My Earliest Known French and Canadian Ancestors

Paternal  Side                                       Maternal  Side

                                                                                                                                                 Gen.

Jean-de Celle Duclos and Collet Lagnot    Pierre LeMoyne  and Judith DUCHESNE                  9th

                          native                                                              natives 

                      Noria, France                      St Jacques, Dieppe Rouen,Normandie, France

                              |                                                                           |

                    (Progenitors                                                           (Progenitors

    Duclos/Poisson family in Canada)                    Messier dit St Michel/LeMoyner family in Canada) 

    Gabriel de Celle Duclos married                                  Michel Messier dit St Michel Married  

                 Barbe Poisson                                                   Ann LeMoyne                               8th                        
                    Nov 19, 1652.                                                        25 Feb 1658

                               |                                                                          |
     Gabriel Lambert Duclos      married            Anne Messier de St Michel                      7th                                         

                                                        Aug 26, 1687

                                                                  |

                                 Alexander Duclos  married  Elizabeth Philippe                              6th

                                                                      21 Nov 1735

Alexander Duclos and his wife Elizabeth Philippe’s see here: 1735 marriage contract was the oldest marriage document I'd recently discovered. The names of their parents listed in that record also provided me another generation of family members that I would be able to use in following back through on both the paternal (Duclos side ) and paternal (Messier de St Michel side).  And once again, I have made an interesting discovery.

  

There appears to be some previously documented special history attached to the Duclos and Messier de St Michel family lines that I hope to learn more about. However, finding my way back to my 8th Generation great Grandparents have led me to understand how these two families first started here in North American, New France (Quebec Canada region) in the Mid-17th century.  

It appears to have started through family ties and contracted marriages to two women who were discovered as being  members of the Les Fillles a marier.   In my previous blog posting, you can read more about these ladies under the tiled: Les Filles à marier 1634 à 1663 

Below are two women in my ancestral line, my 8th generation great grandmothers whose names were Ann LeMoine or LeMOYNE and Barbe POISSON.   A short bio about their lives and the men they married are also proved.

Maternal  Side:

Anne LeMOINE ( LeMOYNE) from Dieppe, Normandy arrived in Canada in 1657.  She perhaps arrived with her sister, Jeanne.  Her brothers Jacques and Charles Lemoyne appear to have been already in Montréal.  All children of an innkeeper, Pierre Lemoine, in Dieppe, Anne was the youngest of this group of children, being 19 when she arrived in Canada.

Her uncle, Adrien Duchesne (her mother's brother), had been a surgeon in Ville-Marie (Montréal) from the years 1631 to 1648, so Montréal was her destination.  First mention of her in Montreal is 12-29-1657 where she is a witness to her sister's marriage contract.
In February 1658, she married Michel Messier, a fur  trader. 

He seems to have come to New France with Chomedey de Maisonneuv’s contingent, which arrived at Ville-Marie in the middle of November 1653.  Various relatives were already in Montréal.  Although Messiers's name does not appear on the muster-roll of contract workers, he must have crossed the ocean with them, for on the 10th of December, 1653 he signed as a witness to the promise of marriage between his cousin, Catherine Thierry and Charles LeMoyne de Longueuil et de Châteauguay, Anne Lemoine's older brother.

In the autumn of 1654, three years before Anne Lemoine's arrival in Montréal, a young Michel Messier was captured by the Iroquois; he was set free the following summer and taken to Ville-Marie by a Mohawk captain named La Grande Armée, in a prisoner exchange of sorts.

Subsequently, Messier became interested in land clearing, and on 11-4-1657, when he was 19, he bought from Charles LeMoyne, his soon-to-be brother-in-law, for 900 livres, a 30-acre piece of land called la provençale. On 2-18-1658 before the notary Bénigne Basset and in the presence of the notables of the town, he signed his marriage contract with Anne LeMoyne.

In 1661, after a short respite, the Iroquois raids on Ville-Marie started up again.  On March 24th, Michel Messier was again captured with a few settlers.  He now was the father of a two-year old daughter, and Anne LeMoyne was pregnant.    On June 22nd, eleven days after his second daughter was born, some Iroquois who had come to Montreal stated that Messier had been burned by the Onondagas and that they did not know whether he was still alive.  Life in Montréal was never simple.

But at the end of 1663, he was back again with his family after having made his escape.  In August of 1665, Anne LeMoyne had a third daughter.  In November of the same year, the Sulpicians signed over to him a 30-acre piece of land above the one that he already owned.  The 1667 census shows him as having 7 head of cattle and 30 acres under cultivation.  On 5-14-1668, Messier and his brother-in-law Jacques LeMoyne de Sainte-Marie received conjointly the fief of Cap-de-la-Trinité, which they divided between them on 8-1-1676.  Messier's portion was called Cap-Saint-Michel.

Above information taken from website Biography Canada, www.biographi.ca

Both Anne Lemoine and Michel Messier died in 1725 in Varennes... both were 87 years old.

Paternal  Side:  

Barbe Poisson was born about 1631 and died on January 7, 1711 in Montreal.  She married Leonard Lucault on October 12, 1648 and they had a daughter Marie born on July 01, 1650.  She grew up to marry Rene Cuillerier and gave birth to sixteen children.  Marie died on December 22, 1727 in Montreal.

Leonard Lucault died of injuries sustained in a raid by the Iroquois, on June 20, 1651; and Barbe then married Gabriel Celles on November 19, 1652.  Gabriel was born in 1626 at Nonant, Caen, Calvados, France; the son of Jean Celles and Colette Pagnot.  He arrived in the colony as a judge.

Barbe made a name for herself when in 1661, her husband was out working in the fields and the Iroquois launched another attack.  All those around watched the advancing Iroquois in terror, when Barbe sprang into action, grabbing an armload of guns and running with them to the men in trouble.  She reportedly said,  "I lost one husband to the Iroquois. I will not lose another".  According to Dollier de Casson's Histoire de Montreal:  "During an attack by 160 Indians in February 1661, only Le Moyne (De Loungeville) had a weapon with which to defend himself. Just as he was about to be captured he was saved by Mme. Celles Duclos, who brought him an armful of weapons."

Barbe and Gabriel had ten children before his death on November 15, 1671.    Return to click here: Finding Ancestral Proof on Paper and in Stone .