Marie Catherine Charet / Charest

Biography

A diary entry dated January 2, 1858 records that, following Jude Bourassa’s death, Catherine had sent three sons and two daughters to the school at St. Mary's Mission, at present-day St. Marys in northeastern Kansas. Father John Duerinck recorded their arrival under her husband's name: “Widow Jude Bourassa.” He also noted that her brother-in-law had urged the decision. That brief entry catches Catherine at a consequential point in her own life: newly widowed, responsible for children, and making arrangements within a family network that extended into the mission.

The family’s provisional genealogy identifies Catherine as the daughter of Barthélemy Charest and Louise Amable Poissant. She married Jude on June 21, 1833. Their household became part of the Potawatomi community displaced westward, reaching what is now Kansas in 1840. Among their children was Eugene, also recorded as Ugane Bourassa. The family's movements placed Catherine's married life within the disruption of removal, followed by the work of establishing a home in a new place.

By 1854, the Bourassa home was associated with a mill and lodging for travelers. A visitor's account describes a household that included a piano played by their daughter Isabella. Such details make the home visible as more than a stopping place on a migration route: it accommodated family life, visitors and the activities surrounding the mill.

The school entry comes after that period of married household life. It identifies five children entering the mission school and the relative who encouraged Catherine to send them. Education at St. Mary's was embedded in a missionary effort to reshape Indigenous children's lives. Catherine's decision therefore took place within both practical family pressures and the larger power of the mission. The diary preserves the action and the family urging behind it, though not Catherine's own explanation.