THAVENET, MARGUERITE DE, b. 1646 at Bourges, daughter of Raymond de Thavenet, captain in the Régiment de Brimon, and of Élisabeth de Mancelin; d. 1708. On 22 Sept. 1664, at Montreal, she married the Sieur Joseph-François Hertel de La Fresnière (1642–1722), king’s lieutenant, who was ennobled in 1716. Fifteen children were born of this marriage.

Marguerite de Thavenet and her sister, Marie-Françoise, probably came to Canada in one of the contingents of young “noble girls” who were sent by Louis XIV and Colbert and intended for Canadian noblemen.

In 1672 Marie-Françoise de Thavenet was engaged to Jacques de Chambly*, who had arrived in Canada in 1665 with the Carignan regiment and who was appointed governor of Grenada in 1679. As marriage freed officers and soldiers from the “service,” Jacques de Chambly’s superior officers refused him permission to marry. He died as governor of Martinique in 1687.

By a deed signed before a notary in Paris on 11 July 1679, Jacques de Chambly made a gift to “Demoiselle Marie-Françoise de Thavenet” of the seigneury of Chambly in Canada, on condition that she went to live there.

It is probable that Marie-Françoise de Thavenet returned to Canada from France, for at her death, in or before 1694, the seigneury became the property of her sister Marguerite.

Robert La Roque de Roquebrune

AN, Y, 236, f.399; Col., C^11A, 2, 3, 43. [François Daniel], Histoire des grandes familles françaises du Canada (Montréal, 1867). Placide Gaudet, “Le capitaine Jacques de Chambly,” BRH, XXIII (1917), 14–16. Robert La Roque de Roquebrune, “Les Demoiselles de Thavenet,” NF, V (1930), 86–91. É.-Z. Massicotte, “Le fief Hertel,” BRH, XXXV (1929), 67–71; “Les premiers seigneurs de Chambly,” BRH, LI (1945), 133–35, 209.