Biographies 11 - Acatia Parish LAGenWeb

Some of My Canadian Ancestors - Page 11

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By Gene Thibodeaux

Although my surname is definitely Acadian I, like most of us, am not 100% of anything. A sizeable part of my ancestry came to Louisiana by way of a generation or two or three in French Canada. Here are short biographies of some of these Québecois:

       Pierre Boucher
       Pierre Boucher arrived in Canada as a boy with his family in 1635. His father farmed land owned by the Jesuit order. Pierre soon worked for the Jesuit priests while receiving an education from them. Between 1637 and 1641, he served as an assistant to the missionaries at Huronia, a mission post in the country of the Huron Indians. There he learned the customs and the language of the Indians, information that would serve him well in later life.
       Boucher left the Jesuits and began working for the government of French Canada. He was first hired as an interpreter and Indian gent for the governor of New France, de Montmagny. He was present at the founding of Montréal in 1642 and was fighting the Iroquois Indians at the Richelieu River later that year. In 1644, he was appointed official interpreter and clerk at the frontier fort at Trois Rivières. He was named commandant of the post in 1651. Two years later, the Iroquois surrounded the fort with 600 warriors. For nine days the fort was successfully defended by forty-four men. Boucher then went out alone among the Indians and convinced them to end the attack and enter into a peace treaty. He was then appointed governor of Trois Rivières and over the next few years received several tracts of land as seigneuries.
       This is about the time Boucher started raising one of the most prominent families in Canadian history. In 1649, he married a Huron woman, Marie Ouebadinakoue, who had been baptized as Marie Madeleine Chrétienne. She died in childbirth along with the infant. He next married a French woman, Jeanne Crevier, and together they produced fifteen children.
       In 1661, Pierre was sent to France by the governor of Canada. There he met and advised the king, Louis XIV, on the problems and promises of Canada. Boucher successfully returned with the promise of two ships, one hundred soldiers, provisions, munitions, and one hundred workmen for the colony and letters of nobility for himself. He then wrote a book that was published in Paris called “Histoire Véritable et Naturelle des Moeurs et Productions du Pays de la Nouvelle-France, Vulgairement Dite le Canada” (True Natural History of the Customs and Products of New France, Commonly Called Canada).
       After an expedition in 1666 against the Mohawk Indians, Pierre retired from government work to live the agricultural life. He had been having difficulties with some of the people of Trois Rivières, notably members of his wife’s family who had been illegally trading liquor to the Indians. His son-in-law, René Gaultier de Varennes, succeeded him as governor and Boucher moved to his seigneury at Boucherville. There he created a model farming community and ran it until his death in 1717.

       Louis Gaignier
       Louis Gaignier and Marie Michel left their home in Igé, France around 1643 to go to Canada. Louis was a miller in France, but was noted as a laborer until 1647 in Canadian records. That year he leased a farm at Beaupré which he kept until 1653. In 1650, Gaignier received his own land at Beaupré.
       After Louis’ death, Marie Michel married Paul deRainville. They lived at Beauport until about 1680 when they moved to Bellechasse. In 1675, Marie sold half of her property to her son, Louis. She bought it back from him in 1679, only to sell it to someone else.

       René DuBois
       In 1639, René DuBois became a “habitant”, or tenant, at the Seigneurie of Robert Giffard at Beauport, Canada. In 1660, records show that he also leased land in another seigneurie on the Ile d’Orleans. It appears that for a number of years he farmed both of these concessions.
       The year 1665 brought to Canada a ship containing a number of “King’s daughters”. These women, usually poor, were sent to supply wives for the female-starved settlers. Julienne Dumont was one of these “filles du Roy”. After a short courtship, René and Julienne were married in Québec.
       Starting in 1667, DuBois made many real estate transactions. He sold land in ’67, bought some in ’68, received a concession in ’69, sold another one in ’70, and sold more land in ’73. In 1667, he brought on a lawsuit to receive payment for 2 ½ barrels of eels. He was sued in 1671 because he supposedly took down his fences and let his cattle roam on another man’s lands. In 1674 he signed a contract to cut pines and make planks and beams of them.
       René moved to Cap de la Madeleine in 1681 to lease land and run a mill belonging to the Jesuit order along with his son-in-law, Jean Janvier, a miller. BuBois contracted in 1685 to accompany a trading trip to the Ottawa Indians. Janvier died and the Jesuits sued to have DuBois evicted. René won in court and stayed until the end of the lease.
       DuBois left for another concession at Gentilly in 1690, but had to abandon it in 1692 because he was unable to support his family on this land. He moved again in 1694 to St. François du Lac to another concession. At the time of his death in 1699, he was living in Batiscan. René DuBois left this world with few assets and many debts.

Pierre Filteau and Gillette Savard
Pierre Filteau arrived in Canada around 1663. Gillette Savard was a “filled u Roy,” or “daughter of the King,” sent to Canada to provide wives for the settlers. In 1666, the pair had a brief courtship and were married. That same year, they acquired a concession of land at the Seigneurie of Lauzaon. The young couple must not have liked life there, because in 1667 they moved to the Ile d’Orleans and received a concession at St. Jean. The Filteau’s remained here for the remainder of their lives. According to the 1681 census, the Filteau family owned five head of cattle and had tem arpents of land under cultivation.

