Grande Recrue of 1653
Marie Lorgueil was born about 1638, identified as a native of the parish of Saint-Vivien at Rouen in Normandy, the daughter of Pierre Lorgueil and Marie Bruyère.¹
She came to Montréal on 16 November 1653 aboard the Saint-Nicolas as part of the Grande Recrue. This recruitment, organized in France by Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, brought more than one hundred settlers to Ville-Marie at a moment when the colony was close to collapse from war and depopulation. Many of the men had signed five-year engagements as laborers and land clearers, and the women who came with them married soon after arrival, forming the first permanent farming households of the settlement.¹
She married Toussaint Hunault dit Deschamps at Montréal on 23 November 1654.² No marriage contract has been found for the couple, and neither spouse signed the parish register.¹
Toussaint Hunault, born about 1625 at Saint-Pierre-ès-Champs near Gournay in Picardy, was the son of Nicolas Hunault and Marie Benoist. He had been recruited for Canada in 1653, signing his engagement at La Flèche for five years as a plowman and land clearer at a wage of seventy-five livres per year with an advance of 120 livres. On 24 July 1654, four months before the marriage, he received a land grant from Maisonneuve.¹
The parish registers of Montréal record the baptisms of their children:
- Thècle dite Thérèse, baptized 23 September 1655
- André, baptized 3 August 1657
- Jeanne, baptized 2 November 1658
- Pierre, baptized 22 November 1660
- Marie-Thérèse, baptized 12 February 1663
- Mathurin, baptized 27 December 1664
- Françoise, baptized 5 December 1667
- Toussaint, baptized 25 August 1673
- Charles, baptized 25 July 1676²
Several of the children died young.¹
In the census of 1667 the family appears at Montréal with cleared land and a growing household, part of the first generation of permanent agricultural settlers on the island.³
On 13 September 1690 Toussaint Hunault dit Deschamps was killed by Gabriel Dumont, Baron de Blaignac, a lieutenant of marines. Marie and her children brought suit against Dumont, ceding their rights in the case to the merchant Charles de Couagne in return for 520 livres and the cancellation of a debt owed by Toussaint.¹
As a widow she continued to act in her own name in the notarial records. On 10 November, before the notary Claude Maugue, she executed a transport and retrocession to Charles de Couagne with a cession to Jacques Talebot.⁴
Marie Lorgueil died 29 November 1700 on the Île Sainte-Thérèse and was buried the following day at Varennes.²
Her life is documented in the records of the Grande Recrue, the earliest parish registers of Montréal, the colonial censuses, and the notarial acts that record both her marriage and her activity as a widow.
Sources
- Peter J. Gagné, Before the King’s Daughters: The Filles à marier, 1634–1662 (Pawtucket, R.I.: Quintin Publications, 2002), 209, Marie Lorgueil.
- Québec (Canada), Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), marriage of Marie Lorgueil and Toussaint Hunault dit Deschamps, 23 Nov 1654, Montréal; baptisms of their children; burial of Marie Lorgueil, 30 Nov 1700, Varennes; see also Cyprien Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes, s.v. “Hunault.”
- Benjamin Sulte, Histoire des Canadiens-Français, 1608–1880, census extract for Montréal, household of Toussaint Hunault and Marie Lorgueil.
- Québec, Canada, Notarial Records, 1637–1935, repertory of notary Claude Maugue, 10 Nov., transport and retrocession by Marie Lorgueil, widow of Toussaint Hunault, to Charles de Couagne with cession to Jacques Talebot.