Pierre BOUCHER De Montbrun sieur de Boucherville

  Notes générales :

Born in 1622 in Mortagne, France, Pierre was the son of Gaspard Boucher, a peasant and carpenter by trade, and his wife, Nicole Lemere. The eldest of eight children, three of which died in their infancy, he and all of his brothers and sisters except Madeleine were baptized at the Notre-Dame Church in Mortagne. Pierre immigrated with his father and the remainder of the family in 1635.

Pierre, the eldest child, left home after having been engaged as a "Donné" by the Jesuit Fathers to accompany them at their Mission Sainte-Marie in Huronia, Huronia being a long thousand miles in land in present-day western Ontario. During his four year stay (1637-1640) in Huronia, Pierre lived with the Indians, learned their languages, observed their way of life, and with his close relationship with the Missionaries, obtained his education.

Following a riot at the Mission, caused by the Indians blaming the French for an epidemic that was striking them, a battle broke out and Pierre Boucher sustained an arm injury during the encounter. The Missionaries had to close the Mission and leave the site.

Back in Québec in 1641, Pierre became a militia man and First Interpreter of the then Governor Huault de Montmagny, and a liaison agent between the French and the Indians. In that capacity, he accompanied the Governor on all his missions andwas present at the founding of Montréal in 1642.

On his way back from Montréal to Québec on August 20th, he took part in an encounter with a group of two hundred Iroquois at the mouth of the Richelieu River. "We managed to escape without a loss." Pierre Boucher relates in his Memoirs.

In 1644 he was transferred to Three-Rivers and named Clerk-In-Chief of the post by the One Hundred Associates Company, the governing body of New France at the time.

The French settlement of Three Rivers (Trois-Rivières) on the banks of the Saint-Lawrence River, halfway between Montréal and Québec, founded in 1634, eight years prior to Montréal by Sieur de LaViolette, was the first important trading postestablished outside Québec. Located at the mouth of the Saint-Maurice River which flows down from the North to join the Saint-Lawrence on the outskirts of Three-Rivers. This trading post was situated handily and gave the One Hundred Associates Company first choice of all the fur brought in by the friendly Indians. This favorable and peaceful fur trading settlement was of short duration, soon to often be attacked during the Indian Wars which started in Huronia in 1642 spreading eastward to Montréal and Three-Rivers; the Iroquois eager to take control of the fur trade in the hands of the Hurons and the Algonquins. The war lasted twenty-five years and reached Three-Rivers in 1644. From there on, Pierre Boucher took partin most encounters that took place and for his bravery fighting the enemy, he was named Commanding Officer of the Fort in 1651.

Hardly was he back and reinforcing the fortifications that in 1652, he is called to replace the Governor, Kerdobot, killed with nineteen men in an ambush outside the fort. The long expected Iroquois mass attack happened in the summer of 1653when Three-Rivers was besieged by approximately six hundred Iroquois. After a six-month siege marked by many assaults, Pierre Boucher with only forty-six men succeeded in defending the fort, forced the enemy to retreat and sign a peace treatyon my own terms", he said.

Governor Jean de Lauzon recognized the significance of Boucher's actions noting "If Trois-Rivières had fallen, Québec and New France would have been lost." The country was so poor that they could not pay the officers. Lauzon named Boucher the Govenor of Trois-Rivières as a reward and gave him a large tract of land 1-1/2 league by 2 leagues (15120 acres) on Lake Saint-Peter at the Yamachiche River. Pierre Boucher named it "Grosbois".

Additionally, in 1655 he received from the One Hundred Associated Company, the company with the authority to govern and control the colony, a forty-five acre island at the mouth of the Saint-Maurice River and a four hundred acre farming tract from the Jesuit Fathers at Cap-de-la-Madeleine. In 1657 he was named a member of the Sovereign Council and in 1661 was ennobled by the King of France, the first man ennobled in Canada. So while most of those possessing seigneuries in New-France were not considered nobles, Boucher was actually then a Sieur, or Lord, as the term was used in France. Sent to France by the Governor d'Avogour to plead for the urgent needs of the Colony, he was received by the Court and had an audience with King Louis XIV who promised him help. From Three-Rivers he sent to Colbert, the King's first Councilor, a detailed account on the advantages and inconveniences of living in Canada.

