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Chapter 2

Farmers, fishermen, family founders

Imagine a 17^th Century frontier family with 13 children, of whom eight reached adulthood and seven married to form new households. Pierre Roberge and Françoise Loignon launched the Roberge dit La Pierre clan with exactly this prolific feat, nearly unthinkable now in an age of hedonism. Little wonder that Ile d'Orléans, dubbed the cradle of New France, still has a stone monument commemorating their achievement.

Large families were officially encouraged. The Talon census of 1666 found only 45 eligible French women between the ages of 16 and 40, although the colony listed 719 single French males in the same age bracket. Although the crown dispatched a regiment of soldiers and about 800 marriageable girls in the same decade, the imbalance took years to level.

Pierre and Françoise raised their family mostly in the parish of St.-Pierre near the western edge of that island in the St. Lawrence River. Our direct paternal line from this founding couple then continued through a son named Pierre. Born there in 1697, he was christened with the same given name as his first-born brother who had died at age 14. Pierre junior is the second-generation ancestor who married Marie Le François of Chateau Richer on 21 October 1726.

An older brother, named Joseph, was baptized at St.-Pierre, I.O., in 1690. He may be better known in Québec because his large collateral family line became prominent local landowners on the south bank of the St. Lawrence. Joseph Roberge married Geneviève Le Duc at Notre Dame de Québec in 1716. She was the granddaughter of a founder of the fishing village of Etchemin, where the northward flowing river named for the Etchemin tribe (Malécite, Passamaquoddy) joins the St. Lawrence across from Sillery. Joseph received a tract of land there from his father-in-law.

So numerous are the descendants of Joseph and Geneviève that there were at least 25 Roberge families in St. Romuald d'Etchemin parish by the start of the 20^th Century.¹

In his fin-de-siècle parish history, Benjamin Demers, Etchemin’s local curé, offered a picturesque account of the place before the great forests were cleared for farmland. A party of Hurons and Frenchmen in two or three canoes dispatched from north-shore fort Quebec scouted the south shore in 1651. Picked as an ideal spot for their future fishing village was this location at the confluence of rivers on the western fringe of Etchemin territory with a view of the Algonquin réduction of Sillery on the north shore.

Ile d'Orléans is the large island at upper right. Shown are other parishes where early family records are often found.

Their 33-year-old leader, Eustache Lambert, had toiled as a donné for the Jesuits’ in the pays d'en haut, tribal territories, until the missionaries had to flee from the West to Quebec with their Huron converts.²

Another brother of Joseph and Pierre in this second generation was Charles Roberge. He wed Marie Madeleine Coté, who would have been a granddaughter of Françoise Roussin, the patriarch’s arguably métisse mother in law. That would make the couple second cousins unless one spouse had been adopted. And Marie Thérese, born in 1709 as the youngest daughter of the Roberge founding couple, apparently migrated westward with her husband upriver to Yamachiche.

Over the years, sons and daughters in the Roberge dit Lapierre line chose spouses from such other old families as Le François, Coté, Le Duc, Blouard, Ratté, Brousard, Goulet, Drouin, Pouliot, Paradis, Couture, Guyon/Dion, Le Brun Carrier, Gagnon, Lacroix, Bourgault and Boisvert (Annex B).

Surviving civil records of our first-generation ancestor, Pierre Roberge dit Lapierre, suggest that he concentrated mainly on the welfare of his family and the calm conservation of its assets. Pierre and five other men, for example, petitioned to recover a concealed legacy of one thousand livres from their deceased in-laws, Pierre Loignon and Françoise Roussin. Their joint complaint was made on behalf of their wives, each one a daughter of the deceased couple.

