Marguerite Bourgeoys - Early Life and Departure

Early Life and Departure

Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys was born in Troyes (France), on 17 April 1620. The daughter of Abraham Bourgeoys and Guillemette Garnier, she was the sixth of their twelve children. Marguerite came from a middle-class and socially connected background, her father being a candle maker and coiner. Her father ultimately died when she was young, and her mother soon followed when Marguerite was 19.

In her early years, Marguerite had never held much of an interest in joining the Congregation Notre-Dame, which had been founded earlier in France in 1598 and had a major convent in her hometown. The nuns present in this external congregation helped the poor but remained cloistered and did not have the right teach outside of the convent. However, it is said that she had a change of heart in October of 1640, during a procession in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary. Her response to this experience was to seek to give herself wholly to God and to live a life that mirrored, as much as possible, that of the Virgin Mary.

Interestingly enough, the director of the convent happened to be the sister of Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the governor of Ville-Marie at the time. During a visit to France in 1652, De Maisonneuve stopped in Troyes. He told his sister that, although the colony was still too fragile for the establishment of a community of cloistered nuns, a lay woman would be welcome to teach the children of the settlers and of the Amerindian peoples. The 33-year-old Marguerite Bourgeoys was ultimately chosen, agreeing to accompany De Maisonneuve to Ville-Marie. In February of 1653, Marguerite left her native France along with approximately 103 other French men that had been recruited and signed to working contracts.