Eat, Pray, Marry

Once again, many thanks to Yvon Sicotte.

As movies have taught us, marriage serves the exclusive purpose of validating romantic love.  If you're not out-of-control, head-over-heels stupid in love then you have no obligation to marry, stay married, or remain faithful, regardless of circumstances.  In contrast, our ancestors married and respected marriage for a bunch of dull reasons like Religion, Morality, and Survival. BOR-ING! So to those of you of modern sensibilities, the story of how the Cicotte family established itself may cause you anything from distaste to horror, but I think there's a human, even tender story to be told here, so bear with me.

By the 1660s, New France (Quebec) had a problem.  The French government had been trying to colonize the Great White North for over fifty years, and it wasn't taking.  They tried subsidizing fur-trapping by paying the passage for any man willing to go to Canada to trap and trade, but few men took their families to install permanently. Instead, mostly young single men would go, build up as much savings as they could during the three-year minimum obligation, then return to France to marry.  This meant that even though New France had a decent population to trap and trade, it lacked the permanent infrastructure to really get things banging.

In 1662 Jean Chicot seemed a notable exception to the stereo-type.  Neither married nor transient, the bachelor had been living in Ville-Marie (Montreal) since 1649, a full thirteen years.  Without a large, growing population, however, marriage prospects looked dim for the twenty-nine year-old.  Furthermore, at this point he had already had his scrape with the Iroquois (pun intended), and scalping means the victim is left with patchy hair on scarred tissue, as well as a cheeks and a brow that droop because the knife that cut off his scalp would have also cut the muscles and tendons in his head and face.

Meanwhile, in 1659 an orphan named Marguerite Maclin, under the charge of a nun named Marguerite Bourgeois, arrived by boat to the colony at the age of 12.  As an orphan her parents would not have been able to leaver her much as a future dowry, and whatever she did have may have been consumed as payment to those who took on the responsibility of providing for her.  Without a dowry she would have seemed less attractive to the fur-trapping transients than more legitimately established women back in France.  In 1662 she was fourteen or fifteen years old.

It seemed like a match made in heaven, or at least outside of frigid Canada. Now before we go labeling this as Phantom-of-the-Opera-style sex slavery, we ought to put this in historical perspective.  First, society considered people adults at a much younger age back then, so we cannot assume that the marriage was totally coercive simply because Marguerite was young. Second, though we can presume a certain degree of coercion (those listed as her "friends" in the marriage contract are the nun and several magistrates, people unlikely to be a fourteen year-old girl's B.F.F.), we have to remember women's universal second-class citizen status, to include women of every social status.  Third, the marriage contract generously provides that all goods are jointly owned, a provision proven legitimate in the land grant they received four years later in which every time Jean Chicot's name is given the words "and his wife" follow.  This indicates that if Jean Chicot were to die first (a likely prospect given their fifteen year age difference) then Marguerite Maclin would actually own property, a pretty unlikely prospect for an orphan girl.  On the surface it may look like everyone forced Marguerite into this marriage, but we have no reason to believe it was any more compulsory than other marriages of the time.

So Jean gains a companion, a young lady who cannot possibly appear less attractive than him, and hopefully the prospect of at least one child to carry on his name and avenge his death if necessary (at least that's why I'm having kids).  Marguerite gains a provider and the chance to avoid an orphan's two other prospects, poverty or the convent (which also comes with a vow of poverty).  With no further ado, their partly-consensual-if-not-romantic marriage contract:

Before Bénigne Basset, appointed to the clerkship and scrivenery of Villemarie for Messieurs the Associates for the conversion of the Savages of New France on the island of Montréal and witnesses here-after named and undersigned, were present in their persons 

Jean Chicot Habitant residing in said place, son of deceased Guillaume Chicot and Jeanne Fafart, of the island of Oléron region of Aunis parish of Dolus, diocese of la Rochelle, his mother and father, firstly 

and Marguerite Maclin, residing also in said place, in the girls' house of the Congregation, daughter of deceased Nicolas Maclin and of Suzanne  – left blank –  of de city of Sézanne-en-Brie parish of Notre-Dame, which parties in presence and of due consent of their friends for this assembly on either side, 

namely on the part of said Jean Chicot Guillaume Gendron, the said Pierre de Bonnefons surgeon also residing in said place and Mathurin Jousset called Lalouaire resident, 

and on the part of said Marguerite Maclin, messire Paul de Chomeday, knight Lord of Maisonneuve governor of said island, the lords Jaques Leber and Charles Lemoyne merchants in said place, and Sister Marguerite Bourgeois, miss Perrine Picoté de Belestre, miss Madeleine Mullois de Laborde, miss Catherine Gauchet, miss Marguerite Thavenet, miss Marie Moyen, 

recognizing and confessing having made and given the accords and promises of marriage that follow.

