Destroismaisons

dit Picard

There was once a village in Picardy called "Trois Maisons" (three houses) near Bazinghem, not far from Boulogne; but it no longer exists. Several French-Canadian genealogists point to it as the probable home of this family (American descendants in the male line are now mostly named Picard). In the fifteenth century, minor nobles called Jehan and Bertaut des Troismaisons possessed fiefs in the area, but there is no proof of a relationship. A Jehanne des Troismaisons married Marc Hamerel about 1525, and a Jacques married Massette Coupelle about 1540. They had daughters Antoinette and Marguérite whose three marriages are also recorded.

Antoine Destroismaisons was born about 1570, of the right age to have been a nephew of the sisters mentioned above. About 1592 he married Jeanne, daughter of François Lacherer and Jeanne Leroy, and they apparently moved to the large town of Amiens, and then later to Montreuil, some 35 miles north of Amiens near the coast. There they lived in the parish of Nôtre Dame de Montreuil-sur-Mer (photo above). Seven children are recorded in these various towns: Claude (female, 1592-1650, married Pierre Senel; Sainte (married Adrien Patte); Adrien (see below); Jeanne (1603-1679, married Jacques Pollart); Magdeleine (1605); Nicolas (1607); and Antoine (1609-1678, married Nicole Senel).

Adrien Destroismaisons was born in the ancestral village, not in Amiens, on August 14, 1600, and died in Amiens on November 2, 1644. He was a master gunsmith, selling arquebuses and the like from a shop on the rue Pot d'Estain in Montreuil. He married Antoinette Le Roux, sometime before 1636 when their first son was born. Known children, born in Montreuil: Antoine (1636, died young?); Philippe (the immigrant ancestor; see below); Antoinette (1640); Pierre (1641); and Louis (c1644, married Louise Durocq).

Philippe Destroismaisons was born in Montreuil on October 15, 1637 and died in February 1713 in Rivière-du-Sud, Québec. He crossed the Atlantic sometime before 1666 (he appears in the census for that year) and apparently worked as a house or farm servant on the estate of Bertrand Chesnay de la Garenne, sieur de Lothainville. This area is part of the present-day Ste-Anne de Beaupré. He married Marie-Martine Cronier or Crosnier (a fille du roi) on November 18, 1669, in the church of L'Ange-Gardien. They later owned a farm across the St Lawrence at Rivière-du-Sud, where Philippe also worked as a shoemaker.

Children: Angélique (c1670-1744, second wife of our ancestor Alphonse Morin dit Valcourt; she married secondly Jean-François Langlois); Marie-Madeleine (1672-1757, married as his second wife Jean Rousseau); Françoise (1674-1715, married Charles Langelier); Marguérite (1675-1703, married Jean-Baptiste Malboeuf dit Beausoleil); Philippe (1677-1689); François (1678, married Marie-Françoise Daignault, half-sister of our ancestor François Daignault, 9 children); Louise (1680-1755, married Jacques Daignault, and then Joseph Morin, brother of our ancestor Pierre-Noël Morin ); Geneviève (1682-1711, married Robert Vaillancourt); Charles (1684-1750, married Marie-Madeleine Blanchet and then Marie-Madeleine Boulay, and then Anne Fontaine; many Picard descendants); Anne (1686-1721, married Michel Chartier); Jacques (1688-1756, married Marie-Madeleine Pelletier, sister of our ancestor Thérèse, who married the Pierre-Noël Morin mentioned above); and Agathe (1691, married Pierre Prou).

Jean Rousseau and Marie-Madeleine Destroismaisons had four children, including our ancestor Marie-Madeleine Rousseau Daignault.