Our maternal ancestors: 5- Marie Fleury (1673-1752)
27 December 2017Marie Fleury married Jean-Baptiste Préaux on March 2nd, 1699 at Notre-Dame parish in Quebec City. She is the ancestor of a fifth Proulx line after Pierre & Marie Gauthier from Champlain, Jean & Jacquette Fournier from Montmagny, Jean & Catherine Pinel from Neuville and Jacques & Jeanne Pilon from Pointe-Claire.
Register of the baptisms of Sillery.
Les Préaux became mysteriously Proulx from the second generation and even during Marie’s lifetime. Probably a matter of pronunciation. She was indeed designated as Prou’s widow at her second marriage with Nicolas Beauher (now Boire; pronounce Bouaire as in the song!), on May 30th, 1712, in Charlesbourg. Several of her descendants chose the surname of Clément, from the first name of one of his sons, hence the Proulx dit Clément or vice versa.
Marie is Canadian since she was born in Sillery on May 12th, 1673, and baptized under this name[1].
The Jesuit mission in Sillery (early 18th century).
The Jesuits still recorded baptisms in Latin. Her name, Mariam, is clearly visible at the end of the third line. The Jesuits had established a mission As for there, built a fort and a mill in the first half of the 17th century.
Marie was the daughter of François Fleury and Marie-Jeanne Gilles, probably married in Quebec in 1670. Her father and mother were immigrants. At his wedding, François is said to be a resident of Côte St-Ange, northwest of Quebec City, but originally from the parish of St-Pierre and St-Paul de Rueil-Malmaison, a commune located between Paris and St-Germain-en-Laye near Nanterre.
The church of St-Pierre and St-Paul is the same one that François knew since its construction began in 1584. Antoine Ier, King of Portugal in exile, lays the foundation stone for the new church. The present façade was erected from 1632 to 1634 by order of the famous Cardinal Richelieu. He was the owner of the nearby château du Val. Josephine de Beauharnais, Napoleon Bonaparte’s first wife, is buried there.
As for Marie-Jeanne Gilles, Marie’s mother, was the daughter of Pierre Gilles and Anne Nicolas. She came to the parish of St-Nicolas des Champs in Paris. It is a beautiful Gothic church located on rue St-Martin not far from the centre of Pompidou and started around 1420.
Saint Louise de Marillac is one of the important historical personalities of this parish. This widow and mother of a son is the foundress of the Sisters of Charity associated with Saint Vincent de Paul.
The Fleury-Gilles couple settled in Sillery around 1670 but stayed in Neuville between 1681-1684. They had ten children, only six of whom survived. Marie is the second of the family.
Marie Fleury’s descendants
Marie and her husband Jean-Baptiste Préau settled in Charlesbourg in 1699. The Jesuits owned this very special seigneury there because of its star cutting.
The seigneury of Charlesbourg cut into stars as we still see it today.
From her marriage to Jean-Baptiste Préau, Catherine had five children, four boys and a daughter. Only three survived: Jean-François (1700), Clément (1703) and Marie (1707). François (1702) and Jacques (1710), died shortly after birth.
Marie lived barely 12 years with her husband Jean-Baptiste. He died on May 22nd, 1711, in Charlesbourg at the age of 60. The eldest, Jean-François, was only 11 years old and the youngest, Marie, 4 years old. It is impossible for a widow, as it is for a widower, to live alone.
The widow remarried in Charlesbourg one year later, on May 30th, 1712, with Jean Beauher. Born in Toussaint in Brittany, Jean is 48 years old and himself a widower. He is the father of four children about the same age as those of Marie. So here she is all of a sudden mother of seven children. The new couple will still have two children, including Henri, the only one who will survive!
But Marie became a widow again on December 31st, 1716, when Jean died at the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec City. She was then 43 years old. The children of both families are then between one and eighteen years old. It is not known how Catherine and her family survived then.
None of the children will live in the Quebec City area. Jean-François, the eldest, was the first to leave Charlesbourg, possibly with his mother. In 1729, at the age of 29, he married Suzanne Leduc, a girl of Lachine. All living children will migrate to the island of Montreal, especially in the west, and to Longueuil. Maybe she lives with Clément in Ste-Geneviève de Pierrefonds, surrounded by her 14 grandchildren still alive. It was there that she was buried on March 15th, 1752, at the very respectable age of 89.
Beyond these genealogical notes, the history of the Proulx-Fleury and Boire-Fleury family remains to be done. Notarial deeds may well reveal many more interesting things about this family. Who among his descendants, member or not, of our association is going to launch out?
Next and last post on the Proulx wives: Marguerite Brunet, wife of René, the last to arrive in this country.
[1] She appeared only twice, in the Charlesbourg register, under the first name of Catherine, at the baptism of her eldest son Jean-François in 1700 and Marie-Catherine in 1707.
