Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Episode 079-January 1, 2019

Just as we dissected baptism, marriage, and burial records in episodes 13, 22 and 27, today Suzanne Sommerville of the French-Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan will help us to dissect a French-Canadian marriage contract.
First, she will explain some of the terminology so we understand the different sections of the contract. Then she will actually translate a document for us. Look for the links below to the original document and the translation which you can download and print out if you choose. Finally, she’ll tell us where to find both indexes and original records.

Dissecting a French-Canadian Marriage Contract

In this episode, Suzanne Somerville helps us to understand what a marriage contract is and what it means.

Marriage contracts

Definition: a legal contract usually, but not exclusively, drawn up before the marriage. It was a time of celebration with many family members and friends present at the signing.

The coutume de Paris controlled property owned after marriage. It was even in effect after the Conquest up to about 1837 when there were modifications.

Terms

• in facie ecclesiae (Latin)/en face de l’église (French): in the presence of the church
• communauté de biens: commonly held marital property
• biens meubles: movables items such as household goods, tools, animals, and clothing
• conquets immeubles: immovables (usually real estate) acquired during the marriage or by donation
• acquets: real property acquired or received prior to marriage
• les biens conquets: immovables (usually real estate) acquired during the marriage or by donation
• séparation des biens: separation of marital property, usually if there was mishandling of funds by one or the other
• séparation de corps: a couple could separate, like a divorce, but could not remarry
• dot: Like the English dowry. It is a sum of money or possessions given to the bride for her choice of whether it would be entered into the community of biens or not.
• douaire: a specific sum of money or property; usually one-half of the dot. It can be the use of the common property for the lifetime of the widow or a specific amount of money set aside for the widow (like an Englishwoman’s dower rights).
• préciput: the right of either surviving spouse to a specific amount of money or possessions at the death of the other spouse and before any division of the estate or deduction of debts owed; usually one half of the douaire. The spouses reserved the right to keep their personal items such as linens, clothing, tools, firearms, and jewelry; and the wife got to keep her furnished bed.
• renonciation: the survivor could renounce the community property if it was in debt and therefore reclaim what the individual brought to the marriage
• donation entre vifs, mutuelle, égale, et réciproque: a donation among living people to each other; it was a gift from the survivor of all or part of the predeceasing spouse’s estate either in full property or the ability to use it. This protected a widow from eviction and destitution.

Construction of a marriage contract

• Begins with “the parties appearing before the notary to contract marriage, their ages, parents’ names, parishes of origin, current domiciles, professions, or occupations.” [Quotes in this section from Suzanne’s Powerpoint presentation at https://fchsmi.ens-10.com/upload/files/Create_Subfolders/Culture/Marriage_Contract_Custom_of__Paris.pdf]
• Followed by “the names of those in attendance to counsel the couple and witness the document and often an indication of their relationship to the future bride and groom.”
• “The future spouses promise to solemnize their marriage in facie ecclesiae (Latin)/en face de l’église (French): before witnesses and a representative of Holy Mother Church, Catholic, Roman and Apostolic, as soon as possible, which was French law at the time.”
• Next section: the extent to which the couple would observe the custom of Paris (there were variations).
• All who married under the custom of Paris married under the provision of communauté de biens. This did not include acquets inherited by the wife before or during the marriage.
• If either partner owed money when he/she entered the marriage, then that spouse was responsible for the debt after the marriage.

Process

1. A couple along with friends, family, and the notary would gather at either the notary’s or a friend’s house.
2. Details would have been worked out ahead of time. The notary would record the details and then read the document aloud.
3. Changes were made in the left hand margin. When you see a hash tag or (#) other symbol in the body of the document, look for that same symbol in the margin. There you will find any deletions, additions, or corrections.

Inheritance

Each child of a marriage, male or female, inherited equal shares of one-half of the marital community property at the death of a parent. If a child pre-deceased a parent, the share went to his or her children.

If children were under legal age (25 in New France), a tuteur, or guardian, was appointed to safeguard their interests until they reached the age of majority.

Contracts for remarriages often indicated that children from the previous marriage(s) would be brought up, fed, clothed, and educated at the expense of the new marital community. They retained their inheritance rights from the former community.

If a woman died before having children, her personal possessions and her dot reverted to any heirs in her birth family.

Wills and inventories were rare because everything was stipulated ahead of time in the marriage contract. Exceptions include single people or when providing for an illegitimate child.

Translation of a marriage contract

To get the most from this episode, you’re going to want to download the original marriage contract and Suzanne’s translation. Click on each image to download. Then pick up at 26:47 and follow along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding aids

• BAnQ-will provide copies of the contracts if you know the name of the groom, the bride, the date, and the name of the notary. (See Gail Dever’s post How to order a notary record from the Quebec Archives after finding it in an index on Ancestry.)
• Contrats de mariage de la région de Québec, 1761-1946
• Contrats de mariage de Charlevoix, 1737-1920, et du Haut-Saguenay, 1840-1911
• See the Finding Aids, Records, and Other Links sections in the show notes for episode #67 for more details.
• René Jette’s Dictionnaire-He often cites which notary produced a couple’s marriage contract (see episode #8, Jetté’s Dictionnaire)
• PRDH-provides some marriage contract summaries
• Ancestry’s Québec City Area, Marriage Contract Index, 1761-1940
• Try an Internet search.

