Fréchette

or Frechet,

or Freschet

Like many other ancestors of ours, these came from the Île-de-Ré near La Rochelle. Étienne Freschet or Frechette married Marie Belin, probably about 1654, in the church of St-Martin there. (The church was attached to an abbey, now in ruins; see the photo above). Their son François Fréchette was born there in 1655. Étienne's brother was probably the Jacques Frichette who was the father of another immigrant, Jacques Frichet dit Desmoulins.

François Fréchette worked in La Rochelle as both an armorer and a carpenter before coming to Nouvelle-France in (perhaps) 1677. He first appears in the records at the age of 21, when he asked a notary to release him from a contract of marriage with the widow Catherine Méliot, who was 32 and had six childen - it would be interesting to know how this came about. In January 1680, he married (at Ste-Famille in the l'Île dOrléans) Anne Lereau (or Levreau, or L'Heros); she was fifteen. They settled on half of her father's farm at St-Nicolas. François earned additional income by repairing boats. He also went on a fur-trade expedition to Hudson's Bay, and used the profits to buy farmland from his brother-in-law. (For a short time during the expedition both men were captured and detained by English traders.) In 1690 the family was living in Québec city, where François worked as a carpenter. Anne died in July 1715, and François then married (1717) Suzanne Métayer, widow of Guillaume Dupont, but they had no children.

François and Anne had eleven or twelve children: François (1682-1765, see below); Étienne (1684-1749, married Marie-Anne Lavergne); Marie-Anne (married Simon Houde, brother of our ancestor Claude Houde); Pierre (1688); Simon (1691-1708); Joseph-François (1693), Geneviève (1696, married Jean-François Boucher); Jean-Baptiste (1698? married Marie-Ursule Rousseau); Marie-Élisabeth (1701, married Nicolas Bergeron, brother of our ancestor Marguérite Bergeron); Marie-Ursule (1703-1735, married René Rousseau); and Michel (1705-1715).

The younger François Fréchette married Marguérite Bergeron in May 1707 at St-Nicolas. They had thirteen children: François (1708-1749, married Marie-Charlotte Hamel); Marie-Geneviève (1709, married Joseph Lemay); Étienne (born and died 1711); Marie-Marguérite (1712, married Jean-Baptiste Filteau); another Étienne (1714, married Marie-Anne Dupère); Marie-Louise (1716, married Louis Perus); Charlotte-Marie (1718, married Pierre Rousseau); Joseph (1719, married Marie-Louise Marier); Jean-Baptiste (1721, married Marie-Madeleine Loignon); Pierre (1723, married Marie-Thècle Guyon); a stillborn daughter in 1725; Marie-Madeleine (1726, married Louis-Charles Dupère); and Louis (1730, married Marie-Geneviève Nadeau).

Marie-Marguérite and Jean-Baptiste Filteau were the grandparents of Marie-Agathe Darcy, grandmother of Louise Boucher Martin.