♂Guillaume Richard

Guillaume Richard (about 1641 – 2 July 1690), known as Lafleur and styled Sieur de La Fleur, was a soldier of the Carignan-Salières regiment who stayed in New France and was killed by the Iroquois while lieutenant of militia at Pointe-aux-Trembles. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Jean Baptiste Richard dit Lafleur (1682–1731).

Early life

He was born about 1641 at Saint-Léger, near Saintes in Saintonge, the son of Jean Richard, a grain merchant, and of a mother whom the 1675 marriage act names only as “dame Meusnier”; the Fichier Origine, a register of French emigrants to Québec, gives her as Anne Meunier. His baptism has not survived: the parish register of Saint-Léger begins only in 1642, the year after his birth, and the Fichier Origine’s researcher reports the baptism there of a younger brother, Mathurin, in August 1644. His father had died by 1675. A family tradition, recorded in the nineteenth century, traced the family to a Welshman named John Richards who was said to have helped the French king escape during the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572; no record supports it.

Soldier

He joined the Carignan-Salières regiment at its formation in 1664. It was the first regiment of regular French troops sent to New France, dispatched to end the Iroquois raids on the colony, and more than four hundred of its men stayed on as settlers when it was recalled. He sailed for New France with the company of Roger de Bonneau de La Varenne at the end of May 1665, reaching Quebec on 19 August after a long and stormy crossing. When the regiment returned to France he chose to stay, and he settled in Canada in 1668.

As a sergeant in the colonial forces he went with Governor Frontenac to Cataracoui, on the site of present-day Kingston, Ontario, where Fort Frontenac was founded in 1673, and he is said to have remained there as the post’s first commandant, a sergeant in charge of the colony’s westernmost fort, until La Salle took it over in 1675. Meanwhile, on 20 August 1674 at Montréal, he formed a partnership (société) with Jacques Berthet dit Champagne before the notary Bénigne Basset. A census of the garrison shows him still at the fort in September 1677.

He was then made sergeant of the garrison at Montreal. From 1679 he made his home at Pointe-aux-Trembles, on the eastern tip of Montreal Island, and by 1684 he was lieutenant of the vanguard company of Montréal. The 1681 census lists him there as a blacksmith (maréchal), aged 40, with his wife Agnes Tessier, given as 23, and three young children, Agnès, Pierre and Guillaume, aged 4, 3 and 2. The household had one gun, four cattle and twelve arpents under cultivation.

Marriage and family

On 26 November 1675 he married Agnes Tessier at Notre-Dame in Montreal. She was sixteen, the daughter of Urbain Tessier dit Lavigne and Marie Archambault, and several of her uncles and her brothers and sister witnessed the marriage. She could sign her name; he could not. The couple had at least ten children, baptized at Pointe-aux-Trembles, where he also served as a churchwarden. Their son Jean-Baptiste became an interpreter in the west and married the daughter of the explorer Pierre You de La Découverte.

Death

On 2 July 1690, during the war with the Iroquois, he led a party of about twenty-five men as lieutenant of the Pointe-aux-Trembles militia near the Coulée Grou at the eastern end of the island, and they were overwhelmed by a war party. He was among those killed. The dead were buried hastily where they fell; the parish register records the burial on 8 July, and four years later, in November 1694, their remains were taken up and reburied in the cemetery of Pointe-aux-Trembles. The register of that reburial calls him captain of the habitants of the parish. His widow sold part of their property in 1692 and later remarried.

Notes

Soldier and Fort Frontenac

Verney, Jack, The Good Regiment, a compiled history of the Carignan-Salières regiment, gives the 1668 settlement and the garrison census of September 1677. Burleigh, H. C., “Richard, Guillaume, dit Lafleur”, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, compiled, gives the 1673 to 1675 command, the residence at Pointe-aux-Trembles from 1679 and the 1684 lieutenancy of the vanguard company of Montréal. Both are compiled accounts, so the body hedges each of these facts.

The 1674 partnership

Roy, Antoine, and Pierre-Georges Roy, Inventaire des greffes des notaires: the partnership of 20 August 1674 with Jacques Berthet dit Champagne, before the notary Bénigne Basset. On record.

The 1681 census

Sulte, Benjamin, Histoire des Canadiens-français, 1608-1880: the census of Pointe-aux-Trembles, with his trade, his household, one gun, four cattle and twelve arpents under cultivation. On record. The census gives Agnes Tessier’s age as 23; Tanguay gives her birth as 23 March 1659.

The death and the burial

Massicotte, E.-Z., Faits curieux de l’histoire de Montréal, and the parish register’s own entry for 2 July 1690: he was killed as lieutenant of the Pointe-aux-Trembles militia. On record. Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes, volume 1, page 516 note, gives the killing near the Coulée de Jean Grou, the burial in haste and the move of the remains to the cemetery on 2 November 1694. The register gives the burial as 8 July 1690. The register of the 1694 reburial calls him captain of the habitants of the parish.