Marie-Madeleine Hachard

Marie-Madeleine Hachard (17 February 1704, Rouen - 9 August 1760, New Orleans) was one of the first members of the first Ursuline Convent in New Orleans in French Louisiana in 1727. She is best known because of a printed correspondence addressed to her father that was published and attributed to her by the Rouen printer Antoine Le Prévost in 1728.

Early life Marie-Madeleine Hachard was the seventh child out of eleven children born to Jacques Hachard, and Marie-Anne Dumontier. Her parents married on June 5, 1695 in the parish of St. Nicaise. They moved to the parish of St. Maclou shortly after their fourth child was born in 1699. Jacques Hachard had served as a bailiff to the king (1695-1698), commissioner of tailles en élection de Rouen (1695-1698), and then procurator in the Cour des comptes, aides et finances de Normandie (1699-1711). Marie-Madeleine demonstrated a strong devotion as a child and took her first communion at the precocious age of ten. Her parents wanted her to marry and presented her with an advantageous match when she was eighteen. She refused the offer and began looking to join a religious community. She had two older sisters, Marie Anne and Elisabeth, who were professed nuns among the hospital nuns of St. Francis at the monastery of Saint-Elisabeth of Rouen. At the age of twenty, Marie-Madeleine began the process of joining this order. However, her confessor at the time deterred her from going through with her plan. Two years later, she joined the mission of the Ursulines to New Orleans, Louisiana.

Mission to New Orleans Marie-Madeleine learned about the Ursuline mission to New Orleans while its contract was still under negotiation. Two Ursulines from Rouen, Marie Tranchepain de St. Augustin and Marie Anne Le Boullenger de St. Angélique, had traveled to Paris in March 1726 to sign a contract with the French Company of the Indies (previously known as the Mississippi Company). However, due to complications, the contract was not signed until September 13, 1726. During this time, Marie-Madeleine presented herself to the Ursulines of Rouen requesting permission to join the mission. The Ursulines hesitated at first because the demands of establishing a mission were difficult enough for experienced nuns and she was not even a member of their order. The Ursulines were traditionally a teaching order, but they contracted with the Company of the Indies to run the military hospital in New Orleans, thus further complicating the mission. After examining Marie-Madeleine for three months "during which they neglected nothing in order to know her well" the Ursulines agreed to let her join the mission.

Works De Rouen à la Louisiane : voyage d’une Ursuline en 1727, foreword by Jean-Pierre Chaline, Rouen, Association d'études normandes, Mont-Saint-Aignan, publications of the Université de Rouen, 1988 "Une Rouennaise à La Nouvelle-Orléans au XVIIIe Siècle: Relation du voyage des Ursulines (1726-1728)", edited, annotated, and foreword by Chantal Théry, Laval, Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2022.