The French Side: Marie Catherine Levesque
Introducing Some "French Connections."
On Links blog page The French Side, I introduced the main family branches comprising my French-Canadian heritage, including Despins and Levesques. Today I wish to remember a woman whose family (both on her father's and mother's side) had a nearly three-century long association with Quebec from the 1600s, until she left the province in the early 1900s to move 4,000 km westward with her husband and children to farm in Saint Paul, Alberta, Canada.
Her name was Marie Catherine Levesque, my great-great grandmother, and she was the last of the Levesques in my direct line before she married into the Despins family. Known as Catherine, she died 100 years ago from what is now a treatable disease.
Marie Catherine Levesque (1869-1924)
Catherine was born 25 November 1869, the oldest of twelve children, to parents Joseph Nazaire Levesque (1840-1892), a blacksmith, and Henriette Michaud (1847-1924).
An interesting side note, Henriette's youngest brother David Michaud (1856-1905), once held the title of Canada's strongest man, losing in March, 1886 to Louis Cyr in a high-profile match.
Descendant of Quebec's First Colonists (Les Premiers Colons de Québec)
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| Figure 1: Plaque Recognizing the First Colonists of Quebec |
Catherine's 7th great-grandparents Zacharie Cloutier and Xainte Dupont are on the plaque listing the names of many of the First Colonists, the earliest Quebec settlers (see Figure 1 at right). The plaque is located at the Louis Hébert Monument in Montmorency Park, Quebec City, Canada.
- Zacharie Cloutier/Cloustier (1590-1677) and Xainte (or Sainte) Dupont (1596-1680) arrived from France with their five children on 10 June 1634:
- Zacharie (1617-1708)
- Jean (1620-1690), Catherine's direct ancestor
- Anne (1626-1648)
- Charles (1629-1709)
- Louise (1632-1699).
- Zacharie (Sr.) is credited with founding Château-Richer, Quebec, located on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River north of Ile-d'Orleans.
- Pierre Desportes (?-?) and Françoise Langlois (?-?)
- Noël Morin (1609-1680) and Hélène Desportes (1620-1675) [daughter of Pierre Desportes and Françoise Langlois; daughter-in-law of Louis Hébert through her first marriage)
- Noël Langlois (1605-1684) and Françoise Grenier (Abt. 1604-1665)
- Jean Guyon (1592-1663) and Mathurin Robin (1592-1662)
- François Bélanger (1612-Bef. 1687) and Marie Guyon/Gagnon (1624-1696) [daughter of Jean Guyon and Mathurin Robin].
Descendant of Several Filles du Roi (King's Daughters)
Catherine was also descended from five (currently known) Filles du Roi. (Les Filles du Roi, or King's Daughters, were the more than 700 women sponsored between 1663 and 1673 by France's King Louis XIV to come to Quebec to marry and settle). Catherine's ancestry can be traced directly to these five pioneer women and their husbands (two on Catherine's father's side, three on her mother's side):
.jpg "Figure 2: Media - Les Filles du Roi") |
Figure 2: Media Used in My Ancestry.ca Tree to Identify King's Daughters |
- Marie Madeleine Normand (1646-1690) PRDH #53398
- arrived 1669
- married 1670 to Alphonse Morin dit Valcour, son of First Colonists Noël Morin and Hélène Desportes
- Louise Faure dite Planchet (Abt. 1642-1714) PRDH #27100
- arrived 1668
- married 1668 to Pierre Gagne dit Belleavance, son of early settlers Louis Gagne dit Belleavance (who had reportedly been captured and killed by Mohawk about 1661) and Marie Michel
- Anne Le Roy (1654-1719) PRDH #3625
- arrived 1670
- married 1670 to Nicolas Bouchard (d. 1683), Catherine's direct ancestor
- married 1685 to Claude Guimond
- Marie Campion (?-?) PRDH #16523
- arrived Abt. 1670
- married 1670 to Mathurin Dube (Sr.)
- Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier (1644-1716) PRDH #15812
- arrived Abt. 1671
- married 1671 to Guillaume Lecanteur dit Latour (d. Bef. 1679)
- married 1679 to Robert Levesque (d. 1699), Catherine's direct ancestor
- married 1701 to Jean Baptiste Deschamps
Family's Long Association with Kamouraska County, Quebec
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| Figure 3: Map of Quebec Showing the Location of Kamouraska County |
Possibly due to the new-found mobility arising from completion in 1879 of the North Shore Railway between Montreal and Quebec City, Catherine and some of her siblings began to leave Kamouraska, moving southwest to Montreal.
Married Life and Moving West
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| Figure 4: Map of Alberta Showing the Location of Saint Paul |
They lived in Saint Paul, raising their large family of 11 children (including my great-grandmother Marie Eugénie Adrienne Despins), until Catherine’s untimely death from a diabetic coma on 3 February 1924; she was 55 years old.
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| Figure 5: Saint Paul Roman Catholic Church |
Catherine is buried next to her husband (who appears never to have remarried, and who died 21 years later in 1945) in Saint Paul Roman Catholic Cemetery (see Figures 5 and 6 below).
(Note: Catherine’s gravestone lists 1871 as her birth year, but her baptism record identifies her birth year as 1869.)
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| Figure 6: Headstone of Catherine and Her Husband Napoleon Despins |
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