Sebastienne Veillon

Biography

Sébastienne Veillon’s life is unusually visible through records of a household that changed substantially over half a century. Originally from Verdille in France, she made a marriage contract with Mathieu Choret at La Rochelle, a port on France’s Atlantic coast, on February 26, 1647. Their church marriage followed on March 4. They subsequently settled in New France, where their family grew to include seven children.

Mathieu died in March 1664. In August of that year Sébastienne married Pierre Offroy, whose surname also appears as Aufroy. Later censuses place her children within the reconstituted household. By 1681 she was recorded at Petite-Auvergne, near Charlesbourg in what is now Québec city, with four sons: Pierre and Ignace, listed as twenty-five-year-old twins, Jean, and a younger Pierre. The household had eight cattle and twenty arpents under cultivation, a substantial body of agricultural work and property recorded under Sébastienne’s name.

Her role in the family’s affairs becomes especially clear in a notarial entry dated March 4, 1686. The published inventory describes a division of property made at her request and names children Pierre, Ignace, Jean and Jeanne, the wife of Jean Morisset. She was participating directly in the legal arrangements of the family she had helped establish.

Sébastienne was buried at Beauport, now part of Québec city, on December 21, 1698.

The burial listing places Sebastienne Veillon at Cimetière Nativité de Notre-Dame de Beauport, Québec, Capitale-Nationale Region, Québec, Canada.