       Robert Giffard
       Several decades after its birth, the French colony of New France (today the Canadian province of Québec) was in a sorry state. Europe was tied up in the bloody Thirty Years War so aid to Canada’s development was a low priority to the French court. An almost constant state of warfare existed between the French and the powerful Iroquois Indian tribe. But the largest problem was the lack of population growth compared to the English colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America.
       New France had been granted to a private company, the “Company of One Hundred Associates,” which had a monopoly on the fur trade and was required to colonize the colony. The Company decided upon a typically feudal way of obtaining settlers: by granting “seigneuries” (large tracts of land) to notable persons who would supply colonists to be tenants on their seigneury. Though the system, in much changed form, still existed halfway into the twentieth century, it was never the most effective. America was not medieval Europe. The hardships and challenges of the wilderness rewarded the independent pioneer, not the obedient serf. The seigneury system began as a failure. That is, until Seigneur Robert Giffard showed up.
       Robert Giffard was born in Mortagne, France. He served as a naval surgeon and apothecary (pharmacist) and visited Québec between 1621 and 1627. He had built a cabin in the woods outside of Québec City (probably a hunting lodge) and apparently fell in love with Canada. In 1628, he was bringing equipment to colonize New France when his ship was captured by the English forces of Sir David Kirk.
       In 1634, when peace had been temporarily restored between the French and English, Giffard was granted one of the first seigneuries. His grant was at the junction of the Beauport and St. Lawrence Rivers and was thus named Beauport. He brought his wife and two young children over, along with a number of colonists from his native region of Perche. Among these colonists were carpenters and brick makers to build his manor house. He has the distinction of being the first seigneur to actually succeed in supplying colonists to his fief. By 1666, Beauport had at least 29 households consisting of 184 persons.
       But Giffard did a lot more for Canada than supply colonists. He fought and repulsed the Iroquois in 1637 at Trois Rivières. He was one of the founders of the “Communauté des Habitants,” a Canadian society for trade with the Indians in 1645. He was churchwarden for the Catholic Parish of Québec and the first doctor of the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. For the latter, he received honorary title of “Apothecary and Doctor in Ordinary to the King.” In 1648, he made a trip to France and there was named a member of the Council of Québec, which had just been established by the king.
       Also to reward him for his work in New France, Gifford was granted two more seigneuries, St. Gabriel and Mille-Vache. These he donated to the Ursuline order of nuns and the Jesuit order of priests.

Jean Juchereau, Sieur de Maur
Jean Juchereau arrived in Canada with his family in 1634. In 1635, he had acquired a fief near Montmarcy and in 1647 became the lord of a seigneurie near Québec City.

       Jean Daigle
       Jean Daigle, nicknamed L’Allemand (the German), first appears in the archives of Canada in 1674. He bought 40 arpents of land at Charlesbourg in 1674 from Pierre LeDoux. Seven years later, he had 10 of the arpents under cultivation and owned a hunting rifle.
       Pierre Radisson and Medart des Groseilliers, with financing from wealthy Canadian merchants, took two ships in 1682 and sought to oust the English from Hudson Bay. Jean Daigle was hired as part of this expedition. The adventurers lost both ships in the ice and built a third. They then captured two English ships and brought their crews and cargoes back to Québec. The governor of Canada, not wanting to start a war with England, released the captives and returned their ships and cargo so Daigle probably only received excitement and danger for his part in the adventure.
       Jean was not a successful farmer so he rented a ship to haul wood in 1689. He appeared to have not profited very greatly in this either as a 1703 inventory of his estate shows. His house measured 12 by 30 feet and he had a shed, a pigsty and a hen house. He had only a cow, a calf, three pigs and eight chickens. His little house contained as furniture only a chest and one bed for a family of nine. The eating utensils consisted of one bowl, one saucer, two plates and two spoons. Though Jean Daigle left this world in poverty, his sons fared better. One stayed in Québec, one left for the Caribbean island of Martinique and another established himself in the new colony of Louisiana.

       Jean Bourasseau (Bourassa)
       On April 5, 1657, Jean Bourasseau signed a contract in La Rochelle, France with the merchants Antoine Grignon, Pierre Gaignier and Jacques Massé. Bourasseau indentured himself to the merchants and would work in New France (Canada) for three years at a wage of 90 livres per year. After this contract expired, Jean became a farmer, a profession he retained for the rest of his life.
       In 1665, Jean married Perrette Vallée, a so-called “Daughter of the King”. The “Daughters” were marriageable women sent from France at government expense to provide mates for the men of Québec, where white women were in short supply. The “Daughters” were drawn from the poor, the orphanages and even from the prison system. Which category Perrette came from is unknown, but she and Jean remained married until her death in 1676.
       The same year that his first wife died, Jean married a second time to Catherine Poitevin, another “Daughter of the King” who was also recently widowed. The home soon contained Jean’s children, Catherine’s children and now children from this new union. Jean now had to work harder to support this large family. His name is often found in the Canadian records accepting land grants and leasing farm land in the Lauzon area from 1662 to 1702. In the 1681 census of Québec, he is listed as having a gun, three head of cattle and cultivating 15 arpents of land. In 1711 he handed over his possessions to his son, François, and was buried in Lauzon in 1718.

       Robert Drouin
       Robert Drouin arrived in Canada in 1635, having been recruited by Robert Giffard to work on his Seigneurie of Beauport. In 1635 he was living in the house of Zacherie Cloutier, a vassal of Seigneur Giffard. Drouin was mainly a brick maker, although he also farmed, made planks and traded in furs.
       Drouin married in 1637 to Anne, the young daughter of Zacherie Cloutier. They had six children, though only two lived to be more than one year old. After Anne died in 1648, Robert rented out his land and livestock and left his two children daughters under the temporary care of his in-laws until he remarried the next year.
       Drouin had a busy time in the courts of Québec. In 1642, he was sued with others by James Bourguignon, who claimed that they had plotted to murder him. The case was never prosecuted. Zacherie Cloutier took permanent custody of the two children of the first marriage in 1655, claiming mistreatment by their stepmother.
       Robert Drouin changed residences several times during his life in Canada. He lived at Rivière-aux-Chiens in 1641, at Cap de la Madeleine in 1650, near Québec City in 1653, back at Rivière-aux-Chiens in 1655, and at Beaupré in 1656.

Claude-Charles Petit de Livilliers
Claude-Charles Petit entered the French navy as a midshipman in 1683 and went to Canada in 1687 as an ensign of the regular marine troops assigned to the colony. He was cited for bravery in the year of his arrival by saving the life of a superior officer in hand-to-hand combat during a battle with Indians. In 1691 he was again cited for bravery after a battle at LaPrairie with the Indians and was promoted to captain in 1692.

       Christophe Crevier, Sieur de Lameslée
       Cristophe Crevier was a man on the move. Born and raised in Rouen, France, he spent a few years at the seaport city of La Rochelle after his marriage to Jeanne Evart. They crossed the Atlantic and moved to Trois Rivières, Canada sometime before 1639, where Christophe worked as a baker and a fur trader. They returned to La Rochelle in the early 1640’s for Crevier to work as a merchant. He was back in Canada in 1650, buying a lot in Québec, then quickly returning to La Rochelle to settle his affairs and return with his family to Canada the following year.
       The Crevier settled for a while at Beauport, then returned to Trois Rivières, where their new son-in-law, Pierre Boucher, was governor. Though Crevier owned and sold various plots of land, including an island at Trois Rivières that was named St. Christophe after him, the family business was fur trading with the Indians. Their trade was heavily involved with illegal liquor trading for furs.
       This was a dangerous profession, and three of Christophe’s sons were captured and murdered by the Iroquois Indians. Pierre Boucher left Trois Rivières to found Boucherville, partly out of embarrassment of his in-laws’ illicit business practices. The new governor was René Gaultier, grandson-in-law to the Creviers and son-in-law of Boucher. Christophe died around 1663 and Jeanne Evart died sometime after 1681.

