13Engagé a La Rochelle 20 Avril 1644
“Not three months after Maisonneuve’s return, the settlement celebrated the first marriage since its founding. On the third day of November 1647, Françoise Fafard married Mathurin Meunier in the little chapel inside the fort. Françoise was the first of many women to come to Ville-Marie intending to marry and settle in the colony. Perhaps it was a decision made easier because her older brother Bertrand had come to New France ten years earlier, in 1637, and had established himself at Trois-Rivières.[ 102]”
— The Women of Ville-Marie: Pioneers of Seventeenth-Century Montréal by Susan McNelley
https://amzn.asia/cqrVE0q15
38Fille a Marier
13Mathurin Meunier et Françoise Fafard fut le premier mariage français célébré à Montréal“Not three months after Maisonneuve’s return, the settlement celebrated the first marriage since its founding. On the third day of November 1647, Françoise Fafard married Mathurin Meunier in the little chapel inside the fort. Françoise was the first of many women to come to Ville-Marie intending to marry and settle in the colony. Perhaps it was a decision made easier because her older brother Bertrand had come to New France ten years earlier, in 1637, and had established himself at Trois-Rivières.
A year after her marriage in the fall of 1647, Françoise Fafard gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter they named Barbe, on November 24, 1648. Sadly, this little girl died nine days later, and her parents laid her to rest in the little cemetery outside the fort. The following year, on December 3, 1649, Françoise gave birth to twin boys. Charles, one twin, lived eighteen days before he died and was buried on December 21, 1649. His brother Mathurin lived two months, dying on February 27, 1650. Having buried three children at Ville-Marie, Françoise and Mathurin decided this settlement was not the place for them. When their fourth child was born, they were living in Trois-Rivières. By 1653, the family was living in Québec.”
— The Women of Ville-Marie: Pioneers of Seventeenth-Century Montréal by Susan McNelley
15