It was discovered that Françoise Roussin, just before her death in 1691, had stashed the money away in a place she revealed only to Charles Loignon, a favored offspring who was still a legal minor. Conseil Souverain ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in a decision signed on 30 June 1692 by Louis Rouer de Villeray, Quebec’s attorney general. Charles’ guardian was ordered to turn over the cash in equal shares to the couple's rightful heirs.³

Our ancestor’s brother, Pierre Roberge dit Lacroix, apparently made a more controversial debut in polite colonial society. Early records reveal an impulsive man of action. On 11 July 1670 Conseil Souverain, the supreme provincial authority, entered a judgement against this Pierre for assaulting and injuring neighbor Mathurin Thibaudeau in the presence of his wife and others on Ile d'Orléans.⁴ Early the following year a more serious criminal case came before the admiralty court. Pierre Roberge dit Lacroix, Alexandre Turpin and the soldier Abraham Aubin dit Lafontaine were accused in the slaying of a man named Saintonge, a soldier based at Quebec's Fort Saint Louis.⁵

Whatever the outcome of that trial, Pierre’s deportment must have moderated no later than 10 October 1671. That was the day when Quebec royal notary Romain Becquet witnessed a marriage contract between him and Antoinette Bagau. The church wedding held in 1672 at Ste. Famille, I.O., was witnessed by Denis Roberge. The childless marriage endured until Antoinette died about 12 years later.

The Roberge name appears repeatedly in civil records for the next two centuries. The most intriguing episode makes mention of half a dozen Roberge men, who were implicated or tried in connection with transgressions during the 1838 rebellion. But these names cannot easily be assigned by family to the Lapierre or Lacroix line.

Compared with the two Pierres, Denis Roberge was a minor celebrity in and around Quebec town and particularly Pierre Roberge dit Lacroix seems to have been his protegé. Both Pierres may have initially become established on Ile d'Orléans thanks to Denis’ excellent connections. The career of this influential lay official of the church is worth a closer look for what it may reveal about the two Pierres and their families, who led quieter lives in relative obscurity.

Evangelist mystics from l'Ermitage de Caen

Upon his arrival in Quebec in 1660, the devout Denis Roberge immediately entered the service of Mgr. François de Montmorency-Laval, Quebec’s apostolic vicar, who had arrived the previous year. Denis would have been about 35 years old when he reached Canada, the year after the death of his first spiritual mentor in Normandy. As a newcomer officially described as a marchand-bourgeois, property transactions, administration and financing appear to have been among his specialties. Soon to be regarded as Laval’s confidant, this loyal former acolyte from the Ermitage de Caen then remained loyal to Quebec’s revered bishop for the rest of his life.

When Laval acquired Ile d'Orléans from a principal of Compagnie des Cent-Associés in 1666, Denis Roberge was apparently dispatched to manage the island seigneurie, which would become an asset of the new Séminaire de Quebec.⁶ Contracts notarized by Beauport notary Paul Vachon also reveal that Roberge acquired an estate on Ile d'Orléans and later sold it. Circumstances suggest that Denis Roberge was dealing for Mgr. Laval and his new Quebec seminary, directed by Henri de Bernières, who had also been made the first permanent pastor of the main parish of Notre Dame de Québec.

Denis Roberge’s close links to both of those two high-ranking priests were undoubtedly forged first in Normandy. In the previous decade all three men had crossed paths at the Ermitage de Caen, a lay seminary of Jean de Bernières de Louvigny (1602-1659). This celebrated Catholic mystic, the uncle of Henri de Bernières, was also a close friend and spiritual guide to Mgr. Laval.

In the wake of religious wars of the previous century, the teachings of the Caen seminary were part of a back-to-basics spiritual revival that spread beyond Normandy. Ermitage de Caen in the ancient diocese of Bayeux placed its emphasis on a life of asceticism, religious contemplation and the devotion to the charitable works that had distinguished early Christianity. Jean de Bernières’ theology resonated with many prominent churchmen and a few civic leaders who would later apply his teachings in colonial New France.⁷

An aristocrat who had served as Caen’s royal property custodian, the Ermitage founder renounced his inheritance, dedicating himself to theological instruction. As a humble member of a secular Franciscan third order, his teachings later circulated widely in Europe under the title Chrétien Intérieur, published posthumously by his sister Jourdaine de Bernières, founder of Caen’s Ursuline cloister, collocated with Jean’s Ermitage. An earlier Norman seminary of the religious mystic, Jean Eudes, had been shut down by the bishop of Bayeux. And de Bernières’ opus was eventually placed on the index in 1689. But his ideas had already taken root in Quebec.

