Acadiensis/Volume 1/Number 3/La Valliere of Chignecto
La Valliere of Chignecto.
(Read before the Historical Society of Chignecto).
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
N 24th October, 1676, Frontenac, Governor of Canada, granted to Michel Leneuf de La Valliere, the title of fief and seigneury of the country of Chignecto, with power to administer superior, middle and low justice, and the rights of hunting and fishing. The bounds of this seigneury, as set forth in the grant, shew it extended "ten leagues in front, which are on the south side between Cape Breton and Isle Percée, beginning from the River Kigiskouabouguet, comprising the same to another river called Kimoutgouiche, also comprised with ten leagues in depth inland, wherein the Bay Chignitou and Cape Tormentin are part." This grant was held by homage at the chateau of St. Louis at Quebec. Dr. Ganong, our foremost cartologist, assigns the grant to the lands between the rivers River Philip and Shemogue, extending back to near Budro's on the Petitcodiac, and to near Springhill in Cumberland.
This was truly a lordly domain, embracing forests and fisheries, mines and marshes, rivers and the coasts of two great bays. The description was, however, sufficiently indefinite to puzzle even the Council of State at Versailles to understand exactly what it did embrace when called upon some years later to settle the bounds. Near the close of the seventeenth century settlements were made at Chipoudy by Pierre Thibideau, and at Fox Creek by Guillaume Blanchard. Sieur de La Valliere claimed these settlers as his censitaires, or tenants, a pretence which they stoutly resisted. The controversy was carried to Versailles by de Villieu, La Valliere's agent, and La Valliere's title was, after years of controversy, held to embrace Shepody Bay as well as the settlement at Fox Creek.
So important a grant could not have been made except to a man of some consequence and consideration. Talon in a memorial (1667) states there were only four noble families in Canada. Those meant were the Repentigny, Tilly, Poterie and Aillebout, and he asks for patents of nobility for five more.
La Valliere was a member of the Poterie family that came with the Repentigny family from Caen to Quebec in 1638. De La Poterie was the first signeur of Portneuf, who seems not to have allowed the circumstance of his son's birth in Canada to stand in the way of his education and training, for he appears to have sent him to France when he was seventeen years of age, no doubt to finish his studies. He was doubly connected with the Denys family by marriage. In 1666 he was military officer in Cape Breton, and in the territories of Nicholas Denys, Sieur de Fronsac; and while there married Marie Francoise Denys, daughter of the Sieur de Fronsac. He again married in 1687 Francoise Denys, widow of Jacques Cailleteau, and daughter of Simon Denys, Sieur de La Trinite. Simon and Nicholas were brothers. The first wife of La Valliere is supposed to have died between 1682 and 1685 at Chignecto, and to have been interred there. The second wife was found dead in her house, rue de Bande, in Quebec, on 12th September, 1721. A servant named Catherine Charland was accused of having assassinated her. At that date Sieur de La Valliere had been dead some years. This is anticipating.
The surname of La Valliere is first mentioned in connection with a property near the fort, Three Rivers, Q., possessed by him in 1664. La Valliere seems to have led a life of ceaseless activity. While nominally an officer in the guards, he was a voyageur, a wood ranger, a mariner, a trader, and a diplomat, and in one capacity or another he was constantly on the more, and knew something of the coasts and forests from Cape Cod to Hudson Bay. In 1671 he is found in an expedition to the western lakes; in 1672 he is at Chignecto, where he established a trading post; the same year he becomes a land-owner at Lake St. Francis; the year after he is at Three Rivers the Jesuit record names him as officiating as god father at an Indian christening.
La Valliere had also recommended himself to Frontenac by address and valor. In 1661, then upwards of twenty years of age, he had accompanied Father Dablon to North (Hudson) Bay—a most toilsome and hazardous journey—in response to a request of the Indians there, who sent a deputation to Quebec, and asked for one in return to confirm the good understanding then existing, and to provide them with a missionary. This work he appears to have performed with success. He was at the date of the grant captain of Count Frontenac's guards. Another evidence of the governor's esteem for him may be gathered from the circumstances that, five years later, Frontenac had a royal row with du Chesneau, the Intendant, because the latter had refused to pay La Yalliere's salary. The facts are told by du Chesneau in a letter to M. de Seignlay, written 13th November, 1681. He says:
"He (Frontenac) abused me very much in his study because I had refused to authorize the payment of a somewhat large sum o money to Sieur de La Valliere, in whom he had conferred the government of Acadia. I justified myself in the precise command of the King, and of his lordship your father, not to direct the payment of any money before it was entered on His Majesty's estimate."