Jean Téstard, Sieur de La Fontaine
Jean Téstard came to Canada but returned to France shortly afterwards. He insisted in taking an inventory of the estate of his brother-in-law, Thomas Godefroy, who was killed by the Iroquois Indians. This inventory was signed at Trois Rivières, Canada on August 28, 1652. While Jean returned to France, three of his children, Jacques, Sieur de La Forest, Charles, Sieur de Folleville, and Jeanne remained in Canada to raise families in the New World. Both Jacques and Charles received Confirmation in the Catholic Church at Montréal on August 24, 1660.

       Jacques Archambault
       Jacques Archambault and his wife, Françoise Toureau, were both natives of Dampierre-sur-Mer in France. Jacques had a brother, Denis, and a sister, Anne. Jacques and Françoise left France for Canada in 1645 with their six children.
       At first Jacques was a servant to Pierre LeGardeur de Repentigny in Québec and later leased a farm from the same man. In 1651, he received a plot of land for his own. Archambault was granted another plot in Montréal in 1652 and soon thereafter left Québec. It appears that Jacques found his true calling in life here as a well digger. He dug water wells for the then substantial sum of 300 livres plus 10 pots of liquor.
       After his first wife died, Jacques married a woman who had been widowed three times before. In 1675, he sold part of his land in Montréal to the Supicien priests. In 1679, he sent to France 152 livres to pay back money borrowed from his brother’s son.

       Jean Baptiste Godefroy de Lintot
       Jean Baptiste Godefroy de Lintot, who came from a Norman family of Protestant origins, was one of the earliest settlers of Canada. He and his brother, Thomas, came to New France in 1626 with Samuel de Champlain. The brothers took to the woods with the missionaries and fur traders. They lived among the Indians during the English occupation of Québec from 1629 to 1632. Jean Baptiste became an Indian interpreter for Champlain and a trader for himself. Thomas died in 1653 fighting the Iroquois Indians.
       In 1633, Jean Baptiste was granted a tract of land at Trois Rivières before the post was established. He received a seigneury in 1637 but had trouble populating it due to Iroquois attacks. Along with ten other entrepreneurs, he formed a company to settle a vast grant of land at Gaspésie.
       Jean Baptiste Godefroy married Marie LeNeuf on December 15, 1636. She had just recently arrived in Canada with her brothers Michel and Jacques.
       In 1647, Godefroy was chosen by the king to represent Trois Rivières in a council made up of the governors of Québec and Montréal and the Jesuit Superior. In 1668, King Louis XIV decided to grant Godefroy letters of nobility, though the paperwork went to the wrong place and was never officially granted. In spite of his land grants and his fur trading, Godefroy was not doing well financially. In 1672, Governor Frontenac appealed to the King to reward him for his services to the colony, as he could not afford a dowry for his daughter.

       Antoine LaCasse
       Antoine LaCasse was born in the town of Doué in the French province of Anjou. It is not known when he arrived in Canada, but in 1665 he married at Château-Richer to Françoise Piloy. He was a farmer throughout his life in Québec.
       On June 16, 1666, LaCasse bought a plot of land on the Ile d’Orleans, but sold it in 1667. In December of 1666, he backed out of another land deal at L’Ange Gardien. Antoine bought another piece of property on Ile d’Orleans on August 15, 1667 for 200 livres, payable in two installments. Two months later the new property owner had to transfer an indentured servant whom he had agreed to keep for four years to a neighbor. He had still not entirely paid for his land by 1669 and asked his creditor to accept 100 wooden planks as partial payment.
       After finally settling down for a while, Antoine sold his land and left the island in 1677. He moved to the newly opened seigneurie of Beaumont. It appears that he had not bettered his condition in all those years. In 1667 he had three cattle, fourteen arpents of cleared land and a servant, while in 1681 he owned a gun, three cattle and eight arpents. He did own, in partnership with Michel Mailloux, a sailboat which they sold for 129 livres in 1683.
       After years of struggle Antoine and Françoise retired in 1702. They donated half of their land, four cattle and two horses to their son, Charles. In return for this donation, the son was required to feed, house and care for his parents until their death and then to have thirty Requiem Masses said for their souls. Antoine died in 1709 and his wife followed him in 1713.

       Jeanne LeMarchand
       Though we don’t know the date of marriage, Mathieu LeNeuf announced his intention to wed Jeanne LeMarchand at the Huguenot temple at Caen on November 21, November 28 and December 5 of 1599. At this time both the fathers of the bride and groom were deceased but both mothers were still alive.
       On November 6, 1636 Jeanne LeMarchand, the widow LeNeuf, arrived in Canada with some of her children.

Nicolas Juchereau, Sieur de St. Denis
Nicolas Juchereau was a member of the Sovereign Council of Canada and fought in Indian campaigns against the Agniers and the Iroquois as a captain of militia under deCourcelle. In 1690, Québec was about to be besieged by an English fleet under Phipps. For three days, Juchereau led 300 militia men at Beauport. An English landing party was repulsed with heavy losses while the militia men suffered only a dozen wounded. In recognition of his heroism, King Louis XIV granted him and his legitimate descendants a patent of nobility in February of 1692.

