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The earliest Cabassier ancestors to be found (to date) on the North American continent were two women with the maiden name of Des Bordes and their families (Lineage goes: Jack Edwin Calhoun (1); Diane Rector Calhoun (2); Ruth Ditton Rector (3); Mary Hebestreit Ditton (4); Jane Anne Wheeler Hebestreit (5); Jane Cabassier Wheeler (6); Charles Cabassier (7); Joseph Cabassier (8); Charles Cabassier (9); Pierre Cabassier and Jeanne Guiberge Cabassier (10); Delphine Des Bordes Cabassier and Mathurine Des Bordes Guiberge (11)). It is not known (to date) whether these women were related, but the parallel path their lives took might indicate they were of the same family and close to one another. These women had married and started their families while still in France. Delphine Des Bordes had married a man named Pierre Cabassier, and by the time they crossed the Atlantic for New France, had a ten-year-old son to care for. Probably Pierre and Delphine were part of the French crown’s earliest efforts to colonize North America. Pierre may have been a founder of the city of Montreal. We do know that the crown appointed him as Royal Notary.
Mathurine Des Bordes married Pierre Guiberge, and had borne two children before leaving for New France. Pierre and Mathurine Guiberge, along with their two children, set sail for New France in about the year 1651 (probably aboard the same ship as the Cabassiers, although this is not yet confirmed by research). However, the Guiberges met tragedy while on the open sea. Only Mathurine and one of her children, a daughter named Jeanne, would survive the journey. Pierre and their other child died en route, probably of disease, which commonly befell those making the long and dangerous journey across the Atlantic. Pierre and his child were buried at sea. Both of the Des Bordes women and their families were headed for a new settlement known as VilleMarie. In these early years of French settlement there, the Iroquois Indians frequently would attack the fort hoping to stop the fur trade, which profited the French greatly. This was certainly no place for a widow and her young daughter. Were it not for the Cabassiers, on whom Mathurine could rely for assistance, the surviving Guiberges might not have made it in the New World. This brand new colony was not a place for a widowed mother who had no real means of supporting herself or her daughter. With the Cabassier’s help, however, the widow and her young daughter struggled to make a life for themselves in VilleMarie, or Montreal, as it would later be known. Finally, in 1660, after close to nine years in New France, Mathurine married Pierre Bissonnet. Within a year Mathurine gave birth to Pierre’s son, Jacque. However, within a very short time the world Mathurine had created for herself would come crashing down around her once again.
New settlers were continuously arriving in Quebec from France. The colony was becoming more settled, and thus more attractive to the less adventuresome who had initially stayed at home in France. Some of these new arrivers remembered Mathurine’s new husband from the Old World, and were surprised to find him with a wife and child in Montreal. They reported that Pierre could not legally marry Mathurine because he already had a wife in France. They reported specifically that his wife’s name was Marie Allaire, and that when they had left France she was alive and still married to Pierre. Mathurine’s accused husband tried to defend himself, acknowledging his wife’s existence, but stating that he could not live with her because she was a witch. His defense, however, did not detract from the reality that Pierre was a bigamist. When it became clear to Pierre that he would soon be arrested for his crime, he disappeared, leaving Mathurine to once again fend for herself and her children.
The reality of Pierre’s bigamy, along with his subsequent disappearance, nearly destroyed Mathurine. She had the marriage annulled in 1663, but she could not annul the scars of her ordeal. Mathurine’s oldest surviving child, Jeanne, who was undoubtedly living in the Bissonnet household at the time (she didn’t marry Pierre Cabassier until 1669), probably took on the task of nursing her mother back to health. However, incapable of raising the child she had with Bissonnet, Mathurine gave Jacque to his godfather, Jacques Boivin, to raise. It is not clear whether Mathurine simply refused to raise Bissonnet’s child, or whether she was so mentally or physically devastated by the ordeal that she could not do so. Whatever the case, with Jeanne’s help Mathurine emotionally recovered and began to put her life back together again. Within a couple of years she married again, this time to Michel Bouvier. The couple would live out the rest of their lives together and have numerous children. (The specific fact from the story of Pierre Bissonnet’s bigamy come from: Laforest, Thomas J. Our French Canadian Ancestors. Palm Harbor, Florida; The Lisi Press. 1993)
Mathurine never took Bissonnet’s son, Jacque, back into her home. He spent a couple of years with his godfather, and then was returned to his father, who had surfaced again in a settlement some miles north of Montreal. Pierre Bissonnet was finally brought to trial for his crime of bigamy, but paid only a minimal penalty for his crime. At the time he surfaced again he was remarried. However, this time he was able to produce evidence that Marie Allaire was now dead. Bissonnet and his new wife, Marie d’Aulonne, raised Jacque, in addition to bringing seven more children into the world together. Jacque, however, decided not to carry his father’s name, took the name LeFavry instead. There is no evidence that Jacque ever had contact with his mother again. There is evidence, however, that Jacque was emotionally scared by the ordeal of his early childhood and his abandonment by Mathurine. Jacque became a fur trader and married Perrine Lapelle in 1690. His marital home was no happier than his original home. His marriage quickly deteriorated because of his long absences, and his wife finally sued for divorce (identifying abandonment as the cause) and separation of property in 1709.
By 1669 Mathurine was well established as the wife of Michel Bouvier and the mother of his children. Finally, after nearly twenty years in New France, Mathurine was able to lead the life of peace and tranquility she had come to deserve after all she had endured since coming to the New World. Jeanne stood by her mother throughout her trials, but now felt free to marry and start her own family, even as Mathurine and Michel Bouvier began a family together. Her chosen mate was Pierre Cabassier. They were married on July 23, 1669.
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