged to the Beaupré settlement, on the St. Lawrence’s north bank downstream from Québec city. Its circumstances changed abruptly when Pierre died in April 1656. The La Prairie historical society describes Marguerite travelling upstream by canoe to Montréal, in present-day Québec, Canada, with Pierre, Nicolas and Marguerite; Louis stayed in the Beaupré area with his uncle.

Her second marriage, to Guillaume Étienne in June 1657, established a new household. The family became associated with the Saint-Joseph area near Montréal. Marguerite’s son Pierre subsequently appears in the Montréal militia alongside his stepfather, a small but concrete indication of how the reconstituted family became embedded in the settlement.

Marguerite’s story is therefore more than an entry between two husbands in a genealogy. The sequence of records follows her from a French parish to Beaupré, through widowhood and the separation of an older son from the younger children, and into another marriage at Montréal. Her death date is uncertain.