       Pierre Gareman
       In settling the North American continent, the English and the French brought along their competitive animosities. But this violent rivalry was matched by that of the Native American tribes of the Huron and the Iroquois. The French allied with the Huron and the English with the Iroquois, and thus began over one hundred years of bloody atrocities in which all four of the nations shared considerable guilt.
       Pierre Gareman and Madeleine Charlot, along with their two children, left their home in Bagneux, in the Picardy region of France, to found a new life for themselves in the New World of French Canada. Gareman signed up to become a tenant farmer for Jacques LeNeuf in the Portneuf region in 1640. But Iroquois attacks forced him to take refuge in Sillery and Trois Rivières. He went back to the isolated Portneuf in 1646, possibly because the Iroquois threat had temporarily lessened. But this threat definitely didn’t go away.
       On June 10, 1653, the Iroquois attacked the settlement of Cap Rouge. A neighbor was scalped and Pierre Gareman and his 10-year-old son Charles were captured. Going by the normal Iroquois hostage custom, Pierre was undoubtedly tortured and killed. Charles, being still a child, was adopted and raised by the tribe. He later returned to Québec and actually married an Iroquois woman.

       Zacherie Cloutier
       In 1634, master carpenter Zacherie Cloutier signed a contract in LaRochelle, France with Robert Giffard, who had just been made Seigneur (Lord) of Beauport in Canada. Cloutier would work for three years on building Gifford’s manor house and parish church. In return, Gifford would pay for the transportation of Cloutier and his family and their living expenses. Cloutier would also receive a few head of livestock and a fief of 1000 arpents of land at what would become Château-Richer, Canada. He also had the right to hunt, fish and trade with the Indians. Cloutier received his land in 1637 and named it “La Cloutièrie”.
       In 1636, Cloutier made an unusual marriage arrangement for his ten and a half year old daughter, Anne, with Robert Drouin. Though the wedding would take place the next year, Anne would remain under her parents’ roof for two years before moving in with her husband. Anne would bear her husband six children, though only two survived infancy. When she died in 1648, Drouin remarried the next year to a woman the Cloutiers did not approve of. They sued Drouin and got custody of their two grand-daughters.
       The Cloutier family was living in Québec in 1651. Zacherie worked as a carpenter there while still owning his fief at Château-Richer. In 1666 he was living at Beaupré. Zacherie gathered his children before a notary in 1668 and stated in writing how his estate was to be divided upon he and his wife’s deaths. Two years later, he sold his fief and moved back to Château-Richer, where he and his wife, Xainte, lived out the rest of their days.

       Jean Trudel
       Jean Trudel arrived in Canada in 1655. He had been a linen weaver in France. In Canada, he leased a fief of land at Beauport for three years from Nicolas Juchereau. In 1657, Trudel received some land of his own at what would become the Parish of L’Ange-Gardien in 1664. Trudel’s house was used for the first mass held and for the election of the church wardens for the new parish. The census of 1667 lists Jean as having nine head of cattle and fourteen arpents of cultivated land. In 1681, he owned two guns and eight head of cattle with thirty arpents of cleared land.
       In 1683, Trudel donated some and leased some of his land to his son, Nicolas. In 1693, Jean and his wife made a donation to another son, Joseph, on the condition that he provide for them for the rest of their lives. Joseph did not perform his part adequately so they broke the contract and sold the property to another son, Jean.
       On the 300th anniversary of Jean Trudel’s arrival in Canada, a celebration was held and a monument was erected in commemoration at L’Ange-Gardien, Canada in 1955. Descendants of Jean Trudel came from all over Canada and the world to honor him.

       Gaspard Boucher
       On May 25, 1663, master carpenter Gaspard Boucher acquired land and an orchard from his mother-in-law, Marie Gastrie. This property, in Perruchet, France, was sold on February 1, 1634. The next April, the grateful mother-in-law left a larger inheritance to Gaspard and his wife than to the other heirs because they had taken her in after she was abandoned by her second husband.
       On March 19, 1635, Gaspard sold land in Perche and soon after left France for the wilds of Canada with his wife and children. After arriving in Québec, Gaspard brought to the attention of Samuel de Champlain the fact that some of his personal effects were in the possession of a traveling companion who refused to return them. Though the thief was ordered to return the property, it was three years before the case was settled.
       Gaspard Boucher farmed land belonging to the Jesuit order at Beauport after his arrival in Canada. In 1664, he received a grant of land at Trois Rivières and became one of the earliest settlers in the area. He sold this land in 1649 and received another grant there in 1650.

Romain Trépagnier
Romain Trépagnier appears in the early Canadian records to have been industrious and litigious. He bought, sold and rented land. He farmed, cut timber and ran a lumber mill. And he was definitely no stranger to the courts. In 1670, he was in disagreement with the Bishop deLaval over farm rents, though they settled through mediation. The 1670’s and 80’s found him frequently in court, and when he lost, in appeals. He spent two years (1694-1696) appealing and re-appealing the succession of his father-in-law against his wife’s stepmother, Marie Chapellier. Possibly to avoid a repetition of her father’s succession battles, Romain’s widow, Geneviève Drouin, divided her estate among her heirs before her death.

       Julien Fortin
       Julien Fortin left his native France forever in 1650 when he departed from the port of Dieppe and sailed for the wilds of Canada. He must have brought some money along, for he bought in that same year a tract of land at Beaupré. He sold this land in 1654. In 1657, Fortin bought an eighth share of the Seigneury of Beaupré and the Ile d’Orleans for 700 livres in beaver pelts. This he sold in 1662 for 750 livres. Julien received a grant of land at Cap Tourmente in 1659 and he would live there for the rest of his life. His wife, Genevieve Gamache, spent her last days in the home of their son, Charles, at L’Islet.
       Julien Fortin was not only a prosperous man, but was also religious and generous. In 1660, he donated 50 livres and a small wooden house to the church at Château-Richer. He is also listed as giving smaller donations to the church at Beaupré and in 1680 he gave a house located at Château-Richer to be shared by the churches at Beaupré and Château-Richer.
       In 1666, Barbe Fortin, Julien’s 12-year-old daughter was near death from pleurisy. Her parents made a vow and had a novena said. At the end of the novena, Barbe was in perfect health. The Fortin’s attributed this as a miracle accomplished through the intercession of St. Anne, the namesake of the Catholic church at Beaupré.