French-Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan links

• Montréal Notaries 
• Québec Notaries
• Trois-Rivières Notaries
• Suzanne’s Powerpoint presentation given to the FCHSM on 12 May 2018: “The Marriage Contract in New France according to the Coutume de Paris / Custom of Paris: legal ownership of property in a marriage and inheritance rights.”
• Marriage Contract in New France according to La Coutume de Paris/The Custom of Paris, article by Suzanne Boivin Sommerville
• Contract of Marriage between J. B. Dupuy and Marguerite Roy – 19 May 1735, translated by Suzanne Boivin Sommerville
• Brief Bibliography for researching French-Canadian Housing and Furniture, by Diane Wolford Sheppard

Contacting Suzanne

• You can email Suzanne at s [dot] sommerville [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. Be sure to mention MSS episode 79 in your note.
• You can leave a message for Suzanne in the Maple Stars and Stripes Facebook group. However, her time is restricted over the next couple of months, so be patient!!

Please leave feedback if you use the downloads as well as the interview to attempt to translate your own documents. Were you successful? Tell us how you used the documents, what your level of French language experience is, and whether or not using this episode helped you to translate your contract. This will be helpful for a future project.

Announcements

Support

A huge thanks goes out to Margie from Washington who just made a second very generous donation to the podcast.

Hessian ancestry

Karen sent me an email: I believe that one of my ancestors married a Hessian soldier. It is very difficult to verify this due to a spelling change in documents. His last name was K-o-c-h; however, my ancestor’s last name became Scott. Can you point to any sources that might aid me in my search? Are you planning on covering this topic of Hessian Soldiers who settled in Canada? Love your podcast.

I suggested the American French Genealogical Society’s Hessian Marriages in Quebec. You’ll find it on their website at afgs.org. Scroll to the bottom of the page in the right side column. After checking that pdf, I suggested she check out the AFGS’s German collection, either in person or by hiring a researcher. Does anyone else have any suggestions? If you know anyone, an author, a speaker, a professor, someone who’s an expert on Hessians, especially those who might have married into our French-Canadian lines, please let me know and I’ll try to entice them on to the podcast.

Journal Rundown

I have no journal articles to report this month; however, I have updates to the first two segments. I received very positive feedback to this Journal Rundown segment. However, some people still expressed concern because they didn’t have a good way to access these articles.

First, I heard back from both the AFGS and FCHSM regarding their policies.

AFGS: We can reproduce articles. We charge 25 cents per page plus postage. However, all Je Me Souviens issues are online for members in a searchable format and books are for sale for $3.50 each plus shipping.

FCHSM: We stopped making copies of individual articles quite some time ago (in part, a lack of volunteers to process the request). All members of FCHSM can access entire journals from 2007 to the present on our FCHSM website for the price of membership, currently $30 a year in U.S.

There is also an index to articles in Michigan’s Habitant Heritage for the years 2005 through 2017.

PERSI

Another option is to search for articles on PERSI and then order a copy through the Allen County Public Library. PERSI (an index to genealogical society and historical society journals) is available at Find My Past. The index is free to search. You have to have a subscription to link directly to the scanned article.

Go to the Find My Past website. If you have a subscription to Find My Past, you can use the index and, in some cases, click a link to go directly to the article itself, which you can download. If you don’t have a subscription, or there is not yet a link to the article you want, you can send a request to the Allen County Public Library. They will, for a small fee, copy the article and send it to you. Pricing is on the form.

When you go to Find My Past to search the articles, there are two different search pages. On the first one, make sure you have clicked on PERiodical Source Index to the left. Then you can use the filters to get to an appropriate article. If you click on ‘Show filters’ after the Periodical category, that will take you to a list of journals in the collection.

Also check out the second search page. It has a few search parameters not found in the first one. But it all depends what you’re looking for. So check out both of them. Hopefully, you will now be able to get the articles you need.

French-Canadian News

The French Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan

January 12, 11 AM, at the Mount Clemens Public Library: The society will air the DVD, Canada, a People’s History: Battle for a Continent (1754 to 1775) after introducing the new Board of Directors.

The Minnesota Genealogical Society’s Canadian Interest Group

January 19, 10 am-1 pm: Join the group for their Canadian Morning at the William J. Hoffman Library Research Center in Mendota Heights.

Podcast Support

If you would like to join other very generous Maple Stars and Stripes listeners and support the podcast, you can send your donation to Sandra Goodwin, PO Box 124, Leicester, Massachusetts 01524. You can send a check or set up a small monthly payment through your online banking. You can also donate through Pay Pal (“maplestarsandstripes [at] gmail [dot] com”). Thank you for your support. It means the world!
[DISCLOSURE: This website may contain affiliate links. Maple Stars and Stripes will be compensated if you make a purchase through these links. There will be NO additional cost to you. Thanks for your support.]

Get Maple Stars and Stripes

Subscribe to the MSS Newsletter 
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts (iTunes)
Subscribe on Stitcher
Join our private Facebook group

How to Contact Maple Stars and Stripes

Post comments on Show Notes page (MapleStarsandStripes.com/#-of-episode) or at end of blog post
Go to https://MapleStarsandStripes.com/contact
Email me at feedback [at] maplestarsandstripes [dot] com
Send a voicemail by clicking on the ‘Send Voicemail’ link from any page at MapleStarsandStripes.com