Marie-Marguerite Chaboillez (1775-c.1816)

She was born in Montreal to one of the wealthiest French-Canadian fur-traders and a founding member of the Beaver Club at Montreal. She married one of her father's contemporaries, Simon McTavish (1751-1804), in October, 1793, at Montreal. They moved to London where McTavish hoped to retire among English society, but she grew homesick and they returned in the Spring of 1796. In 1800, her husband built the McTavish Mansion but died before its completion. In his will, he stipulated that their children must be educated in England and in 1806 she accompanied them to London. There, two years later (1808), she married William Smith Plenderleath, the illegitimate son and eventual sole heir of Gabriel Christie, one of the largest landowners in Quebec. They lived with her four surviving children at Stroud-on-the Green near Kew and later at Ramsgate, Kent. She probably died about 1816 when Plenderleath set up in Montreal.