       Jean Janvier and Dorothée DuBois
       Jean Janvier was a flour miller in Poitiers, France when he signed a contract in 1675 to go to Canada. Janvier would run a windmill at Pointe-aux-Lièvres and the landlord would supply sails and tools. The miller would have to pay a rent of 70 minots of wheat a year. Janvier worked this mill from his arrival in Canada until 1681. He also branched out into river transportation, buying a one half interesting a barge in 1676 and selling it at a loss the next year.
       Jean married Dorothée DuBois in 1679 and in 1681 was living near his father-in-law near Charlesbourg, Canada. Later that year, René DuBois and Jean Janvier moved their families to Cap-de-La-Madeleine and leased for nine years farm land and a mill owned by the Jesuit priests. Janvier died there in 1688. Without Jean’s help, his father-in-law had trouble keeping the terms of the lease. The Jesuits took DuBois to court to have him evicted, but he won and remained until his lease ran out. René DuBois had other troubles and would die in 1699, deep in debt.
       Dorothée remarried in 1691 to Etienne Biguet and moved to Champlain. In 1699they moved to Sainte-Marie. Dorothée died in 1709, and Etienne died in 1715. Because minor children were involved, the estate was not distributed to the heirs until 1722.

       Joseph deLaMirande
       On June 22, 1743, Joseph de La Mirande received from the government of Québec a “Conge de Troit”, or passport to the interior. This document gave a “voyageur” permission to go into the wilds and trade with the Indians. Joseph’s party consisted of six men and one boat.
       Joseph went south and did more than just trade with the Indians. He would take the merchandise acquired from the Indians and illegally trade them in the Ohio River valley with the English. The goods thus gained were then sold in New Orleans. This was considered smuggling in those days and deLaMirande apparently did well at it.
       Joseph de La Mirande later became a planter in Louisiana. In the 1766 census of Pointe Coupée, he is listed as having ten children, five boys and five girls. At that time, he owned fourteen arpents of land and twenty-six slaves. According to the Opelousas census of 1796, he was domiciled in the Grand Prairie district. In his will, deLaMirande freed four mulatto children of his mulatresse slave, Babe: Judith, Lise, Kiequo and Zenon.
       Joseph’s actual surname was “du Lignon.” His family in Canada usually went by duLignon and sometimes added deLaMirande and a few times just used deLaMirande. For some reason, except for his baptism, Joseph is listed in records exclusively as deLaMirande.

Joseph Carriere, père
Joseph Carriere traveled to Mobile from Québec by way of the Mississippi River in 1708. He was under the employ of Gabriel Beaudreau de Graveline, a Canadian trader who came to Louisiana in search of furs and minerals. Though Beaudreau eventually left Louisiana disappointed, Carriere stayed on in the fledgling colony.

       Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière
       During the exploration and settlement of Louisiana, many brave and daring men and women succeeded in their efforts to build a civilization out of the wilderness. Few contributed more to the history of this state than Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière and his family.
       Pierre Chauvin and his wife, Marthe Autreuil, were among the early settlers of French Canada. Together they produced eleven children, six of whom later played roles in the history of the colony of Louisiana. Pierre was a miller and a farmer, and while his children learned these crafts, they obviously also learned about business and Indian trading.
       The first Chauvins to arrive in Louisiana were Jacques and Joseph, who landed in Biloxi in 1700 with Iberville. Joseph adopted the name of Chauvin de Léry while Jacques, the eldest of the Louisiana brothers, went simply as Chauvin. They were followed by their brothers, Louis Chauvin de Beaulieu and Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière. One sister, Barbe, who was the wife of Ignace Hubert, relocated to Louisiana, while another, Michelle, was killed by Indians along with her husband, Jacques Nepveu, and three of their children in Illinois. One of Michelle’s surviving daughters also followed the Chauvin family south.
       King Louis XIV in 1712 made Antoine Crozat, a French businessman, the proprietor of Louisiana with a trade monopoly for fifteen years. One of Crozat’s plans was to establish trade with the Spanish and to accomplish this, he sent Louis Juchereau de St. Denis on a mission to Mexico. Although this mission resulted in no profits, a second one was organized using private merchants instead of government officials and soldiers.
       In 1716, a commercial company was formed by St. Denis, the younger Chauvin brothers, Nicolas, Joseph and Louis, another Canadian named Graveline, and a colonial official, the Sieur d’Herbanne. The group left Mobile, then the capital of the Louisiana colony, in October of 1716 with 60,000 livres worth of merchandise. The party rested and traded at Natchitoches and then resumed the journey through Texas. St. Denis arrived first at the Presidio del Norte on the Rio Grande and had his trade goods confiscated by the Spanish authorities. He had gone to Mexico City to obtain the release of his goods when the rest of the merchants arrived at the Presidio. There they traded on credit until they learned of St. Denis’ imprisonment in Mexico City, and fearing their own arrest, left for home without collecting for their wares. The failed traders returned empty handed to Mobile on October 25, 1717. it took twenty-five years and a lawsuit before St. Denis, de La Frénière, and the widows of de Léry and de Beaulieu each received 8000 livres from the colonial government for their losses in the expedition.
       On January 17, 1718 a daughter was born in Mobile to Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière and an Indian servant named Catherine. This daughter, Hypolite, was first married to a Canadian, Joseph Turpin, and secondly to Joseph de La Mirande, an Indian trader and sometimes smuggler who later became a planter in the Opelousas area. The daughter of Joseph de La Mirande and Hypolite de La Frénière, Josette de La Mirande, married Barthelemy LeBleu and became the progenitor of the LeBleu family of this area.
       Nicolas de La Frénière was appointed a member of the Superior Council of the colony upon his return to Mobile from the Mexican adventure. This appointment came over the objections of Governor Cadillac, who considered him one of the “scum and refuse of Canada”, and of the King’s Commissary, Marc-Antoine Hubert, who thought of him as barely literate and not in keeping with the dignity of the Superior Council. Not only did Nicolas keep his seat in the Council, but was reappointed in 1732 by the King of France himself.
       Shortly after the founding of New Orleans, the three younger Chauvin brothers, de La Frénière, de Léry and de Beaulieu, received extensive land concessions up river near the site of an old village of the Tchoupitoula Indians. The site of the Chauvin plantations was near the present day Harahan, Louisiana. The first use to which these lands were put was in lumbering. The brothers set up a sawmill and sold lumber to the colony. De La Frénière donated much of the wood used in the building of the original church of St. Louis in New Orleans. The brothers grazed cattle and sheep on their lands and grew crops of rice, corn, potatoes and indigo. To work this land the Chauvin’s used slave labor. In 1721, they owned 96 slaves while by 1726 the number had increased to 254.
       In addition to this plantation, de La Frénière profited in other ventures. He purchased two other tracts of land and owned a townhouse in New Orleans. In 1729, he and the Chevalier du Pradel opened what may have been the first cabaret in New Orleans. De La Frénière married in the mid 1720’s Marguerite LeSueur, a cousin of Iberville and Bienville. Of this union were born five children: Nicolas, fils, Jean Baptiste, François, Catherine and Marguerite. Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière, père arrived in the colony that he helped to build as a poor trader and died in 1749 as a prosperous planter and businessman who was a leader in the social, political and economic life of Louisiana.
       His son, Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière, fils, was also a colorful historical figure. Nicolas, fils was educated in France and upon the death of his father, took his seat in the Superior Council of Louisiana. In n1763, he was appointed Attorney general of French colonial Louisiana. When Louisiana was transferred from France to Spain, de La Frénière, fils clashed with the Spanish governor, Antonio de Ulloa. In 1768, he was one of the leaders of the rebellion which forced Ulloa to flee the colony. The following year, the Spanish general and new governor, Alexander O’Reilly, returned to New Orleans in force and arrested the ringleaders of the rebellion. On October 25, 1769 Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière, fils and four others were executed by firing squad. xxxPierre François Marie Olivier de Vezin
       After the governor of Trois-Rivières, Canada asked the King of France for an iron foundry to be established in New France, Pierre François Marie Olivier, Sieur de Vezin, was sent in 1738 to build and manage the Forge St. Maurice. He was born in Nancy in the province of Champagne in France in 1716 and was a councilor to the king before arriving in Canada. He was married at Trois-Rivières on June 14, 1747 to Marie Josephe Gatineau Duplessis. She was born at Trois-Rivières in 1720 and was the widow Linier. In 1749, he was appointed as the Chief Inspector of Bridges and Roads and Surveyor General of Lands for the Province Louisiana and went to New Orleans to carry out his new duties. When the Spanish took over Louisiana, he took a seat on the Cabildo as “rigidor perpetuoy y alguazil mayor”. He died in New Orleans in 1776 and his wife died there in 1772.

