Marie-Catherine Leriger de La Plante

Biography

Marie-Catherine Lériger’s name recurs in the baptismal register of Michilimackinac, in the Straits of Mackinac region of present-day Michigan. In July 1743 she stood as godmother to Pierre-Augustin, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen whom the priest recorded as enslaved by a man called Maugres. The entry names her as Bourassa’s wife and preserves her signature. It places her personally within the post’s religious community—and within a society in which enslavement was part of daily life.

Born and baptized at La Prairie, across the St. Lawrence from Montréal in present-day Québec, Canada, on November 25, 1702, Marie-Catherine was a daughter of Clément Lériger dit Laplante and Marie Roy. She married the widowed fur trader René Bourassa dit La Ronde there on September 28, 1721. This was René’s second marriage; five children are attributed to their union.

Her sponsorship was repeated. In July 1745 she was godmother to Marie-Athanase, an enslaved young woman belonging to Charles Hamelin. Other entries connect her with the children of families working and travelling through the Great Lakes. Her signatures continue into the 1750s, establishing a longer presence than family trees that end her life in 1748 allow.

In August 1754, her daughter Charlotte-Ambroisine married Charles de Langlade. The marriage contract names both René Bourassa and Madame Lérigé Laplante among the bride’s consenting relatives.

The specialist genealogy records Marie-Catherine’s death at Montréal on August 30, 1770 and burial the next day. René’s older son, born in 1718, was a child of his first marriage to Agnès Gagné.