Étienne Vien and Marie Denot.

Moving the Family From France.

Marie Denot de la Martinière was born about 1606 in du bourg de Porcheresse d'Angoulesme, the daughter of Elie Denot of La Rochelle and Marguerite DeLafond. Marie and Étienne Vien were married in France about 1636.

Two daughters were born in France. The first, our ancestor Marie Vien, was baptized on 13 December 1637 in Saint-Pierre-de-Sales church. The church overlooks the oyster-rich Seudre River where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean near Marennes. The brackish waters in the basin lent themselves to salt harvesting, an important and highly regulated commodity used to preserve food.

A record for the birth of another daughter, Catherine, on 16 December 1640, was found in Péreuil, about 70 miles to the east. This does not necessarily indicate a move, they may have visited relatives as the child's godmother was Catherine Vien.

But the family did move. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean to be among the first settlers of Trois-Rivières, Canada. About 40 homes were established in the trading post between 1648-51. The Vien's journey occurred before the birth of another child named Catherine on 6 September 1648 in Canada, though she lived just a few short weeks. Marie-Magdeleine was born two years later on 20 January 1650. (Magdeleine, 13, would marry Mathurin Gouin on 20 December 1663)

Trois-Rivières.

Étienne Vien received a building concession in Trois-Rivières from Louis d'Ailleboust, dated 8 June 1650. The family lived at the corner of rue Saint-Pierre and rue Saint Jean, neighbors to our ancestors Jacques Bourgery and Marie Gendre and Jacques Ménard and Catherine Forestier. (View map of the village here.) After Québec, it was the second permanent settlement of the French in the colony.

The sparse records do not include the marriage of their daughter, our ancestor, Marie Vien. She was a young bride, perhaps 14, when she married Jean Lanctôt (also spelled as Lanqueteau) before June 1651. Their only child, our ancestor Françoise Lanctôt, was born about 1653. Nor do records exist which reveal the death date of Marie's father, Étienne Vien, who died prior to 26 January 1653 when his widow married Mathieu Labat dit Fontarabie.

Though Trois-Rivières was an important location for trade for both native Americans and the French, the stone fortification of the town hints at its need for protection from attack. Raids from members of the Five Nations to the south in order to expand their range into the Abenaki and Algonquin territory made the site dangerous. The French Governor organized a militia to protect the settlement but lost many of his men in August of 1652 - perhaps this was the fate of Étienne. Despite that loss the town was able to withstand the siège des Trois-Rivières in the summer of 1653.

Though the settlers prevailed in that round, the family suffered a tremendous blow the following year. The Jesuit Relations records state that on 23 November 1654 "Three Frenchmen were killed by the Iroquois... Jean Languedoc (Lanctôt), Louis Lebécheur and Mathieu Labat." Mother and daughter lost their husbands on the same day.

Remarriage.

Custom demanded that women (not men) remain in mourning for one year. But Canadian frontier families relied heavily on each member; the loss of one's spouse represented a major blow to the family's safety and well-being. It was not unexpected then that the rule for mourning was overlooked and the two women would quickly remarry. On 26 January 1655 a double wedding was held: Marie Denot de la Martiniére to Louis Ozanne dit La Fronde and her daughter Marie Vien to the carpenter Philippe Étienne who lived next door.

An inventory of the estate by the local notary Séverin Ameau was conducted that year on the 19th of May. The lot in the village of Trois-Rivieres measured "eighteen toises in one direction and twenty in the other" (about 115 feet by 128 feet). Their home was described as "an old crumbling house forty feet long and fifteen feet wide … adjoining on the surrounding staked plaza covered with straw … half-stone floor leading off where there is an oven and a boiling chimney with two small cabinets of which the partition is made of planks..." The property included a 30 x 20 foot barn, a 30 arpen land concession on the slopes of the river, and another 80 arpens at Cap de la Magdeleine. The furniture was divided equally.

A year or so into the marriage Marie Denot, then in her 50's, had a child, Anne, though the baby did not survive. Her third husband, Louis Ozanne, died in December 1661.

Her daughter Marie Vien, 27 and her husband Philippe, 35, declared they had four children in the 1666 census in Trois Rivières. Marie's son François Lanctôt, 12, was in the home as was her widowed mother Marie Denot, 60. Jacques Frevereu worked for the family.

The following year, 1667, Philippe, 40, claimed he had 18 arpents of land under cultivation and owned 8 animals. Marie, 28, was again pregnant. Her son François, 14, was present but there is no mention of her mother. Marie gave birth to a boy on 27 July 1667 but she did not survive for long after. Philippe remarried three months later on 03 Nov 1667 to Marie Gravois.