       Gabriel Beaudreau dit Graveline
       He left Montréal with his pregnant wife and two daughters in 1708 and headed for Mobile (then considered Louisiana) in order to trade in furs and search for minerals with his brother, Jean Baptiste, who was already there. Gabriel hired Antoine Simon, Etienne Etienne, Laurent Blot, Jean Baptiste L’Escuyer, Joseph Girardy, Jacques Mainville, Joseph Carriere, Etienne Campot, Nicolas Cadieu, Jean Alarie and Pierre Bourdon to accompany him. En route to Mobile by way of the Mississippi River, the party stopped at the small post of Detroit, where Beaudreau’s wife, Marie Catherine Forestier, gave birth to a daughter. Heading south, the travelers were attacked by Miami Indians (at the instigation of Detroit’s commandant, who wanted them to stay) and sent back to Detroit. They left again, this time evading the Miamis, and made it to Kaskaskia in the Illinois country. There he left his wife and children and the rest of the party arrived at Mobile in January of 1710.
       Finding the commercial opportunities of Louisiana less promising than he had expected, Beaudreau soon left Mobile and settled in Illinois. Years later, the Detroit-born daughter, Marie Louise, would settle in the Opelousas country of Louisiana with her husband.

       Louis Juchereau de St. Denis
       In 1700, the frigate Renommé brought Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d’Iberville back to the frontier post of Fort Maurepas. The fort had been established in 1698 by Iberville and was located across the bay from the present-day Biloxi, Mississippi. Louis Juchereau de St. Denis was an officer in this expedition and was also Iberville’s uncle-in-law. Juchereau had been born in Canada and raised on his father’s fief at Beauport and his arrival in the new colony would profoundly influence the history of Louisiana, and also of Texas.
       St. Denis witnessed the abandonment of Fort Maurepas and the establishment of Fort Louis on Mobile Bay. From this base, he participated in the exploration of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. From the beginning, he showed an uncanny knack for dealing with Indians in either diplomacy or war. Juchereau, with knowledge and tact, kept the peace whenever he was in charge of Indian relations and many tribes grew to almost worship him. In battle, this same man was rarely ever defeated.
       The French in Biloxi and Mobile were worried about Spanish encroachment from the west while at the same time they desired to establish trade with Spanish Texas and Mexico. In this frame of mind, the governor of Louisiana, Antoine de La Mothe, Sieur Cadillac, received a letter from a Spanish missionary. Father Francisco Hidalgo had founded missions in what is now east Texas in 1694 but the Spanish government had ceased supporting them and the missions were forced to close. Father Hidalgo had written to Cadillac inquiring about the welfare of the Indians and seeking French cooperation in re-establishing the missions. In September of 1713, using the letter as an excuse, Cadillac sent St. Denis on a double mission: to keep the Spanish out of Louisiana and to start up a trade route with them.
       St. Denis and his party traveled up the Red River to a point where the river was blocked by a massive log jam. There in the territory of the Natchitoches Indians, St. Denis built a fort which he called Fort St. Jean Baptiste. Around this fort would grow Natchitoches, the oldest continuously settled town in Louisiana.
       In July of 1714, St. Denis arrived at the Presidio del Norte, also known as the Mission San Juan Bautista, located on the Rio Grande River near what is now Eagle Pass, Texas. Upon entering the settlement, he was arrested by the commandant, Don Diego Ramón. From there he was sent to the viceroy of Mexico, the Duke of Linares, in Mexico City and imprisoned. Juchereau managed to get himself released and then joined in a Spanish expedition to re-occupy the east Texas missions. Upon his return to the Presidio del Norte, the ex prisoner wooed and married the step granddaughter of the commandant, Emanuella Sanchez de Navarro. After the missions were opened, Juchereau returned to Mobile, leaving his new bride at San Juan Bautista.
       Shortly thereafter, in 1716, St. Denis returned to Mexico. This time he led a commercial expedition bearing trade goods and he was in the company of the Sieur de Graveline, Sieur de Derbanne, and the Chauvin brothers, Joseph, Nicolas and Louis. This trip ended in disaster with the Spaniards confiscating the trade goods and the Frenchmen forced to leave Texas. In 1719, Spain and France were at war. In spite of his new bride’s nationality, St. Denis and his Indians fought for the French and participated in the defense of Mobile and in the capture of Pensacola.
       St. Denis was commandant at the Cane River in 1720 and in 1721 he was made commandant of Fort St. Jean Baptiste, the post he had founded earlier. At this time, his wife and children were living with him in Natchitoches and he was awarded the knighthood of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis. In 1730, when the Natchez Indians were at war with the French, St. Denis was called upon to defend Natchitoches from a force of Natchez using a small group of Frenchmen and allied Indians. The Natchez were defeated and ceased to exist as a tribe. The commandant of Fort St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches died there in 1744. He was succeeded in this office by his son-in-law, Cesaire deBlanc.

