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- Barbe Bajolet - Three times a widow
The following register has been translated from the parish registers of Pineau on May 22, 1608 :
This baptism may seem unimportant, but Barbe went on to become one of the first woman pioneers in Acadia. She was also a very enterprising woman of her time.
After 16 years of marriage and the death of her first husband Isaac Pesseley in Acadia, Barbe returned to France with her children. As compensation to the colonel's widow, the king grants her some fur pelts which allowed her to live well in France.
2nd Marriage - Sieur de Monstespy
On December 16th, 1646, we find Barbe Bajolet at La Rochelle, France where she married her second husband, Martin Lefebvre, Sieur de Montespy and Secretaire Ordinaire of the Money Chamber of King Louis XIV. The church marriage ceremony was held on the 10th of January 1647.
In 1652, Barbe was still in La Rochelle when her second husband died, leaving two more children.
3rd Marriage - Admiral Savinien de Courpon
On October 17, 1654 in St-Jean-du-Perrot, France, she married a man she had known from Acadia, Savinien de Courpon (who was a close friend of Chomedey de Maisonneuve).
This last husband of Barbe had a previous history of his own. Savinien de Courpon was in the Caribbean between 1641 and 1648 where he was taken prisoner by the Turks. France arranged his release in exchange for a famous Corsaire who was detained in Marseilles.
Savinien de Courpon's wife at the time was the ex-Baronness Savigny. She went to meet her husband when he was finally released on the Island of Saint-Martin. Unfortunately, the ex-Baronness found him in the company of another woman. The jealous wife stabbed him in the neck with a bayonnette when he was asleep in a drunken stupor. De Courpon survived the attack and condemned the ex-baronness to be executed.
Barbe Bajolet became the second wife of this widower of Nantes (Savinien de Courpon) who was Captain of a vessel. In fact, he was a retired Admiral of a fleet named 'Des 100 Associ [1]
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