Genevieve Cauchon dit Lamothe (1682-1754)

           ​Genevieve Cauchon dit-Lamothe was born in Château-Richer, Isle d’Orleans, Québec August 17, 1682. Her parents Joseph and Barbe-Delphine (Tardif) both immigrated from France, he from Dieppe, specifically. Jacques’ wives were from large families, but unlike the previous two, Genevieve was several years older than Jacques.

           ​The couple were married in St-Antoine-de-Tilly, Lotbinière, the 25th of August 1732, when she was fifty and he forty-six.

           ​Genevieve’s previous marriage to Joseph Huot had created a family of ten children, seven boys and three girls, between 1708 and 1727. Joseph died in 1727, leaving Genevieve with six children still at home. The eldest son married Jacques Côté and Madeleine Rondeau’s eldest daughter in 1731, one year before she and Jacques married. This would show families links. Another of her sons married Marie-Charlotte, (Jacques and Marie-Thérese Lambert’s) second youngest daughter in 1739, creating a further liaison between the families.

I noticed that Genevieve’s first two children were born in St-Nicholas, Levis, as were Jacques’ first four. All these children were born between the years 1708 and 1711, leading me to believe that St-Nicholas was a new destination in the pioneer voyage while searching for new homesteads. Both families, all originally from Ile d’Orleans, migrated to Saint-Nicolas before eventually settling in St-Antoine-de-Tilly, Lotbiniere (Buckinghamshire County until after 1825). The 1794-1795 Gale and Duberger map of southern Québec shows three counties south of the St. Lawrence and west of the Richelieu: Huntingdon, Kent and Surrey; and five east of the Richelieu: Bedford, Richelieu, Buckinghamshire, Dorchester and Hertford. Charles, P. de Volpi and P.H. Scowan, The Eastern Townships A Pictorial Record (Montréal: Dev-Sco Pub. 1962) Endpapers.

           ​Genevieve’s first marriage to Joseph Huot produced a family of ten children. Widowed May 6 1727 according to the death registration, Joseph died after a lengthy illness. A great number from the parish attended the ceremony, showing the positive family status in the community. The oldest boy, Joseph, was nineteen, and Catherine-Genevieve, the youngest just five months of age. 

           ​When Jacques and Genevieve married, Jacques still had seven of his eleven children with him. The house would have been overflowing by combining the two family broods.

           ​When Jacques died, several of his children would have still been too young to care for themselves. This would have meant that unless he sent them to other relatives, it would have been Genevieve’s responsibility to raise the youngest five of his children ages five to fifteen and her own children from her first marriage to Joseph Huot.​ She was indeed a courageous woman.

           ​​September 9, 1754,​ Genevieve died at age seventy-two in the village of St-Antoine-de-Tilly. She outlived Jacques by twenty years.