My Canadian Ancestors Who Transplanted to Louisiana

Although my surname is definitely Acadian, I, like most of us, am not 100% of anything. A sizeable part of my ancestry came to Louisiana by way of a generation or two or three in French Canada. Here are short biographies of some of these Québecois who moved south:

Pierre François Marie Olivier de Vezin
After the governor of Trois-Rivières, Canada asked the King of France for an iron foundry to be established in New France, Pierre François Marie Olivier, Sieur de Vezin, was sent in 1738 to build and manage the Forge St. Maurice. He was born in Nancy in the province of Champagne in France in 1716 and was a councilor to the king before arriving in Canada. He was married at Trois-Rivières on June 14, 1747 to Marie Josephe Gatineau Duplessis. She was born at Trois-Rivières in 1720 and was the widow Linier. In 1749, he was appointed as the Chief Inspector of Bridges and Roads and Surveyor General of Lands for the Province Louisiana and went to New Orleans to carry out his new duties. When the Spanish took over Louisiana, he took a seat on the Cabildo as “rigidor perpetuoy y alguazil mayor”. He died in New Orleans in 1776 and his wife died there in 1772.

       Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière
       During the exploration and settlement of Louisiana, many brave and daring men and women succeeded in their efforts to build a civilization out of the wilderness. Few contributed more to the history of this state than Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière and his family.
       Pierre Chauvin and his wife, Marthe Autreuil, were among the early settlers of French Canada. Together they produced eleven children, six of whom later played roles in the history of the colony of Louisiana. Pierre was a miller and a farmer, and while his children learned these crafts, they obviously also learned about business and Indian trading.
       The first Chauvins to arrive in Louisiana were Jacques and Joseph, who landed in Biloxi in 1700 with Iberville. Joseph adopted the name of Chauvin de Léry while Jacques, the eldest of the Louisiana brothers, went simply as Chauvin. They were followed by their brothers, Louis Chauvin de Beaulieu and Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière. One sister, Barbe, who was the wife of Ignace Hubert, relocated to Louisiana, while another, Michelle, was killed by Indians along with her husband, Jacques Nepveu, and three of their children in Illinois. One of Michelle’s surviving daughters also followed the Chauvin family south.
       King Louis XIV in 1712 made Antoine Crozat, a French businessman, the proprietor of Louisiana with a trade monopoly for fifteen years. One of Crozat’s plans was to establish trade with the Spanish and to accomplish this, he sent Louis Juchereau de St. Denis on a mission to Mexico. Although this mission resulted in no profits, a second one was organized using private merchants instead of government officials and soldiers.
       In 1716, a commercial company was formed by St. Denis, the younger Chauvin brothers, Nicolas, Joseph and Louis, another Canadian named Graveline, and a colonial official, the Sieur d’Herbanne. The group left Mobile, then the capital of the Louisiana colony, in October of 1716 with 60,000 livres worth of merchandise. The party rested and traded at Natchitoches and then resumed the journey through Texas. St. Denis arrived first at the Presidio del Norte on the Rio Grande and had his trade goods confiscated by the Spanish authorities. He had gone to Mexico City to obtain the release of his goods when the rest of the merchants arrived at the Presidio. There they traded on credit until they learned of St. Denis’ imprisonment in Mexico City, and fearing their own arrest, left for home without collecting for their wares. The failed traders returned empty handed to Mobile on October 25, 1717. it took twenty-five years and a lawsuit before St. Denis, de La Frénière, and the widows of de Léry and de Beaulieu each received 8000 livres from the colonial government for their losses in the expedition.
       On January 17, 1718 a daughter was born in Mobile to Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière and an Indian servant named Catherine. This daughter, Hypolite, was first married to a Canadian, Joseph Turpin, and secondly to Joseph de La Mirande, an Indian trader and sometimes smuggler who later became a planter in the Opelousas area. The daughter of Joseph de La Mirande and Hypolite de La Frénière, Josette de La Mirande, married Barthelemy LeBleu and became the progenitor of the LeBleu family of this area.
       Nicolas de La Frénière was appointed a member of the Superior Council of the colony upon his return to Mobile from the Mexican adventure. This appointment came over the objections of Governor Cadillac, who considered him one of the “scum and refuse of Canada”, and of the King’s Commissary, Marc-Antoine Hubert, who thought of him as barely literate and not in keeping with the dignity of the Superior Council. Not only did Nicolas keep his seat in the Council, but was reappointed in 1732 by the King of France himself.
       Shortly after the founding of New Orleans, the three younger Chauvin brothers, de La Frénière, de Léry and de Beaulieu, received extensive land concessions up river near the site of an old village of the Tchoupitoula Indians. The site of the Chauvin plantations was near the present day Harahan, Louisiana. The first use to which these lands were put was in lumbering. The brothers set up a sawmill and sold lumber to the colony. De La Frénière donated much of the wood used in the building of the original church of St. Louis in New Orleans. The brothers grazed cattle and sheep on their lands and grew crops of rice, corn, potatoes and indigo. To work this land the Chauvin’s used slave labor. In 1721, they owned 96 slaves while by 1726 the number had increased to 254.
       In addition to this plantation, de La Frénière profited in other ventures. He purchased two other tracts of land and owned a townhouse in New Orleans. In 1729, he and the Chevalier du Pradel opened what may have been the first cabaret in New Orleans.
       De La Frénière married in the mid 1720’s Marguerite LeSueur, a cousin of Iberville and Bienville. Of this union were born five children: Nicolas, fils, Jean Baptiste, François, Catherine and Marguerite. Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière, père arrived in the colony that he helped to build as a poor trader and died in 1749 as a prosperous planter and businessman who was a leader in the social, political and economic life of Louisiana.
       His son, Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière, fils, was also a colorful historical figure. Nicolas, fils was educated in France and upon the death of his father, took his seat in the Superior Council of Louisiana. In n1763, he was appointed Attorney general of French colonial Louisiana. When Louisiana was transferred from France to Spain, de La Frénière, fils clashed with the Spanish governor, Antonio de Ulloa. In 1768, he was one of the leaders of the rebellion which forced Ulloa to flee the colony. The following year, the Spanish general and new governor, Alexander O’Reilly, returned to New Orleans in force and arrested the ringleaders of the rebellion. On October 25, 1769 Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière, fils and four others were executed by firing squad.

