Individual Details

Françoise Hébert

(27 Jan 1638 - Abt 16 Mar 1716)

Events

Christen	23 Jan 1638	Notre-Dame-de-Québec, Québec, Québec, Canada, Nouvelle-France
Birth	27 Jan 1638	Québec, Québec, Canada
Marriage	20 Nov 1651	Québec, Québec, Canada - Guillaume Fournier
Death	Abt 16 Mar 1716	Saint-Thomas-de-la-Pointe-à-la-Caille, Québec, Canada, Nouvelle-France
Burial	16 Mar 1716	Saint-Thomas-de-la-Pointe-à-la-Caille, Québec, Canada, Nouvelle-France
Reference No		A1527 M503
Occupation		Midwife
Life sketch		Françoise Hébert was born on 21 January 1638 in Québec, within the District of Québec, Canada, New France. She was baptized on 23 January 1638 in the Parish of Notre-Dame at Québec, the principal church of the colony and the ecclesiastical center of the Diocese of Québec. Her baptism occurred during the early decades of permanent French settlement along the Saint Lawrence River, when Québec served as both the administrative capital and the central mission of French colonial efforts in North America. She was the daughter of Guillaume Hébert (1604–1639) and Hélène Desportes (1620–1675). Her mother, Hélène Desportes, is recognized as one of the first children of European descent born in New France, while her father was a descendant of Louis Hébert, considered among the earliest settlers and the first European farmer to establish permanent cultivation in the colony. The Hébert family, as one of the founding households of Québec, occupied a prominent place in the early colonial community, representing the transition from temporary trading settlement to enduring agricultural and familial establishment. Françoise Hébert married Guillaume Fournier (1623–1699) on 20 November 1651 at the Parish of Notre-Dame, Québec, District of Québec, Canada, New France. Fournier, a native of Normandy, had arrived earlier that same year and soon became an active participant in the seigneurial development of the colony. The marriage joined one of New France’s original colonial families with a recently arrived French settler. Their union was entered in the parish registers of Notre-Dame, the cathedral parish serving as the ecclesiastical authority for the district. Following their marriage, the couple resided in Québec, where they were recorded in the 1667 colonial census. Guillaume Fournier held the position of settler and landholder and was later recorded as co-owner of the Fief Saint-Charles and the Fief Saint-Joseph at Montmagny. Françoise Hébert’s role in the family would have centered on the management of domestic and agricultural responsibilities, characteristic of colonial households operating within the seigneurial economy. These early families were crucial to the population growth and stability of the French colony, which depended on high birth rates and the establishment of permanent rural communities. By 1681, the Fournier family was documented as residing in the Seigneurie de Bellechasse, within the District of Québec, Canada, New France. The seigneury was situated along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, part of the agricultural expansion that supported Québec and its dependent parishes. Their residence in Bellechasse placed them among the second generation of seigneurial settlers responsible for extending the colony’s cultivated territory eastward from the capital. Françoise Hébert was the mother of sixteen recorded children, including Marie Fournier (1655–1717) and Simon Fournier (1667–1771). The size of the family reflected both demographic patterns in New France and the colony’s reliance on natural population growth to sustain its development. Many of her descendants remained in the Bellechasse and Montmagny regions, forming part of the established rural society that characterized the south shore parishes in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Her lifetime corresponded with the transformation of New France from a missionary outpost into a stable colonial society. The period saw the arrival of the Filles du Roi (Daughters of the King), the establishment of the seigneurial land tenure system, and the development of a colonial administration directly under royal control following the 1663 creation of the Sovereign Council. Québec’s population grew significantly during these decades, and families such as the Fourniers and Héberts formed the nucleus of the emerging colonial elite, tied to both agriculture and local governance. Records note her occupation in 1703, likely as the acting matriarch and property holder within her family’s seigneurial estate following her husband’s death in 1699. Such notation reflects the legal and economic responsibilities often assumed by widowed women in New France, who could manage property and oversee family interests under the Custom of Paris, the civil code that governed the colony. Françoise Hébert died on 15 March 1716 at Montmagny, in the District of Québec, Canada, New France, and was buried there the following day, 16 March 1716. Her burial took place in the local parish serving Saint-Thomas-de-la-Pointe-à-la-Caille, one of the principal seigneuries on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence. The parish register entry would have been made under the authority of the Diocese of Québec. Her life, spanning from 1638 to 1716, encompassed nearly the entire first century of French settlement in North America. Born during the colony’s formative years, she witnessed its transformation from a precarious foothold of fewer than 500 inhabitants into a structured and enduring French colonial society numbering in the tens of thousands. Through her family connections to the Héberts and the Fourniers, she stood at the intersection of the founding generation of Québec and the second generation that consolidated and expanded French settlement in New France. Her descendants contributed to the continued habitation and development of the regions surrounding Québec and Montmagny, ensuring the lasting presence of her family within the historical fabric of French colonial Canada.

Families

Spouse	Guillaume Fournier (1619 - 1699)
Child	Marie Fournier (1655 - 1717)
Child	Agathe Adèle Fournier (1657 - 1743)
Child	Joseph Fournier (1661 - 1741)
Child	Jean Fournier (1665 - 1744)
Child	Simon Joseph Fournier (1667 - 1749)
Child	Pierre Fournier (1669 - 1750)
Child	Françoise Fournier (1671 - 1734)
Child	Louis Fournier (1674 - 1721)
Child	Madeleine Fournier (1675 - 1741)
Child	Charles Fournier (1677 - 1739)
Child	Jacquette Fournier (1679 - 1736)

Spouse

Guillaume Fournier (1619 - 1699)

Father	Living
Mother	Hélène Langlois Desportes (1620 - 1675)

Endnotes