Mgr. Laval (1622-1708), the ordained son of an ancient noble family in the diocese of Chartres, also passed up a substantial inheritance to pursue a higher calling in the New World. He was destined to be beatified as the saintly first bishop of Quebec. On 13 April 1659, shortly before Jean de Bernières’ death in Caen, Laval departed for Canada as the newly appointed apostolic vicar of New France. Dubbed the Apostle of Canada by his biographer, Laval was accompanied by Caen-born Henri de Bernières (~1635-1700), a promising junior cleric who also renounced his family fortune and came directly from his uncle’s Ermitage.⁸

On 17 June, an enthusiastic civic welcome marked the arrival of their ship at Québec. The same day, Laval found time to baptize a newborn Huron infant and personally to administer last rites to a dying native boy. On 24 August he presided at a confirmation ceremony for scores of Algonquin and Huron Christians, with ritual prayers in their own languages as well as Latin and French. A great feast was held at Quebec’s Jesuit college to celebrate the Amerindian Catholics. The apostolic vicar’s keen interest in indigenous converts even caused some of his own countrymen to wonder whether they would be neglected.⁹ In the evangelistic spirit of the Council of Trent, Laval clearly had an agenda.

In Laval’s time French and native Christians were confirmed together at Québec, with or without reference to origin or background. A confirmation ceremony for 17 parishioners on 2 February 1660, for example, identified Charles Le François as having come originally from the archdiocese of Rouen in Normandy but Adrien Hayot and Louis Joliet were listed as being of undetermined origin. Laval later financed Jesuit-trained Joliet’s initial fur trading venture among the Amerindians before Joliet gained lasting fame as an explorer and cartographer of North America.¹⁰

In 1660 the vicar ordained Henri de Bernières, who would become his principal deputy. According to his priestly 19^th Century biographer, Auguste Honoré Gosselin, Laval tasked the young priest to learn the Iroquoian language, which would include the Huron tongue. That would scarcely be possible without the help of native speakers, but none are identified. De Bernières was named superior of the new Séminaire de Québec chartered by Laval in 1663. This seminary took on the role of training future parish priests for Québec’s theocracy, helping to free the various religious orders to concentrate on missionary work farther afield.

The following year, young de Bernières was also given the dual assignment of permanent resident pastor of the parish of Notre-Dame-de-Québec. This main parish initially included neighboring settlements of Sillery, côte de Beaupré, côte de Lauzon, Charlesbourg, Notre Dame des Anges and l'Ile d'Orléans as well as the provincial capital. There were still no more than about 2,200 permanent settlers in the French colony. The Talon census of 1666 found that the Beauport seigneurie of Robert Giffard had only 85 residents in 29 households while all of côte de Beaupré had just 537 souls in 89 dwellings. The original registry of the Québec city parish actually dated from 24 October 1621 but had been destroyed in a fire in 1640 and had to be partly reconstructed from memory. This makes families launched in the Champlain era hard to trace.

The vicar's man for all seasons

Apart from the acquisition of the seigneurie of Ile d'Orléans for the new seminary, Denis Roberge quietly facilitated other such transactions for his patron, moving his family three times at Laval’s request. When Laval contracted to construct buildings for the seminary in 1667, Roberge was compensated for providing preliminary financing.¹¹ He also seems to have raised the funds to buy a residence in Quebec city in 1689 for the Congrégation de Notre-Dame, a secular order of nuns started by Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1658.¹²

Encouraged by young Louis XIV’s request to accelerate the conversion and acculturation of the Amerindians, Laval wished to foster religious instruction of youngsters at a tender age. Since the two Pierres as young men seem to have been sponsored by Denis Roberge in association with de Bernières’ seminary, one may assume that religious initiation preceded their respective confirmations in 1664 and 1665. Religious instruction of youngsters was formally entrusted in 1668 to a junior division of the Quebec seminary, which also accommodated boys being instructed by the Jesuits.

