Last thing!
And holy smokes… Apparently I’m very distantly related to TWO of the biggest settlers of Montreal (when it was New France)!!!
“….Many of New France’s pioneers arrived unmarried and settled down to found families only later. Those familites that came with children generally had few of them. In contrast, Jacques Archambault, a pioneer of Montreal, already had 6 children when he decided to immigrate to a new life in North America. A great deal of courage was needed to transplant a whole fmily to the wilds of such a new country. Jacques was the son of Antoine Archambault and Renee Ouvrard from Dompierre-sur-Mer in the area of La Rochelle, and was born in 1604, according to genealogist Cyprien Tanguay. On 24 Jan 1629, he married Francoise Tourault at Saint-Philbert-du-Pont-Charrault, a village now included in the arrondissement of La-Roche-sur-Yon in the departement of Vendee. Francoise was also from Dompierre-sur-Mer.
Jacques Archambault took part in Ville-Marie’s very beginnings. He was among the first settlers to receive land outside the fort from Governor Maisonneuve. Ville-Marie was only 9 yrs old when Archambault was granted a concession of 30 arpents ‘touching the land reserved for the town’ on 18 Sept 1651. On the same day, his son-in-law Urbain Tessier dit Lavigne was granted a concession of the same size next to Jacques’ on the west side. 7 years later, his neighbour on the east side would be none other than Lambert Closse, Ville-Marie’s major of the militia.
Great determination was required to develop the land that lay beyond the protection of the fort’s small cannons, for the Iroquois might well be nearby, and nobody went off unarmed to plant or reap. At the beginning of May, Jacques Archambault and Charles Le Moyne risked their lives to save 2 settlers who had been surprised by a band of marauders. One ball pierced Le Moyne’s hat and the Iroquois scalped one of the settlers, Jean Chicot. In their hurry, they actually cut out a piece of his skull; however, he lived another 16 years afterwards!
Two months later, Archambault lost his son Denis during another attack. According to the entry in the Journal des Jesuites on 25 August, ‘we received letters from Monreal telling us of the death of Denis Archambault, killed dead by the explosion of a canon being fired for the third time against the Iroquois. This was on 26 July.’ The date is confirmed by the certificate of burial found in the Liber defunctorum of Ville-Marie.
On 10 May of the same year, Archambault’s daughter, Marie, lost her home when Iroquois raiders set fire to Urbain Tessier dit Lavigne’s house during the night.
Considering the number of Iroquois raids, Governer Masonneuve took measures to keep the settlers on the land. He decided to pay sums varying from 400 to 1000 livres tournois (Tours pounds) to settlers who would legally bind themselves to persevere in the development of their concessions. Jacques Archambault and his son-in-law agreed to do so on 15 Jan 1654.
Archambault’s children carried on the settlement of Ville-Marie and New France. As noted, Denis died defending the fort, he was only 21 years old. Marie married Urbain Tessier dit Lavigne at the age of 12; she bore him 16 children (11 sons, 7 of whom founded families). Anne married Michel Chauvin in 1747 and only learned (after bearing him a son and daughter) that he already had a wife in France! Her second husband was Jean Gervaise, one of a group of desperately needed settlers who arrived in 1653. The couple had 9 children, 8 of whom married. Another daughter, Jacquette, married Paul Chalifou, a widower, and bore him no fewer than 14 children, of whom 11 eventually married. A son, Laurent, was married at the age of 18 to Catherine Marchand, from Paris; 3 of their daughters became nuns in the Hotel-Dieu, a 4th in the Congregation de Notre-Dame; 2 daughters as well as 5 sons, established families. Finally, the youngest, Marie, married a coppersmith named Gilles Lauzon from Caen and carried on the tradition by giving him 13 children (a full baker’s dozen).
Not surprisingly, Jacques Archambault’s descendants have kept the memory of their ancestor alive — some 25,000 now bear his name. The family association ‘Les Archambault d’Amerique” was founded in 1983. Five years later, about 40 Archambaults gathered in Dompierre-sur-Mer to unvail a plaque on the wall of the church where their ancestor was baptized. In an earlier ceremony, the road leading from his birthplace, l’Ardilliere, to the village of Dompierre, had been renamed Jacques Archambault Street.
Where did Jacques Archambault find the strength to produce such a lineage? Certainly he was fit, having dug the first well in Ville-Maie, at the request of Governer Maisonneuve in 1658 - archaelogists found it on the Pointe-a-Callieres. A bronze plaque marks the spot near the new museum of archaelogy and history, the Musee d’archeologie et d’histoire, that was inaugurated on the 350th anniversary of Montreal’s founding….”
From the Text: “Archambault - by Robert Prevost, Editions Libre Expression” - published online under www.collections.civilization.ca
