Hermine Malouin was born in 1841 in the Maskinongé region and died in Saint-Venant in 1941. Arriving in Saint-Venant in times of colonization, she truly deservd the title of pioneer the town attributed to her. Married to Alfred Lefebvre in 1860, in Stanstead, Madam Malouin followed her husband in 1861 to settle in Paquetteville. She was 20 years old.
Some say this woman was sturdy. Measuring six feet and with a large size, she smoked pipe and chopped wood. When her carpenter husband was away, she took care of the farm, kept harvesting the soil, and attended to the work on the fields. With the wool from the sheep in her farm, she enjoyed spinning and sewing. In their first house, made of log, she gave birth to her two younger sons, William and Joseph. The eldest child saw the light of day before they settled in Paquetteville.
In the 1870s, the family lived happy days and built, with the help of the children, a beautiful large house with gables that saw four generations of Lefebvre living it it.
Her husband died in 1902 at 65 years old, Hermine lived on 40 years afterwards. When she gave the house to her younger son, she set conditions. He had to offer her a bed and food, 100 dollars a year and the wool of two sheep, a black one and a white one. The last year she was alive, despite the fact that she remained lucid, she had to be confined to her bed. The family gathered together in the family home in 1941 to celebrate her hundredth birthday. She died the day after Christmas 1941.
Source: Research Amélie Masson-Labonté, for the TCCC