On 29 May 1674, provincial Gov. Louis de Baude, comte de Frontenac, approved a concession to Denis Roberge for development of his property in the lower village of Quebec. If the project was not just a private matter, it could have been another instance of Denis’ dealings on behalf of the senior clergy. Other civil records name him mostly in routine business transactions or small claims. Denis Roberge was one of two Quebec merchants elected in 1691 as marguilliers, prominent laymen who were entrusted with such tasks as the administration of diocese or parish properties and alms disbursement registries.¹³ He was obviously a respected elder of the community.

Denis’ son Pierre, born in 1688, apparently followed in his footsteps as a Quebec merchant, frequently witnessing church baptisms and marriage ceremonies in the capital region. Jacques Roberge, a son baptized the following year, is remembered for a fatal misfortune described by Quebec’s superior court in an unusual posthumous criminal proceeding against his lifeless body. Jacques had committed suicide by eviscerating himself with a razor. The court found that the Quebec butcher had lost his faculty to reason as a result of being kicked or stomped repeatedly by a horse.¹⁴ A legal decision was needed to clear his reputation, suicide being a sin that might otherwise prevent burial in consecrated ground. Jacques Roberge was interred on 21 March 1732 in the parish of Notre Dame de Québec.

Denis Roberge and Geneviève Aubert, married at Chateau Richer around 1667, had eight other children beside Pierre and Jacques, both known to have remained bachelors. Angélique, one of the three girls, became a nun. With seven Roberge boys, one may wonder why this family line disappeared. Denis Roberge, whose French baptismal certificate has never been found, lived to about the age of 82. He was buried at Notre Dame de Québec in 1709. His widow, whose father had the same name as an older Quebec recruit from 1619, died in 1732.

Quebec-born wives

If the patriarchs of early families arrived mostly from France, as we are told, one might ask about their wives. In this chronicle, it appears that many of their forebears were already there to welcome the newcomers to Canada. These women were born and raised in the New World. Let's begin with Françoise Loignon and Marie Le François, the mothers of the many children of the first two Pierres.

We have seen that Marie Le François, who married Pierre Roberge dit Lacroix at Chateau Richer in 1684, was the aunt of the woman with the same name, who would marry our Pierre Roberge (jr.) dit Lapierre at Chateau Richer on 21 October 1726. By then, this younger Marie Le François who enters our line’s second generation could possibly trace her family story back perhaps another four generations in North America. The paternal line might even connect to the Charles Le François recruited for Quebec in 1619 by Admiral Montmorency, King Henri IV’s godson.

Our Marie was the daughter of Nicolas Le François and Marie Madeleine Le Febvre, who had married at Charlesbourg in 1702. Her mother was the oldest daughter of Marie Madeleine Trudel and Pierre Le Febvre, married at an unknown place, lieu indéterminé, in Quebec in 1674. Marie Madeleine Trudel in turn was one of at least nine children of Jean Trudel and Marguerite Thomas, who had married at Notre Dame de Québec in 1655. Their descendants appear in our de Nevers-Boisvert line as well as in the Roberge family tree.

Jean Trudel’s parents, Jean Trudelle senior and Marguerite Desnoyer Nonide, are known to have been a couple before the end of 1629, the year English invaders temporarily exiled some Quebec families to France. Since the names Jean Trudelle, Pasquère Nonet and Charles Le François also appear on a surviving list of French recruits for Samuel de Champlain’s Quebec colony in 1619, Marie Le François’ forebears may have been in Canada four centuries ago.