On August 20, 1662 Governor de Lauzon conceded to him another fief on the banks of Lake Saint-Peter containing 7728 acres. He named it Saint-Francois. The following year he became Royal Judge of the Three-Rivers Court. The long sought-after help finally materialized in 1665 with the arrival of the Carignan Regiment, fifteen hundred strong of well trained soldiers. With the help of the local militia, they, within a year, put an end to the Indian War. The Colony, now at peace, hada population of approximately four thousand souls.

Now forty-five, Pierre Boucher decided to give up his governorship, for reasons that will be discussed later, in favor of his son-in-law René Gaultier de Varennes, and realized his dream of establishing with his family on his seigneury in Boucherville, a large tract of land two leagues along the Saint-Lawrence River opposite Montréal. This tract of land granted him in 1664 was more fertile and easier to develop than the two other seigneuries. It is here in his developing town ofBoucherville that he was to spend the next fifty years of his life until his death on April 19, 1717 at age ninety-five.

Pierre Boucher married twice. His first marriage took place in Québec on April 8, 1649 with Marie Chrétienne, a young Huron girl which had been raised and educated by the Ursuline nuns. She was the daughter of Three-Rivers Huron Chief Pachirini. The union did not last long as she died the following December giving birth to a child which died two days later.

Following an eighteen month widowhood, Pierre Boucher, at 30, took Jeanne Crevier, aged 16, for his second wife. Born in Rouen, France in 1636, Jeanne Crevier was the eldest of a family of eleven children, the daughter of Christophe Crevier,Sieur de la Meslee and of Jeanne Enard.

Baker by trade, Christophe Crevier, his wife and Jeanne came to New France in 1639 and first settled on a lot next to his future son-in-law Pierre Boucher at Cap de la Madeleine (Three-Rivers) where we can presume they first met. Like many of his time, Christophe Crevier quickly realized that to provide for his growing family he had to get involved in the fur trading business. This new venture necessitated many trips to Québec and sometimes to France. Meanwhile, Jeanne was beingeducated at the Ursuline Convent in Québec.

On November 1, 1650, returning from a short visit in France, Christophe Crevier bought a house on the Grande-Allée in Québec and it is in this home on July 12, 1652 that Jeanne signed her marriage contract and married on the 19th. Two years later, the Creviers sold their property in Québec and came back to Three-Rivers where they settled for good on an island at the mouth of the Saint-Maurice River where they established a fur trading post.


Jeanne Crevier had two sisters and five brothers who lived to adulthood: Marie, Marguerite, Antoine and François (both killed fighting the Indians), Jean, Jean-Baptiste, and Nicholas. Like their father, the sons and the son-in-laws were allfur traders, trained and knowledgeable in the way of river and forest, and guerrilla fighters--men who could meet the hostile Indians in their own warfare. At their father's death in 1666, their mother continued to operate the trading post andshe was accused of selling alcohol to the Indians. Pierre Boucher, then the Governor, was against this illicit trade and instead of having to take the side against his mother-in-law, he decided to resign his post in Three-Rivers and to retireto his seigneury in Boucherville. Thus, in his Memoirs, he wrote: ".. to have a place in this country consecrated to God, where honest people can live in peace."

