MARIE-MADELEINE JARRET DE VERCHÈRES (more often called "Madeleine", and sometimes "Madelon") was born on March 3, 1678 at Verchères (Que.) and baptized April 17, 1678. She was the fourth of the 12 children.
• Her father's name was François Jarret de Verchères.
• Her mother's name was Marie Perrot.
Madeleine died in on August 8, 1747 and was buried at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade (Que.).
Madeleine’s father, François Jarret was originally from Saint-Chef (dept. of Isère), France. He was born around 1641 and was about 24 when he landed at Quebec in August of 1665 with the company commanded by his uncle, Antoine Pécaudy* de Contrecœur, in the Régiment de Carignan.
Once the Iroquois had been subdued he decided to settle in Canada, following his uncle’s example. On Sept. 17, 1669 he married a peasant girl of twelve and a half years of age, Marie Perrot, at Sainte-Famille, Île d’Orléans. He was 28 and she was 12 which seems ludicrous in this day and age but was much more common in the 1600s. Many women were married and mothers by the time they were fourteen.
Jarret himself was not “of noble birth” as has been said: in 1672 and 1674 Frontenac [Buade*] sought letters of nobility for him, without success, in recognition of his continuing services.
On October 29, 1672, his title as an ensign in the Carignan regiment and probably his uncle’s support brought him the grant of land on the south shore of the St Lawrence River. His land totaled at least 7627.93. The new seigneury (land grant), called Verchères, was enlarged in August of 1673 by two islands directly in front of it, the Île aux Prunes and the Île Longue, and in October 1678 – the year of Madeleine’s birth – another league (7627.93 acres) was added to the back of the original grant.
Although M. de Verchères campaigned occasionally, he did not neglect his seigneury. In 1681 he had 11 censitaires at least, and some 120 acres of land were under tillage. The seigneur himself had 20 acres, and, according to the census, 13 cattle and five muskets. The firearms – there were 15 in the seigneury – were necessary; the Iroquois were beginning to maraud again in the region, the most exposed in Canada because of the proximity of the Richelieu River (or “Rivière des Iroquois”) which this redoubtable enemy used to penetrate the colony. Verchères and the neighboring lands of Contrecœur and Saint-Ours were to be threatened still more in the terrible years to come for the Iroquois used them as short cuts to avoid the fort at Sorel.
Like many other seigneurs, M. de Verchères had a fort built for the protection of his family and censitaires: a rough, rectangular stockade 12 to 15 feet high, with a bastion at each corner. It had no moats, and a single gate, on the river side. Inside were the seigneur’s manor-house, a redoubt which served as guard-house and magazine, and probably some temporary building which could shelter the women, children, and animals in case of danger. One or two guns, probably just swivel guns intended to sound the alarm rather than repulse the enemy, completed this modest defensive system.
The years went by, and the seigneur’s children grew rapidly, at least those who survived. In 1692, when Madeleine was nearing 14 years of age, she had already lost her older brother Antoine, who had died in 1686; two brothers-in-law, both of whom had been married to Marie-Jeanne and had been killed by the Iroquois, one in 1687, the other in 1691; her brother François-Michel, also killed by the Iroquois in 1691 at 16 years of age. Six brothers and sisters came after her, their ages varying from 12 to two (two boys had not yet been born). A fine family, which seemed to attract the fury of the Iroquois.
One day in 1690 the alert had been close at the manor-house, and the little group had been in great danger. Knowing that it was almost defenseless, the Iroquois tried to scale the stockade; a few musket shots made them fall back at first. Mme de Verchères, who was 33 at that time, had only three or four men with her. She took command and repulsed the attackers several times. Did she sustain the attack in the fort, as Charlevoix maintains, or in a redoubt more than 50 paces outside the stockade, as La Potherie [Le Roy*] claims? It does not much matter. According to Madeleine the temporary fortificstion was within the walls of the fort: it would have served as a terrible sign and even a possible precedent if the Iroquois had breached the stockade. The siege lasted two days, and with the bearing of a veteran Mme de Verchères finally forced the enemy to retire. She had lost only one combatant, whose name was L’Espérance.
