Sagamo Membertou – Daughter or Grand Daughter?

The dates that we know of from history do not support Grande Chief Membertou having a daughter that married an Acadian man.  Grande Chief Membertou died September 18, 1611 and was described as a very old man.  When Grande Chief Membertou died his wife, Marie was still alive. Her death date is unknown. Grande Chief Membertou is also described as having met Jacque Cartier and as being a grown man with a family at the time of the meeting. Grande Chief Membertou was only married once, to an Abernaki woman named Marie. Because Grande Chief Membertou died in 1611 estimating an age of 100 years this would put his birth date at about 1511 at the earliest.   

Jacques Cartier visited in 1534, 1535/36 and 1541/42. If Marie was married to Grande Chief Membertou at the time and we estimated her age to be about 16 years, her childbearing years would be between 1534 to about 1576.  If we calculate from the 1542 Cartier visit to Mi’kma’ki. her childbearing years would be from 1542 to 1582.  This would make the marriage period of Grande Chief Henri and Marie Membertou’s children between the mid 1500s to late 1500s.

The women of Mi’kmaq ancestry that are amongst the first marriages between he Mi’kmaq and the people of Acadian ancestry are Grace who married John Grander dit Jean dit le Grangier and Jeanne de Saint-Étienne de La Tour who married Martin d’Aprendestiguy de Martignon  and possibly Anne Marie who married the unknown Pinet and Rene Rimbault dit dit Raimbault

if descendants of Sagamo Membertou were the women in these early marriages between the Mi’kmaq and the Acadians then it is most likely they were the grand daughters and not the daughters of Sagamow Membertou.