Marie Rollet
Statue of Marie Rollet at Parc Montmorency, Quebec City, Canada
Born
Saint-Sulpice, Paris
Died1649 (1650)
Quebec City
NationalityFrench
Other names
  • Marie Dufeu
  • Marie Hébert
  • Marie Hubou
Occupationpioneer
Known forOne of the first French settlers in Quebec

Marie Rollet was a French woman and early settler in Quebec. Her second husband, Louis Hébert, was apothecary to Samuel Champlain's expeditions to Acadia and Quebec on 1606 and 1610–13. When she and her three surviving children traveled with her husband to Quebec in 1617,[1] she became the first European woman to settle in Quebec. Her eldest daughter Anne's marriage to Étienne Jonquet in 1618 was the first recorded in Quebec. While Anne died in childbirth in 1619, she left many descendants through her other two children.

According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Hébert routinely provided medical treatment to First Nations peoples, and the entire family had friendly ties with First Nations people.[2][3][4]

Her husband Louis Hebert died in 1627, and she remarried in 1629.

Quebec was captured and occupied by British privateers in 1627, during the Anglo-French War of (1627–1629). Although the English returned many of the settlers to France, Rollet and her family, remained.[4]

David Kirke, the leader of the English occupiers, had brought a seven year old enslaved boy from Madagascar.[2] Kirke sold the boy to Olivier Letardif. This was the first recorded sale of an African slave in Quebec. Letardif, in turn, gave the boy to Rollet's daughter Guillemette Couillard. Rollet and Couillard arranged for the child to have some religious and practical education, and he was baptized Olivier Le Jeune, in 1633.

According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography after the end of British occupation, in 1632, "her house became the home of indigenous girls given to the Jesuits for training."[4]

References

  1. ^ http://www.biographi.ca/fr/bio/rollet_marie_1E.html "En 1617, avec son mari, Louis Hébert, et ses trois enfants, elle arriva de Paris à Québec, pour y trouver la famine, la maladie et les conflits avec des Amérindiens."
  2. ^ a b Marcel Trudel. "Le Jeune, Olivier, a servant of Guillaume Couillard". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. We do not know whether Couillard treated him as a slave or set him free, for in the burial register Olivier is listed as a servant. No text certifies that he was a slave. His situation may very well have been the same as that of the Indian girls Charité and Espérance, whom Champlain was unable to obtain permission to take to France and whom Couillard adopted.
  3. ^ Ethel M. G. Bennett. "Hebert, Guillemette (Couillard de Lespinay), daughter of Louis Hébert and Marie Rollet". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Retrieved 2020-02-26. They must have formed part of a cosmopolitan household, for it contained also Olivier Le Jeune, a black boy from Madagascar brought up the river by the English, sold to Olivier Le Baillif, and given by him to the Couillard family.
  4. ^ a b c Ethel M. G. Bennett. "ROLET (Rollet), MARIE (Dufeu ; Hébert; Hubou), daughter of Jehan Rollet, gunner of the king, and Anne Cogu". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Retrieved 2020-02-26.
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