Since 62 of those enumerated recruits are known to have landed in Quebec, researcher Dick Garneau quipped, “You can be sure that many métis children were born as a result.” But missing records make some very early family lines impossible to reconstruct. That’s the case with the 1619 recruits Adrien Hayot, Pierre St. Denis, Claude Aubert and Jacques Goulet, whose familiar surnames also match those of men and women who later married into the families Roberge or Boisvert.

In the third generation of our Roberge dit Lapierre, Charles-Prisque Roberge married Agathe Goulet at St. Pierre, I.O., in 1761. The Goulet intermarried with the Roberge over several generations. Nearly a century after Prisque and Agathe, our great-grandfather, François Roberge, from Ste. Claire parish fathered eight children with Euphémie Goulet, his first wife. A woman so named was baptized 17 Sept. 1834 in the parish of St. Joseph de Lanoraie, north of the St. Lawrence River in Berthier county.

There seems to be no surviving record of that marriage, which would have been about 1850. Only two of their children, Louis and Ceanne, are known to have reached adulthood. Born 1855, Louis became a cigar-maker in Fort Edward, N.Y., and died of pneumonia in a Glens Falls hospital at age 49. Ceanne, born 1860 in Glens Falls, married Gustave Izaac Robillard in 1878. Their son, William, born in 1880, lived to be 95.

PRDH traces Euphémie’s Goulet family back seven generations to the sparsely documented couple Thomas Goulet and Antoinette Feilland. A son named Jacques served an indenture at Chateau Richer and was also recorded at Sillery. He raised 12 children with Marguerite Mulier before dying at l'Ange Gardien parish near fort Quebec in 1688. A son named Nicolas was baptized at Notre Dame de Québec in 1647 and married Sainte Cloutier at Chateau Richer in 1672. This affiliated family had settled on Ile d'Orléans in the parish of St. Pierre.

The kinship tie of Francois Roberge’s first wife to his third-generation forebear, Agathe Goulet, is now difficult to trace. Agathe was a greatgranddaughter of Nicolas Goulet and Sainte Cloutier. A woman with the same name, Sainte Cloutier (1622-1706), was a granddaughter of Zacharie Cloutier (1590-1677) and great-granddaughter of Denis Cloutier. Both those men joined Champlain’s colony as laborers in 1619 and returned again to Québec in 1634 in the Giffard migration from Perche. Zacharie married a widow named Xaintes Du Pont (1596-1680) in 1634. The Cloutier clan of Chateau Richer is now said to have produced more descendants than any other old family.

A few years after the death of Euphémie Goulet, nicknamed Phoebe, in Glens Falls, N.Y., about 1864, great-grandfather François Roberge married Marcelline Boisvert, a young widow from Pointe du Lac, Quebec. The next few chapters examine the origin of Marcelline's family. They unpack fresh information that was still unknown when the Roberge-Boisvert family chronicle, New Light on an old Family of Yamachiche, was published in 2012.

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Notes:

1 Demers, Benjamin. La Paroisse de St. Romuald d'Etchemin avant et depuis son érection. Laflamme, Québec 1906: pp. 44-45.

2 Ibid., pp. 12-26

3 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ): TP1, S28, P4138 & P4684

4 BAnQ-Fonds Intendants: TP1, S28, P705

5 BAnQ-Québec: TL5, D80

6 Gosselin, Auguste Honoré. Les Normands au Canada: Henri de Bernières: premier curé de Québec. Imprimerie de l'Eure, Evreux 1896: p. 39-41, 151-168 <https://archive.org/details/henridebernire00goss>

7 Gosselin, Auguste Honoré. Vie de Mgr de Laval, premier eveque de Québec et Apotre du Canada. 1622-1708. Imprimerie du L.-J. Demers + Frères, Québec 1890: p. 81 <http://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/2021711>

8 Gosselin. Henri de Bernières …: p. 42

9 Gosselin. Vie de Mgr de Laval…: pp. 151-168

10 <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Joliet>

11 Gosselin, Henri de Bernières…: p. 64

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., p. 100

14 BAnQ-Quebec: TL5, D894.2