Jacques Goulet was a pioneer on the river's edge of  Beaupré. In 1666 he was living with his wife, seven children and a domestic. The family had 15 acres of cultivated land and five cows. By 1681 Jacques had worked sufficiently to have 30 acres of cultivated land, his five cows and a horse. so one might say that he was a prosperous farmer.

The youngest son of Jacques and Marguerite, is the patron of the line that concerns this particular article, for it is this line that connects with the Macfie. Joseph Goulet born 1669 at Chateau Richer which is now called Montmorency, located just est of Quebec City. During his youth around 1688 he signed up as a  "coureur des bois" and traveled out west to trade for animal skins with the Indians. Joseph married Anne Julien  in 1692 in Ange Gardien Quebec. Their great grandson Francois born 1724 decided to remain in Canada under the new rulers the English (1763) and it appears that either he or his son Francois displaced them selves to the area around Chateauguay - Valleyfield . We can imagine, if we cannot confirm, that perhaps Francois, the father had been obliged to join a French Militia group to fight the English armies and had along with his company been transferred to the Chateauguay valley, to protect New France from invading English for the American Colonies. Once the conflict was terminated, his group may have been disbanded in that area and he decided to remain..

In any case the Goulet family of which we are concerned remained in the Valleyfield area until the early 1900's where upon we find them in Montreal. This bring us down to Rene Goulet born 1908 in Valleyfield, and apprenticed in Montreal to the firm Lindy- Hall of Montreal. The company having obtained a contract with the gouvernment of the times to build refrigeration lockers for the fishing industry in the peninsula of Gaspé, moved his young family to Chandler Quebec. Once the contract was completed young Rene was asked to stay on and work for the gouvernment as refrigeration inspector of the the various cold storage lockers that he had help construct. A position that he did not refuse, and a position he held until his retirement in 1970.

In Chandler, on April 6th 1938, Francoise Goulet made her appearance, she was the fourth child , the third girl for Rene and his wife of eight years Gertrude Dumont. Shortly after her birth the family moved from Chandler, to the town of Gaspé itself, where they installed themselves in the former large brick residence of Dr Buckley. They remained in Gaspé until 19--, moving to a residence on Brown St. in Quebec City, then onto a modest home in Ste Foy until 1975. At that time following a disastrous automobile accident in which Rene, Gertrude and their young grandson Stephen Lafleur were seriously injured, it was determined that the difficulties of keeping the house were too much, so Rene and Gertrude moved to an apartment in St. Lambert Quebec.

The Dumonts of Québec seem to descend from several different ancestors. But it should be born in mind that a number of French immigrants named DUMONT lived in the colony without leaving behind any posterity. According to the 1667 census, a certain Jean DUMONT, probably a "thirty-six monther", was working as a "domestic" for Pierre Pellerin dit (alias) Saint-Amant, a master nailer living at Trois-Rivières. He disappeared from the records afterwards. There was also Robert DUMONT, a priest who arrived in the colony at the very beginning of the eighteenth century. Roch DUMONT dit Champagne was a soldier in the company of the marquis Antoine de Crisafy; he had a sad fate: he was "arquebused" [shot] at Montréal in December 1691. Finally, Gabriel DUMONT, baron de Blaignac, another soldier, became engaged to Catherine Nolan, daughter of Pierre Nolan and Catherine Houart in 1685; the marriage contract was annulled and two months later, the girl married Mathieu-François Martin.

Of the seven sons born to Jean DUMONT and Marguerite Morin, only one would marry. He was their youngest child, Pierre, born at Charlebourg in 1712. At MontrĂ©al on 16 November 1744, he  married ThĂ©rèse Gaudry. Jean DUMONT was the son of Jean DUMONT and Anne Moneron, of Cognac-le-Froid in Limousin. At Charlebourg, he was married in June 1689 to Marguerite Morin, daughter of AndrĂ© Morin and Marguerite Moreau. Eight of their thirteen children died at birth or shortly afterwards. Four daughters were married: Marie-Louise to François Barbeau; Marie, to Pierre Lereau; Louise-Marguerite, to Pierre Savard and Jeanne, to Jacques Guignon. Old Jean DUMONT, a mason by trade, died at Charlebourg on 16 November 1724. His wife, Marguerite Morin, had died earlier, on 5 April 1715.

Besides the various immigrants whose principal surname was DUMONT, there were a number of others for whom it was a "dit" or cognomen, i.e. a kind of family nickname, often inherited through the generations and often becoming the only surname of the line. There was Nicolas Foulon dit DUMONT, from Brucourt in Normandy; Jacques Guéret dit DUMONT, from Canchy, also in Normandy, and Eustache Lambert dit DUMONT, who was born at Québec in 1658 and had added the DUMONT to his name.

At the very end of the history of New France as such, the name DUMONT crops up in the tale of  the battle of Sainte-Foy of 28 April 1760. At the time, Jean-Baptiste DUMONT, a QuĂ©bec City merchant originally from Saint-Caprais (a village not far from Agen, in Guyenne), owned some land on the Sainte-Foy road; there was a mill on the land. The day before the battle, LĂ©vis had stationed five companies of grenadiers in the mill. It was there and thereabouts, according to Philippe-Baby Casgrain, that Murray attacked the next morning with twenty pieces of field artillery and two mortars. The grenadiers resisted bravely in and around the mill, but were forced to evacuate and  retreat before the enemy's numbers and firepower.

      text by Jacques Laboursière Trans.: Michel Thibault