2Fille du Roi, Arrivée en 16683

13Fils de Jacques et Guillemette Debien
(Ct 24-04 Basset) avec Mathurine Desbordes. Le mariage est annulé le 1/8/1663 à Montréal, cause que le dit BISSONNETTE avait une femme en France qui serait Marie Allaire

Pierre Bissonnette et Mathurine Desbordes se marient à Montréal en 1660. Un enfant plus tard, Pierre avoue à un ami qu’il a une épouse en France. Aussitôt accusé de bigamie par la Justice, il reconnaît sa faute tout en expliquant avoir quitté sa première épouse parce que c’était une sorcière… Son mariage avec Mathurine est annulé et Pierre est expulsé de Montréal. C’est donc à Québec qu’il contracta un troisième mariage en 1668 avec Marie Dallon, après le décès de son épouse française. Il termina sa vie à l’île d’Orléans en 1687.
Illustration : La famille Dallon-Bissonnette possédait, à l’île d’Orléans, une maison et une terre avec sept arpents en culture, deux bovins et un fusil (Femme avec des bovins de H. Walker, 1910, musée McCord).
Source: Facebook « Ma Voisine Dérange »

5On 20 December, Bissonnet, who had decided to settle at Ville-Marie, appeared at the home of notary Bénigne Basset to rent a mill from the Company of Montréal. It was situated on the Saint-Louis hill. (6). The lease was valid for twelve months. The rent was 400 livres each quarter, starting on the following 21 March "payable in silver, beaver or good genuine wheat and marketable at the current price and according to the currency of the town. " This valuable document was signed by three famous people: Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, Louis d'Ailleboust and Adam Daulac, better known under the pseudonym of Dollard des Ormeaux.


ONE MARRIAGE TOO MANY

Sixteen months later, Pierre found himself perfectly at home in his new environment. He had made many friends at Ville Marie, particularly one friend who pleased him a lot: Mathurine des Bordes, the widow of Pierre Guiberge. It is possible that the Guiberges and the Bissonnets left France the same year. Husband Pierre Guiberge, wife Mathurine and their two children seem to have departed, but only the mother and a daughter Jeanne (who married Pierre Cabassier in 1669) arrived on the banks of the Saint-Lawrence. (8)

Therefore, on 24 April 1660, Pierre Bissonnet brought Mathurine to the home of his friend, the notary Basset, to have him draw up a marriage contract. On 3 May in the parish church of Ville-Marie the promise became a reality. If she admitted to already having a husband, he took good care not to breathe a word to anyone about his first wife.

And life goes on. On 21 August 1661, he made another visit to the Basset home. Bissonnet, his wife and especially the child who was going to be born soon, needed food. The new contract mentioned the lease of enough land to pasture a cow. Rented from the boilermaker Gilles Lauzon, the site was situated quite near the mill. The agreement was valid for three years. Lauzon promised to build a lodging there for the tenant and his family, and he said that if they can not "reside there because of war in the land” (the Iroquois), then he, the landlord, will give them shelter in his own house.

Little Jacques was born on 28 August. Historian Séguin tells us that ”It was then that an event, at the least unforeseen, came to upset this home until now without clouds. (9) One day, new colonists came to "clear" the land, according to the slang in use at the time. One of them knew Bissonnet and was astonished to find him married, since he already had "a wife living in France Even that she was named Marie Allaire and that she lived at Poiré—sur-Vie,in the Vendée. This kind of news travels like a lighted powder train. Bissonnet was soon accused of bigamy. But the latter, continues the historian, had more than one trick up his sleeve. At the least, we will also see him try to justify himself by invoking an original reason. One time Bissonnet was in the house of his neighbor, the boilermaker Lauzon. Pressed with questions more than usual, he finally admitted that he already had a wife on the Old Continent, but immediately added that he could not "live" with her because she was a witch. As this expression did not increase his popularity, Bissonnet took off and left.

What happened then to the poor widow whose second husband disappeared in a less official way than the first? On 1 August 1663, she appealed to the pastor Gabriel Souart (10). The priest at once mace his own inquiry. Friend Lauzon had no choice; he must tell all that he knows. Pierre then ran away, ”or it was a criminal felony to be married twice". Pursuing his tale, the witness added that Bissonnet "was met by the boat of the Sieur Le Ber (11), in which he went to the Ile de Sainte—Thérese at Québec, from where he left by wooden canoe to go join their ship where, given entrance, he threw himself on his knees before the fire in the presence of the Sieur Lambert Closse, a major in the area (12), to whom he admitted that he had left his wife in France because she had the reputation of being a witch.

(13)

At the time when she denounced her second husband, Mathurine des Bordes kept her intentions very secret: she was already in love with another young man and she was ready to remarry. And this she did on 16 August by marrying Michel Bouvier, master mason originally from La Fleche, in Anjou. At the time of the wedding, the curate Souart recalled that the marriage of 1660 to Pierre Bissonnet had been declared nul by an order of the Bishop of Québec and that Mathurine had obtained permission to remarry whomever she pleased, ”which was done today at the verbal request presented to us on the first day of August one thousand six hundred sixty-three by the named Mathurine des Bordes, widow of the late Pierre Guiberge ". (14)

The widow, finally consoled, lived for thirty-five years more. Years undoubtedly calmer than the preceding ones. After bringing four other children into the Bouvier family (one daughter and three sons), Mathurine died peacefully and was buried on 23 October 1698. Michel survived her by almost five years; he was killed falling from a scaffold erected on the house being built for the Sieur de Senneville (15), on the upper part of the island of Montréal. This took place in early August 1703.

THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL TAKES OVER THE AFFAIR

If the bigamy of Pierre Bissonnet was known in 1661, at least according to the testimony of Lauzon, the affair simmered for three long years before being brought to the attention of the Sovereign Council of New France. On Wednesday, 3 September 1664 (16), the King's prosecutor declared that he had received from Montreal information according to which the miller Pierre Bissonnet was accused of being married in France and at Montreal at one and the same time.

Having knowledge of the said information signed by the clerk de Mouchy (17), the Council ordered "to take and apprehend the body of the said Bissonnet and to make him a prisoner at the royalprison of this town according to law".

If Pierre Bissonnet must face the rigors of the law, how did this bigamy affair end? The official reports of the Council are silent on this subject. What is certain is that the slippery path where the ancestor had ventured did not lead to an impasse. In any case, if he remained in jail, it was not for a very long time. It would not be surprising either if he had been quite simply fined.13

7 enfants. 7 Children. établient a Sainte-Famille, Ile d’Orleans

Décédé entre le 1 Avril 1692 et le 19 Avril 16943

Sans enfant. No children

Aucun enfant3