La Valliere, having secured his grant, left Quebec with his family and retainers for his new home. While his destination was on the Bay of Fundy, no doubt he came by vessel, and possibly landed at Bay Verte, and followed the trail through the woods, which would have been more expeditious than coasting around Nova Scotia, and easier than the Kennebec route. When he arrived at Chignecto—now Fort Lawrence—he found his territory already occupied.
The advantages of Chignecto for fur trading with the Indians, and for cattle raising, had not escaped the eyes of Port Royal; and one of the residents there, Jacques Bourgeois, who, in coasting along the bay, engaged in trading ventures amongst the Indians, had spied out the land at Beaubassin; and, returning to Port Royal, sold out his farm and his cattle and came back to Beaubassin, accompanied by his two sons-in-law, Pierre Sire and Germain Girouard, and the latter's two brothers-in-law, Jacques Belon and Thomas Cormier, and also by Pierre Arsinault. This little colony comprised the first European settlers in Chignecto, and, excepting the settlement at Baie des Vents, the first in the present Province of New Brunswick.[1]
Bourgeois, the leader of the immigrants, was in his way a notable man. He was a surgeon by profession; his name appears in the capitulation of 1654 as brother-in-law and lieutenant of Doucet de La Verdure, guardian of the children of d'Aulay, and commandant at Port Royal; and he was one of the hostages delivered to the English. His settlement at Beaubassin was made between the years 1671 and 1675.
Sieur de La Valliere's grant did not permit him to interfere with existing rights, so he located himself beside Bourgeois and constructed there his manorial buildings.
He brought with him from Canada a number of families, amongst them were the Chiasson and the Cottard; also he had employed people bearing the familiar names of Mercier, Lagasse and Perthuis, (the latter held the responsible office of armorer), and also Haché Galand, who was his man of business and his man-at-arms; he could lead a fur trading expedition into the wilderness, or he could direct an attack on the English. He married an Acadian lass—Anne Cormier—and their descendants to-day number hundreds of families. As nearly all the female part of the population was on the Bourgeois side of the settlement, it was not long before any jealousies melted away and the people were all Bourgeois.
It is presumable, but not certain, that the Bourgeois settlement was at Fort Lawrence, in the vicinity of the Chignecto Ship Railway Dock, and that La Valliere's was at Tonge's Island, the former name of which, as appears on the old plans and maps, was Isle de La Valliere. The remains of old French cellars are to be seen there, which must have been of an earlier date than 1760, for at that time it was covered with a heavy forest growth, as contemporary drawings show.
Sieur de La Valliere displayed much energy in organizing his settlement. He made clearings, built houses for himself and his families, erected his stockades, made dykes, enclosed a considerable quantity of marsh, and built a mill. He owned a vessel called the "Saint Antoine," with which he traded up and down the Bay of Fundy. The "Saint Antoine" was also used by the ecclesiastics of those days in their missionary efforts to convert the heathen. It is recorded that the bishop of Quebec used her on his pastoral visit to Acadia in 1689. It is hinted in the early records that the "Saint Antoine" was no saint; that she only ante-dated those missionary ships fitted out by pious hands in New England to convert the Africans, and that went forward to their mission laden with New England missionaries and New England rum. Brandy was a leading article of truck with the Indians at that date, and was the basis of a profitable trade to the Europeans, though the demoralizing and destructive effects of it were as patent two hundred years ago as to-day. Strenuous attempts were made by the bishops and some of the governors from time to time to suppress it, but with only temporary success.
- ↑ In 1672 or 1673 some French families from St. Malo settled Baie des Vents. At this time the French had two forts in the country, Pentagoet, where Grandfontaine, governor, resided, and that at Jemseg, where M. de Marson held command.