♂Laurent Archambault

Laurent Archambault (born about 1642, baptized 10 January 1642) was a carpenter and landholder who grew up among the first settlers of Ville-Marie, the settlement that grew into Montréal. He was the tenth great-grand-uncle of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the brother of Marie Archambault (born 1636), her tenth great-grandmother.

Childhood

Laurent was baptized at Dompierre-sur-Mer, the son of Jacques Archambault (born 1605) and Françoise Tourault (born 1600), who lived in the hamlet of L’Ardillière in the parish. About 1645–1646, when he was three or four, the family crossed to New France and settled at Québec. In 1650 they moved to Ville-Marie, and the next year his elder brother Denis was killed there. When the militia of the Sainte-Famille was formed in 1663, he stood in its tenth squad, while his brothers-in-law Jean Gervaise and Urbain Tessier served in the eighth and Gilles Lauzon in the fourteenth. Marcel Trudel’s roster of Montréal that June lists him as a carpenter.

Marriage and land

His marriage contract with Catherine Marchand is dated 14 December 1659, and a family genealogy gives the wedding at Montréal on 7 January 1660. The notarial records of Montréal show him busy with land between 1667 and 1677. He made a transfer to Jean Gervaise in September 1667, leased and sold land to Jacques Boivin in March 1669, rented land from Urbain Geté that November, was granted a meadow on 2 February 1672, and leased land to Jacques Millot in April 1677. In June 1678 he joined his three brothers-in-law in a gift to his father.

Later life

On 26 November 1675 he was a witness at Montréal when his niece Agnès Tessier married Guillaume Richard dit Lafleur, and he signed the act beside Gervaise and Lauzon.

A compiled family history gives his death at Pointe-aux-Trembles on 19 April 1730, at the age of eighty-eight.

Notes

The move to Pointe-aux-Trembles

The 1891 family genealogy found no record of when Laurent left Montréal. Its author supposes 1665 or 1666, when Urbain Tessier moved to the Longue-Pointe (the book calls Tessier Laurent’s father-in-law, though he married Laurent’s sister Marie).

Sources for the marriage and death

The contract is listed in Roy’s inventory of Montréal notarial records. The wedding date comes from the 1891 genealogy and a compiled family history, which agree; a Québec marriage database (PRDH) also indexes the marriage. The death date rests on the family history alone.