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Marriages in those days might be made early, but they were not contracted lightly. The marriage contract of François Cottineau and Madeleine Millot, which is still preserved, reveals with what a multitude of witnesses—kinsmen, neighbours, old regimental officers—the solemn undertaking was made, and with what thrifty and cautious care the future family finances were detailed and guarded. [4]

When the eldest of the four children of François Cottineau-Laurier, fittingly named Jean Baptiste, was married at twenty-six to Catherine Lamoureux, a girl of sixteen, youngest but one of a family of eleven, it was not at Montreal but at St. François in Ile Jésus, to the northeastward, that the marriage was performed. That even Colbert could not mould the people to his will is made clear by the fact that the two daughters of François Cottineau-Laurier did not marry until one was twenty-nine and the other was twenty-four. Jean Baptiste made his home at Lachenaie, across the river from St. François, but at first in the same parish. Here his quiverful of children were born—Jean Baptiste, Marie Catherine, Marie, Agathe, Jacques, Rose, Thérèse, Joseph, Pierre, Marie Anne, and Véronique.