KNOWN FACTS ABOUT MARIE-ANNE GRUZELIN

On February 18th 1760, Marie-Anne Gruzelin is "the widow of Georges Bédel and daughter of Benoit Gruzelin and of Jeanne Chaillé, her father and mother of that parrish". Marie-Anne Gruzelin had celebrated her first wedding with soldier Georges Bédel, a kind of non-commissioned infantry officer under the rank of corporal (in the French army of the 16th-17th century) (foot-soldier), in the La Sarre Regiment, the Laferté-Duminier company (cavalier Donz called Tanguay's company), less than a year before the one with Jean Bézanaire on February 5th 1759 and also in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. Geroges Bédel called St-Georges was from Bazieze, diocese of Toulouse, son of Barthélémy Bédel and of Jeanne Harz. The patrilineal surnames of Gruzelin and Bédel appear only on these occasions in the Canadian parochial archives, without making reference to their European origins; could it have been two military men like Bézanaire? The risks of the trade and premature deaths had knit close bonds amongst these soldiers' wives. As for Jeanne Chaillé, she was already a widow, and had remarried with Pierre Payan at the time of her daughter's second wedding on February 18th 1760. Tanguay's dictionary took census of the second wedding with Payan; her name is then written "Chaly", she is from Nancy in Lorraine, widow of Benoit Gruzelin, buried in Lake of Two Mountains on October 23rd 1766; the same author says, on that occasion, that Pierre Payan is the son of Jean Payan and of Marie Somier from Lavive-en-Glandanges in Dauphiné; the same Payan remarries in Montreal on March 2nd 1767 with another widow; with these details I suspect that he was also a soldier.... Other coincidence: all of the official deeds concerning them are brought up in the same district, around Lake of Two Mountains. After the death of Jean Bézanaire in 1796, Marie-Anne Gruzelin marries for the third time on June 27th 1801 with Antoine Gauthier, and is buried in Vaudreuil on September 16th 1816 at the age of 80.