That is namely Jean Chicot having promised to take as his wife and legitimate spouse the said Marguerite Maclin as also said Marguerite Maclin having promised to take said Jean Chicot as her wife her husband and legitimate spouse and the marriage accomplished and solemnized before the apostolic and roman catholic Holy Church as soon as possible and it will be advised and deliberated between them and their said friends if God and our Holy Mother Church here consent and accord.  To be one and common in all goods and belongings, acquisitions and procured properties, in a few places where they may be installed, situated and seated, according to the custom of the provost and viscounty of Paris followed and kept in that country (i.e. Parisian common law).

Said future husband will take said future wife with all his rights, names, causes and actions. The said future wife will be endowed with the customary dowry according to said custom. To each other the said future spouses have given and give mutual and reciprocal donation of all goods of said union, in the event that there are no children procreated from their said future marriage, for these to be transacted and disposed of by the last survivor, according to said custom.  For thus has been accorded among the said parties and their said friends.  Promising etc. Each in accordance with his obligations etc, Renouncing etc, Accomplished and passed at said Villemarie in the house of the Congregation, the year g bj^c  (one thousand six hundred) sixty and two, the fourteenth day of October afternoon in the presence of lords Jean Gervaise and Jacques Lemoyne, witnesses to this requisite and undersigned, with the said friends of said future spouses, who have said and declared not knowing how to read nor write as has done the said Jousset of whom inquired following the ordonance.

Paul de Chomeday          Dupuy     
      Leber               C. Lemoyne                 Gendron
Bonnefons         Perrine Picoté de Belestre
Madeleine Mullois    Marguerite Bourgeois     Catherine Gauchet
Marie Moyen           Marguerite Thavenet

Marie-Anne Hardy                                          Basset

                                                                      Notaire

A few notes on the document: It seems that in Quebec you have to have your friends' approval to get married.  I'm sure each of us can think of at least one friend of ours this would have benefited. Apparently Marguerite did not know her mother's maiden name, a small reminder of the lonely life she must have led as an orphan.  The barred words "her wife" are an error found on the original document."g bj^c" is shorthand used by the notary.  All my notes are un-italicized.

Did Jean Chicot and Marguerite Maclin marry for love? Probably not.  Did they ever love each other? I don't know.  What I do know that we love whom we serve, but our modern society has a very selfish definition of love.  In contrast, Jean and Marguerite saved each other from more unpleasant lives merely by marrying each other.  Furthermore, the time and place where they lived required them to work a hell of a lot harder for each other (and their little boy, Jean Jr.) than certainly anyone I know.  I have to assume that if you spend your life helping someone merely to live, you probably love them at least a little, even if they look like a pug.

Now, if you're still skeptical I hate to disappoint, but by the following year Marguerite Bourgeois's penchant for marrying off orphans had totally become a THING.  In 1663 at the behest of Marguerite and the territorial governor of New France, Jean Talon, King Louis XIV began sponsoring the voyage of poor and orphaned girls between the ages of twelve and thirty to Quebec to solve the population problem, even providing them a state-sponsored dowry to make their marriage prospects better.  More than eight hundred Daughters of the King, as they were known, participated in the program and in the ten years of the program's existence New France's population tripled.

"Sure, that was then, but nobody would view that positively now." In 1982 Marguerite Bourgeois became Saint Marguerite, canonized by Jean Paul II and recognized by both the Roman Catholic church and the Anglican church in Quebec.

If i'ts any consolation to those of you who remain appalled, Marguerite Maclin survived Jean Chicot, remarried, and had several more children with a man nearly the same age as herself.  From and LDS standpoint, she's been sealed to both husbands, and I don't even know how that's supposed to work.  Maybe she'll get to choose and then we'll know whom she really loved.  Regardless, I wouldn't be here without Jean and Marguerite, and for that I love them both.

Update: A fourth reason to believe that Marguerite Maclin married consensually rather than forcibly: had she wanted, she probably could have joined the convent instead.  France had a hard enough time finding immigrants, let alone immigrants that wanted to live celibate lives and try to force the Irouquois to adopt French culture.  Orphans often joined convents to avoid abject poverty and starvation, in fact, it's part of the reason nuns ran orphanages in the first place, it's a recruiting tool.