Joséphine de Beauharnais place of birth Les Trois-Îlets
Early life
Childhood
Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie was born in Les Trois-Îlets, Martinique, to a wealthy French family who owned a sugarcane plantation, which is now a museum. The Taschers were an ancient French family of country gentry, and Joséphine's grandfather, Gaspard-Joseph was the first to settle in Le Carbet on Martinique in 1726. He seems to have lived in poverty there, but secured a position as a page for his son, Joseph-Gaspard (1735–1790) in the household of the Dauphine of France, Maria Josepha of Saxony.After spending three years from 1752 in France, Joseph-Gaspard returned to Martinique and married Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois (1735–1807), whose maternal grandfather, Anthony Brown, may have been Irish.  Rose-Claire was from one of the oldest European families on the plantation, and the Tascher family home near Les Trois-Îlets was part of her dowry. Joséphine was their first child, and they had two more: Catherine-Désirée in 1764 and Marie-Françoise in 1766. Joseph-Gaspard earned his living as a plantation owner and a lieutenant of the Troupes de marine, apart from a small pension for his work in the royal household. He was almost always close to bankruptcy and suffered from ill health.Joséphine was raised by an enslaved nurse called Marion, whose freedom she would secure in 1807. At the age of ten, she and Catherine-Désirée were sent to a boarding school in Fort-Royal, run by the  Bénédictines de la Providence. There, they learned to read, write, sing, dance, and embroider for four years. After the death of Catherine-Désirée, Joséphine returned to her parents' plantation.
birthplace place of origin native place homeland birth city