|
|
«On
November 13, 1685, was baptized at Rivière-des-Trois-Saumons, Élisabeth,
daughter of Pierre Micheaux(sic) inhabitant of the said place, and
Marie Ancelin, his wife, born on November 10. Godfather, Louis Bellanger(sic),
Godmother Marguerite Lefrançois». So wrote Father
Thomas Morel, missionary. It must be specified that Trois-Saumons
River irrigates the east part of the Seigneurie L'Islet-Saint-Jean and
is situated between Saint-Jean-Port-Joli and L'Islet.
Élisabeth
was the seventh child of the family, born after five brothers: Pierre
born in 1672, Jean-Baptiste, 1674, Joseph, 1678, Pierre
le cadet, 1681, Louis, 1684, and a sister Marie-Anne born
in 1676. Élisabeth
spent her childhood on the six arpents
of frontage piece of land conceded to her father in the Seigneurie de L'Islet-Saint-Jean.
But, when seven years old, she has to leave her native place and follow
her family down the River to settle in Kamouraska.
In Kamouraska,
not far from the twelve arpents land conceded to the ancestor Pierre, we
find a Pierre Levasseur, second neighbour to Pierre Micheau.
Born and baptized on January 8, 1679, in Saint-Joseph de Lauzon, Pierre
Levasseur is the grandson of Jean Levasseur dit Lavigne, first bailiff
of the Sovereign Council of New France. His father, Laurent Levasseur
and his mother, Marie Marchand, were married in Quebec City in 1670; Pierre
Levasseur, having left his native place Lauzon, to settle in
Kamouraska, is rightly seen as one of the first pioneers. Being a
settler, a farmer and a master carpenter, he will become a church warden
of his parish in 1716. On May 8, 1703, young Élisabeth,
at the age of seventeen and a half, becomes the wife of Pierre Levasseur
in Notre-Dame-de-Liesse church in Rivière-Ouelle (there was no resident
priest in Kamouraska yet).
Élisabeth
and Pierre will live on a land of five arpents of frontage on the
River, by thirty-two arpents in depth. At the time of the Tally of
Sworn Vassals and Census of 1723, Pierre et Élisabeth own «five
arpents of frontage by the said depth, charged a rent of thirty sols de
France by arpent and a quit-rent of one sol also by arpent of frontage,
the same owning a house, a barn, a stable, twelve arpents of arable land
and three arpents of grass-land on the shore». On March
11, 1726, Land-surveyor Noël Beaupré will still allot them
their five arpents.
Between 1704
and 1729, Pierre and Élisabeth will become the happy
parents of twelve children: Anne, Marie-Joseph, Geneviève,
Marie
(dead at the age of one), Pierre, Rose, Marguerite,
Joseph-Clément,
Marie-Claude,
Jean-Timothée,
Élisabeth,
and Louise. They all married in Kamouraska where Pierre and
Élisabeth lived. On October 26, 1738, Élisabeth witnesses
the death of her lifetime companion who was buried the following day in
Kamouraska Cemetary. Pierre Levasseur was 59 years and 10 months
old. Élisabeth survived to him for twenty-eight years and
was buried on July 29, 1766.
