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Marie-Anne
was born at l'Ile-aux-Grues on November 12, 1676 and was baptized the next
day. Jean Pelletier and his wife, Anne Langlois, who reside in the
island since 1675, are chosen to stand as godparents of the new-born child.
When the family made another move, the last one, to Kamouraska, Marie-Anne
was sixteen. Being the mother's right hand, she is thus getting ready
for her maternal role. She then makes Pierre Boucher's acquaintance;
he is a master mason and the son of Jean Galeran Boucher and Marie Leclerc.
They will be married on July 19, 1695, in Rivière-Ouelle church,
as there is no chapel in Kamouraska at the time. Pierre who was baptized
in Château-Richer on November 9, 1664, is now thirty years old.
Marie-Anne
is in her nineteenth year of age. No marriage contract has been uncovered.
After their
marriage, Marie-Anne and her husband settle in Rivière-Ouelle
and as early as 1709, Pierre Boucher sits as the first church-warden
of Kamouraska. The fact that the baptisms of her three last children
do not appear in the registers of Rivière-Ouelle indicates that
Marie-Anne
was likely come back among her relatives in Kamouraska where a parish
priest is now in residence. Unfortunately, records were burnt for
the period from 1709 to 1727. About 1716, sieur Philippe Peiré
hires Marie Anne's husband for purpoise fishing in Rivière-des-Caps.
Pierre Boucher with the help of his sons, installs the fishing
gears and during all summer hires other young people as helpers.
Pierre Boucher, now fifty-eight, transfers his two properties in
Rivière-Ouelle to his son Joseph, and from 1722, he permanently
settles down, with his sons Michel and Pierre, in Rivière-des-Caps
which is situated to the east of the seigneurie of Kamouraska. The
following year, he is granted a land at the chosen site : six arpents of
frontage by forty-two arpents deep. Soon Marie-Anne and her
five daughters join him. Pierre and Marie-Anne will
be the first and the original pioneers of Rivière-des-Caps, today
St. André-de-Kamouraska.
Pierre
and Marie-Anne had five daughters : Marie-Anne, Marie-Claire,
Marie-Charlotte,
Marie-Joseph,
Marguerite and four sons : Joseph, Pierre,
Guillaume
(who died in infancy) and Michel. Pierre Boucher
died on September 21, 1737 and was buried on the 23rd in Kamouraska cemetary;
he was seventy-three. His wife Marie-Anne survived him for
eighteen years; she died on June 12, 1755 and was about seventy-nine.
The 1750's
were disastrous for Marie-Anne's family. An outbreak of "picote"
(smallpox) took her son-in-law Pierre Roy, Marguerite Boucher's husband
in 1753 and also her son Pierre and Charles-François Marquis, her
daughter Marie Anne's husband in April 1754. Her grand-daughter,
Rosalie Boucher, was buried on May 29, 1755, at fourteen months of age.
Marie-Anne herself, widow of Pierre Boucher, died on June
15, 1755, in the middle of the outbreak. In 1756, five members of
the family are stricken with the disease; in March, her son Michel;
in September, her daughter Charlotte and her three grand-children : Geneviève
Deneau, eleven years old, her brother François-Germain who
was four and little Anne Boucher, three years old. In 1757, four
other members of Marie-Anne's family are stricken; in February, Geneviève
Hayot, her son Joseph's widow; Joseph; Marguerite Choret, her
son Michel's wife; her two grand-daughters : Geneviève Marquis,
twenty-one years old and her sister Marie-Anne, eighteen. Finally,
on March 22, 1759, Jacques Deneau, her daughter Charlotte's widowed husband
is buried. Fifteen members of Marie-Anne Michaud's family have passed
away within the course of nine years. In spite of these sad years,
Marie-Anne
Michaud and Pierre Boucher had numerous descendants, more than
sixty grand-children in all.
