♂Charles Saint-Étienne de La Tour

Charles Saint-Étienne de La Tour (1593–1666) was a fur trader and governor of Acadia who lived on its coasts for more than half a century, from Cap de Sable to the mouth of the Saint John River. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Anne Saint-Étienne de La Tour (1661–1738).

Early life and Cap de Sable

He was born in 1593, probably in the French province of Champagne, the son of Claude Saint-Étienne de La Tour and Marie de Salazar; the family name may once have been Turgis. On 25 February 1610 he sailed from Dieppe with his father, in a party led by Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt that was sent to reoccupy the abandoned settlement at Port-Royal. There he became the close friend and lieutenant of Poutrincourt’s son, Charles de Biencourt^W.

After the English destroyed Port-Royal in 1613, Biencourt and his men lived for a time among the Indigenous people of the coast and gave up farming for the fur trade. When Biencourt died in 1623 he left La Tour as his heir. La Tour took charge of the colony and built a strong post at Cap de Sable, Fort Lomeron, named for David Lomeron, his agent in France, where he traded furs and farmed the land.

France’s last post

When war broke out between France and England in 1627, La Tour wrote to Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu asking for men, supplies and a commission. The relief ships were taken at sea by David Kirke^W, and his father was captured with them. With the fall of Quebec in 1629, Fort Lomeron was the last French stronghold left in New France. Claude de La Tour, who had gone over to the English, came to Cap de Sable and urged his son to give up the fort in exchange for an English title and a grant of land.

Charles refused, saying, as Samuel de Champlain recorded, that “he would rather have died than consent to such baseness as to betray his King.” His father then turned to force against him. Troops presumably led by Claude attacked the fort for more than twenty-four hours, without success, and Claude retired with the English to Port-Royal. On 8 February 1631 Louis XIII named Charles governor and lieutenant-general for the king, and he built Fort Sainte-Marie^W at the mouth of the Saint John River, his headquarters from 1635. In 1636 the ship Le Croissant sailed from La Rochelle chartered on his behalf, one of five ships sent to Acadia that spring.

The feud with d’Aulnay

After Isaac de Razilly^W died in 1635, his cousin Charles de Menou d’Aulnay^W took charge of the Razilly interests in Acadia, and the two men, with commands that overlapped, were soon in open conflict. In 1640 La Tour was refused entry at Port-Royal and the two apparently came to blows. D’Aulnay won the favor of the court, and La Tour, ordered to France to answer charges, refused to go and turned to Boston for supplies and hired ships.

The struggle ended in 1645. While La Tour was in Boston, d’Aulnay took Fort Sainte-Marie, and La Tour’s wife, Françoise Jacquelin, died soon after its fall. He spent the next four years at Quebec, trading and once fighting alongside the Huron against the Iroquois. When d’Aulnay died in 1650 La Tour went to France, asked for an inquiry into his conduct, and was cleared; his property and his commission as governor were restored.

Marriage to Jeanne Motin

In 1653 La Tour sailed for Port-Royal with several families of settlers, among them that of his old friend Philippe Mius d’Entremont, and presented d’Aulnay’s widow, Jeanne Motin, with a royal order restoring Fort Sainte-Marie to him. Both were heavily in debt and anxious to end the ruinous rivalry of the two factions, and in 1653, at Port-Royal, Jeanne Motin married Charles Saint-Étienne de La Tour, the chief rival of her late husband. They lived at the mouth of the Saint John River until about 1656, then moved to Cap de Sable.

On 14 July 1654 an English expedition sent by Oliver Cromwell arrived at Saint John. With 70 men against 500 and almost no ammunition, La Tour surrendered and was taken prisoner to England. In 1656 Cromwell recognized his right as a baronet of Nova Scotia^W, as his father’s heir, on condition that he accept English allegiance and pay his debts. La Tour went into partnership with William Crowne and Thomas Temple, and in September 1656 sold them his rights, keeping only a small share of the profit. He seems to have retired with his wife to Cap de Sable, and he died there in 1666.

La Tour was married three times. His first marriage, to a Mi’kmaw woman whose name is not known, was blessed in 1626, and they had three daughters; his second, to Françoise Jacquelin at Port-Royal in 1640, gave him a son who apparently died in childhood. With Jeanne Motin he had five children: Jacques, Charles, Marie, Marguerite and Anne.

The family

According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, their son Charles, born at Cap de Sable between 1663 and 1668, was a fur trader and soldier who in 1696 pleaded his brothers’ and sisters’ claim to the rights in Acadia they had inherited from their parents, a claim largely granted by a decree of the Conseil d’État in 1703. He was severely wounded in the defense of Port-Royal in 1710, received the cross of the Order of Saint Louis^W in 1728, and died a captain in the garrison at Louisbourg in 1731.

Notes

Sources

Almost everything known of La Tour’s life comes from George MacBeath’s biography of him in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1, a compiled history drawn from the documents of the period. His year and probable province of birth, his parents, his three marriages and his death at Cap de Sable in 1666 all rest on it; it says he “appears to have retired with his wife to Cap de Sable”. A WikiTree profile gives his death as 1664; the Dictionary’s 1666 is kept here.

The 1636 fleet

The charter of Le Croissant (60 tons, of La Rochelle, captain Jacques Jamain), taken by David Lomeron and Samuel Georges for La Tour, is listed with the other four ships of the 1636 fleet in a table from the collection of Guy Perron (2022). Another ship of that fleet, Le Saint-Jean, carried Jeanne Motin to Acadia.

The date of the marriage

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography gives the marriage only as 1653 at Port-Royal in La Tour’s entry, which has him sailing for Port-Royal in the summer of that year; its entry for Jeanne Motin gives 24 February 1653.