The same scene and the same peril were to be repeated two years later. Mme de Verchères would be absent this time, in Montreal, as was her husband, called to Quebec. It was Madeleine who in her 15th year would have to play the role her mother had played so well in 1690. Had she perhaps helped her at that time? Instinctively she assumed the same attitude and carried out the same actions, adding, it appears, a dash of boldness befitting her age if not her sex.
There are five accounts of the siege of 1692: two by Madeleine herself, two by La Potherie (in the same work, the second correcting in part the first), and one by Charlevoix. They were all composed after the event, Madeleine’s first one being the closest to it, although it was not made until 15 Oct. 1699; her second was not made before 1722; La Potherie’s and Charlevoix’s date respectively from about 1700 and 1721. The heroine’s original narration, contained in a letter to the Comtesse de Maurepas, was attested to by Intendant Champigny [Bochart*]. It agrees fairly well with those by La Potherie and Charlevoix, since Charlevoix had followed La Potherie and La Potherie, who knew Madeleine, had certainly seen her letter, if indeed he had not suggested it to her himself, dictating it to her word by word.
On 22 Oct. 1692 then, at eight o’clock in the morning, with only one soldier on duty at the fort of Verchères, some Iroquois, who had been hidden in the thickets nearby, suddenly seized some 20 settlers working in the fields. Madeleine, who was 400 paces from the stockade, was pursued and quickly overtaken by an Iroquois who seized her by the kerchief she was wearing around her neck; she loosened it and rushed into the fort, closing the gate behind her. Calling to arms and without stopping to listen to the cries of some women who were distressed at seeing their husbands carried off, she wrote, “I went up on the bastion where the sentry was . . . I then transformed myself, putting the soldier’s hat on my head, and with some small gestures tried to make it seem that there were many people, although there was only this soldier.” She fired a round from the gun against the attackers, which “fortunately had all the success I could hope for in warning the neighboring forts to be on their guard, lest the Iroquois do the same to them.”
After this very dangerous event, the palisade was thankfully still in tact. Life continued as usual in the seigneury. For the Jarrets de Verchères two more births in 1693 and 1695 came to complete the family. The father, a half-pay lieutenant since 1694, died on February 26, 1700. The pension of 150 livres he received as a former officer in the Régiment Carignan was then transferred to Madeleine in consideration of her exploit in 1692 and on condition that she provide for her mother’s needs. (Mme de Verchères was buried on her seigneury on Sept. 30, 1728.)
Madeleine, who had an “agreeable personality and an energetic air, but also the modesty of her sex,” and who was a “sensible” girl, had to put off her marriage until she was 28, probably to manage the seigneury and to keep her family from falling into “the deepest poverty.” Perhaps she spent her spare time hunting, since, according to La Potherie, there was “no Canadian or officer who was a better musket shot” than she. In September 1706, 28-year-old Madeleine married Pierre-Thomas Tarieu de La Pérade who was the son of a colonial administrator.
In the marriage contract Madeleine declared that she was bringing a dowry of 500 livres “accumulated through her savings and care.” The couple went to live on the north shore, at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, of which Pierre-Thomas was in part seigneur.
The marriage gave Madeleine noble status, and she moved to her husband’s family seigneury at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade. The couple had five children, two of whom survived to adulthood: Madeleine Marie (1707–76) and Charles François (1710–76). She became a noble which was a privileged social class. The Verchére seigneury was transfered into Pierre-Thomas' name as was the custom of the times. Because they lived at his family seigneury, Sainte-Anne-de-Pérade, it is probable that their main source of income was land. Wealthier nobles often owned large estates and ran them as businesses.
DEFINITIONS
seigneur: a man of rank or authority especially : the feudal lord of a manor. 2 : a member of the landed gentry of Canada.
censitaires: the habitants of the manor/seigneury/land grant of the seigneur. They paide dues and acknowledged that the seigneur was the most important person in the seigneury
Relationship of the seigneur and the censitaires
A seigneur was the man who ran a large piece of land called a seigneury. On this land, the seigneur was the boss. He gave out parcels of land to the peasants, who in New France were known as the habitants. On a seigneury (the land), these habitants were tenants called censitaires, and paid the seigneur dues called the cens. They also had to acknowledge the seigneur as the most important person of the seigneury.
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