Marie Guilbault

Life and times

General historical context. This section describes the times and places this person lived in. It is not documented fact about them; “likely” means just that.

Places

1. Saint-Paul and Joliette, Lower Canada 1798-ca. 1815
2. Montreal, Lower Canada ca. 1815-ca. 1825
3. Sainte-Mélanie and Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez, Canada East (Quebec) ca. 1825-1860

What was happening

• 1812 War of 1812 and Border Conflicts · Lower Canada (Quebec)
  During her teenage years in Saint-Paul, Marie would have likely experienced widespread anxiety and community dislocations as men from her parish were mobilized to defend Lower Canada against American forces. Source
• 1816 The Year Without a Summer · Montreal and Lower Canada
  Caring for her newborn daughter Marie in Montreal, Marie would have likely endured intense hardship when unseasonal frosts and summer snow destroyed regional wheat crops and caused widespread hunger. Source
• 1832 Lower Canada Cholera Outbreak · Montreal and Lanaudière Region, Lower Canada
  Managing her household in the Lanaudière region, Marie would have likely taken desperate domestic precautions as the deadly cholera pandemic swept through Montreal and neighboring rural parishes. Source
• 1837 The Patriote Rebellion in the Lanaudière Region · Lanaudière and Montreal Districts, Lower Canada
  Living in close proximity to centers of Patriote resistance, Marie would have likely experienced profound community distress and fear of military reprisals during the armed uprising of 1837. Source
• 1847 Typhus Epidemic and Irish Famine Migration · Montreal and St. Lawrence Valley, Canada East
  Living near the transportation hubs of the St. Lawrence Valley, Marie would have likely witnessed the human tragedy and quarantine measures that accompanied thousands of typhus-stricken Irish immigrants arriving in Canada. Source
• 1854 Abolition of the Seigneurial System in Lower Canada · Canada East (Quebec)
  In the final decade of her life, Marie would have likely benefited from the historic legislation that finally dismantled feudal seigneurial dues on farmland across Canada East. Source

In context

Marie Guilbault lived her sixty-two years across the Lanaudière region and Montreal during the formative decades of Lower Canada and Canada East. Born in May 1798 in the parish of Saint-Paul near Joliette to Paul Guilbault and Marie Olivier Mulotte, she grew up in a traditional French-Canadian rural household. In July 1814, at age sixteen, she married Simon Ladouceur in Saint-Paul. Her early married life took her to Montreal, where she gave birth to her daughter Marie in August 1816, enduring the bitter food shortages of the 'Year Without a Summer.' Returning northward to the expanding Lanaudière frontier, Marie raised her children in Sainte-Mélanie and Saint-Alphonse-de-Rodriguez. She guided her family through the catastrophic cholera epidemics of the 1830s, the political unrest and military violence of the 1837 Patriote Rebellion, and the 1847 typhus crisis. In her later years, Marie witnessed the opening of new Laurentian timber districts and the legislative dismantling of the old seigneurial system in 1854. Widowed that same year, she lived in Saint-Alphonse-de-Rodriguez until her death on August 21, 1860.