Because the City of Boucherville wanted to recognize the important role Jeanne Crevier played supporting her husband to lay deep and broad the foundation of New-France and the early settlement of their city, the city of Boucherville dedicated a monument to her in 1992. This brave and heroic woman gave birth to a family of fifteen children, nine boys and six girls. They all lived to adulthood, a rare event at that time. Two of them, Philippe and Nicolas, became priests. Genevievean Ursuline nun, died at age 90 after 70 years devoted to her religious order. Louise, who by choice remained unmarried, died at the age of 85. Jacques at the age of 15 died in a hunting accident and all the others married, had families and played important roles in the foundation, the defense and the development of the country. At her death in 1727 at age 91, Jeanne Crevier had seventy-eight grand-children. She deserved a monument in Boucherville which she helped to establish.

Excerpts From a Book on Life in New France Published by Pierre Boucher

Winter
Are winters very cold? Some days are certainly very harsh, but we can still do what we have to; we dress a little more than usual; we put on gloves that we call "mittens"; all the houses have good fires, because wood here costs nothing, all you have to do is chop it and bring it into the house. We use oxen to carry it, on special sleds that slide on the snow, and thus a single ox can pull as much as two oxen pulling a cart in the summer. As I have already said, the weather is quite good most days and it seldom rains in the winter. The greatest inconvenience is that cattle must be fed in the stables for over four months, because the earth is covered with snow during that time. However in accommodating the snow, it has a great advantage in that we can easily bring out of the forest, comprised of as much water as land, the timber that we fell and use for building and our other needs. We drag all the timber out of the forest using the sleds I have already mentioned, much more easily and at a much lower cost than by cart in the summer.

Mosquitoes
The second inconvenience are the mosquitoes. They live in abundance in the forests during the three months of summer. There are less on the farms, because they are not strong enough to fly against the wind. However, the woods shelter them and they are extremely inconvenient, especially in the morning and evening; their bite is sharper when they feel rain. Some people get bitten to the point where their face is extremely puffed up; however, that condition doesn't last and practically disappears in twenty-four hours. Smoke chases mosquitoes away; that is why we always have a fire going and stay close to the smoke when we sleep in the woods.

=================================
Sieur de Grosbois et de Boucherville; au rec.66, à Trois-Rivières; au rec.81, à Boucherville; donné des Jésuites 1639-1641; interprète à Trois-Rivières en 1645; commis de la Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France en 1649; gouverneur de Trois-Rivières 19-08 au 08-09-1652, 16-07-1653 à juillet 1658, 01-09-1662 au 26-09-1667 (commission 08-10-1663); en France 22-10-1661 au 27-10-1662; lettres de noblesse 1661, renouvelées 17-06-1707 (enregistrées 06-10-1710 Québec); lieutenant général civil et criminel de Trois-Rivières 17-11-1663 au 29-10-1664; établi à Boucherville 1667; concession du fief Grosbois 23-05-1653 et 09-08-1655, reconcédé 03-11-1672, dont il vend une partie à son fils Lambert 02-07-1693 (Grosbois-Ouest ou PetiteRivière Yamachiche) et le reste à Charles et Julien LeSieur (Grosbois-Est ou Grande rivière Yamachiche); concession du fief de l'Île Saint-Joseph près Trois-Rivières 20-10-1655 (dans rivière Saint-Maurice) (après14-06-1723?); concession de l'arrière-fief Sainte-Marie dans le Cap 09-03-1656, vendu à Simon Baillargé 01-02-1713 (après ?); concession de la seigneurie de la Rivière Saint-François (ou Saint-François-du-Lac) 20-08-1662, vendue à Jean Crevier 23-07-1676; achat, après 05-07-1668, du fief de LaPoterie (ou Niverville) à Jacques LeNeuf; concession de la seigneurie de Boucherville 03-11-1672 (érection d'une terre concédée par Lauzon dans la seigneurie de LaCetière 20-04-1662), augmentée des Îlets, grèves et battures 17-08-1698.

Pierre épousa Madeleine OUÉBADINOUKOUÉ dit Chrétienne en 1648. (Madeleine OUÉBADINOUKOUÉ dit Chrétienne naquit environ en 1620.)

Pierre épousa ensuite Jeanne CREVIER.