♂Mathurin Meunier

Mathurin Meunier (baptised 22 April 1619 – died before 1684) was a settler of New France from Clermont-Créans in Maine, whose marriage to Françoise Fafard at Ville-Marie^W, the mission settlement that became Montréal, on 3 November 1647 was the first wedding celebrated there, with the governor, Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve^W, as a witness. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Jean Meunier (born about 1651).

Early life

Mathurin was baptized on 22 April 1619 at Saint-Lambert, the parish church of Clermont-Créans, near La Flèche in France, the son of René Lemonnier and Marie Le Roux. He probably came to Canada in 1644 as an engagé^W, a laborer hired in France to work in the colony for a set term, under a contract made at La Rochelle that April.

Marriage at Ville-Marie

The Latin act of their marriage names Mathurin as the son of René Lemonnier and Marie Le Roux, of the parish of Clermont near La Flèche, and Françoise as the daughter of Jean Fafard and Élisabeth Tibou, of Argences near Caen. Maisonneuve stood witness with Gilbert Barbier of the Nivernais and Jean de Saint-Père of the Gâtinais.

Their first child, Barbe, was baptized at Ville-Marie on 24 November 1648, and her godmother was Jeanne Mance^W, the founder of the settlement’s hospital. Barbe lived only nine days and was buried on 3 December. On 3 December 1649 twin sons, Charles and Mathurin, were baptized there; Charles was buried on 21 December and his brother on 27 February 1650.

Québec and the Beaupré shore

The family is said to have left Ville-Marie in search of better conditions at Trois-Rivières and Québec. Their son Jean was born about 1651, and by 1653 the family was at Québec, where three daughters were baptized: Françoise, born on 13 September 1653, Élisabeth, born on 17 February 1656, and Marguerite, born on 4 August 1659. Two more sons followed, Mathurin about 1661 and François about 1667.

Their children married along the Beaupré shore and on the Île d’Orléans, below Québec. Élisabeth married at Château-Richer on 30 June 1670, Jean married Marguerite Housseau at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré later that year, and Marguerite married at Sainte-Anne in 1674. Mathurin had died by 1684: when his son Mathurin, aged 23, married at Sainte-Famille on the Île d’Orléans that year, the act called his father deceased, as did François’s marriage at L’Ange-Gardien in 1692.

Notes

His name

His surname was written in many ways. His baptism has Lemonnier, and the Latin act of his marriage has Mathurinum le Monnier, with Mathurin le Meunier in its margin; at Beaupré his son Jean’s marriage and his widow’s burial write Meusnier. The historian Marcel Trudel, in his study of early Montréal, calls him Lemonnier and Lemousnier.

Coming to Canada

The Fichier Origine, the register of French emigrants to Québec kept by the Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie, gives his hiring as an engagé by a contract of 20 April 1644 before the notary Pierre Teuleron at La Rochelle, and his arrival in Canada that year. Trudel describes him as a bêcheur, a laborer who dug the ground, aged 28 at his marriage and able to sign his name, and writes that he was among the early settlers who left Ville-Marie for better conditions at Trois-Rivières and Québec.

His death

The Fichier Origine places his death between 8 October 1676 and 27 July 1679. The earliest act known to call him deceased is his son Mathurin’s marriage in 1684.

The marriage date

The day of the month is blotted in the register; 3 November 1647 is the date in the Drouin Institute’s index of Québec parish acts, and Trudel gives the same day. The year heads the page.

Jean and the line of descent

An online family tree gives Jean’s birth at Trois-Rivières on 8 January 1651; the PRDH index of Québec parish records holds no such baptism. The line to Floyd Amatus Delahorne runs from Jean through Marguerite Meunier, the wife of François Michel in Acadia, whose place as Jean’s daughter rests on a compiled genealogy of the Acadian families.