Jeanne Tétard / Testard

Biography

Jeanne Testard married François Le Ber at Montréal, on the St. Lawrence River in present-day Québec, Canada, in December 1662. Originally from the region around Rouen in Normandy, northern France, she had crossed to New France before that marriage; her brothers Jacques and Charles were among the witnesses. François already had a daughter, Anne, from an earlier marriage. Their household grew to include children of Jeanne’s own, among them Joachim, Marie and François.

On September 21, 1668, according to the record-based account, Jeanne joined her husband in a sale that connected their family to one of Montréal’s enduring historic sites. They sold property at Pointe-Saint-Charles to the women of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame. It was a commercial transaction, not a charitable gift. The property became associated with the institution now remembered at Maison Saint-Gabriel, where the congregation maintained a farm and received women arriving in the colony.

The Le Ber family moved across the river to La Prairie. The 1681 census places Jeanne and François there with children still at home and six arpents under cultivation. Their daughter Marie had married that year, while younger children remained in the parents’ household.

François died in 1694. The 1698 inventory records Jeanne as his widow in an estate shared with descendants. She survived François by almost three decades. The transcription of her burial entry places the burial on January 18, 1723 and says she had died the previous day.