Etienne Burel
Etienne Burel was a pastry cook who emigrated to Québec from Paris, France. There he married a widow, Marguerite Roussel. He returned to France around 1700 with his family. When the French government was searching for marriageable girls to send to Mobile, Burel, having three daughters, was recruited to return to the New World. Etienne, his wife Marguerite, and children, Jeanne, Genevieve, Marguerite and Louis, arrived in Mobile, at that time the capital of the French colony of Louisiana, aboard the ship “Pélican” in 1704. There Burel opened a tavern which sold wine, brandy and pastries. The tavern keeper was once charged with buying goods which had been stolen from the King’s warehouse. He was fined twice the value of the goods and ordered to shut down his tavern for six months.

       Louis Juchereau de St. Denis
       In 1700, the frigate Renommé brought Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d’Iberville back to the frontier post of Fort Maurepas. The fort had been established in 1698 by Iberville and was located across the bay from the present-day Biloxi, Mississippi. Louis Juchereau de St. Denis was an officer in this expedition and was also Iberville’s uncle-in-law. Juchereau had been born in Canada and raised on his father’s fief at Beauport and his arrival in the new colony would profoundly influence the history of Louisiana, and also of Texas.
       St. Denis witnessed the abandonment of Fort Maurepas and the establishment of Fort Louis on Mobile Bay. From this base, he participated in the exploration of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. From the beginning, he showed an uncanny knack for dealing with Indians in either diplomacy or war. Juchereau, with knowledge and tact, kept the peace whenever he was in charge of Indian relations and many tribes grew to almost worship him. In battle, this same man was rarely ever defeated.
       The French in Biloxi and Mobile were worried about Spanish encroachment from the west while at the same time they desired to establish trade with Spanish Texas and Mexico. In this frame of mind, the governor of Louisiana, Antoine de La Mothe, Sieur Cadillac, received a letter from a Spanish missionary. Father Francisco Hidalgo had founded missions in what is now east Texas in 1694 but the Spanish government had ceased supporting them and the missions were forced to close. Father Hidalgo had written to Cadillac inquiring about the welfare of the Indians and seeking French cooperation in re-establishing the missions. In September of 1713, using the letter as an excuse, Cadillac sent St. Denis on a double mission: to keep the Spanish out of Louisiana and to start up a trade route with them.
       St. Denis and his party traveled up the Red River to a point where the river was blocked by a massive log jam. There in the territory of the Natchitoches Indians, St. Denis built a fort which he called Fort St. Jean Baptiste. Around this fort would grow Natchitoches, the oldest continuously settled town in Louisiana.
       In July of 1714, St. Denis arrived at the Presidio del Norte, also known as the Mission San Juan Bautista, located on the Rio Grande River near what is now Eagle Pass, Texas. Upon entering the settlement, he was arrested by the commandant, Don Diego Ramón. From there he was sent to the viceroy of Mexico, the Duke of Linares, in Mexico City and imprisoned. Juchereau managed to get himself released and then joined in a Spanish expedition to re-occupy the east Texas missions. Upon his return to the Presidio del Norte, the ex prisoner wooed and married the step granddaughter of the commandant, Emanuella Sanchez de Navarro. After the missions were opened, Juchereau returned to Mobile, leaving his new bride at San Juan Bautista.
       Shortly thereafter, in 1716, St. Denis returned to Mexico. This time he led a commercial expedition bearing trade goods and he was in the company of the Sieur de Graveline, Sieur de Derbanne, and the Chauvin brothers, Joseph, Nicolas and Louis. This trip ended in disaster with the Spaniards confiscating the trade goods and the Frenchmen forced to leave Texas.
       In 1719, Spain and France were at war. In spite of his new bride’s nationality, St. Denis and his Indians fought for the French and participated in the defense of Mobile and in the capture of Pensacola.
       St. Denis was commandant at the Cane River in 1720 and in 1721 he was made commandant of Fort St. Jean Baptiste, the post he had founded earlier. At this time, his wife and children were living with him in Natchitoches and he was awarded the knighthood of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis. In 1730, when the Natchez Indians were at war with the French, St. Denis was called upon to defend Natchitoches from a force of Natchez using a small group of Frenchmen and allied Indians. The Natchez were defeated and ceased to exist as a tribe. The commandant of Fort St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches died there in 1744. He was succeeded in this office by his son-in-law, Cesaire deBlanc.

       Charles Petit de Livilliers
       Early in the French colonial period of Louisiana history, Claude LeBlanc, the French Secretary of War, received a large concession (land grant) on the Mississippi River near present day Vicksburg. LeBlanc was required to colonize and protect his concession and with this in mind, he organized two infantry companies in 1720 to be sent with the workers. Charles Petit, a young Canadian, was a sublieutenant in one of these companies.
       Petit seemed to have prospered while the LeBlanc Concession didn’t. The first commander died and his replacement left in 1723. Petit, who had since been promoted to lieutenant, was left in command and after many deaths due to yellow fever, moved the settlement in 1724 to a less swampy location near Natchez, Mississippi. Shortly thereafter, he left LeBlanc’s employ and joined a regular military company in New Orleans.
       The young officer dabbled in real estate in the New Orleans area. In 1725, he sold one house and bought another in the city. In 1727, he had a plantation upstream of the early New Orleans site (today’s French Quarter) in what is now uptown New Orleans and in 1731, he entered into partnership to run another plantation at Cannes Bruslees in what is now Kenner, Louisiana.
       Charles Petit de Livilliers did not live long enough to enjoy the fruits of his business dealings. He was promoted to captain in 1732 and was wounded in the disastrous campaign against the Chickasaw Indians. A fellow officer named Jean Baptiste Macarty got into a dispute with Petit over a real estate deal. On April 1, 1738, Petit was killed in a duel by Macarty.