♂Pierre Chicoine

Pierre Chicoine (baptised 7 February 1639 – died before 20 September 1692) was a settler of New France from Channay-sur-Lathan, in the diocese of Angers in Anjou, who came to Canada in 1663 as an engagé^W and married Madeleine Chrétien of Paris at Montréal on 20 October 1670, when he was living at Longueuil; the wedding was witnessed by Charles Le Moyne^W, son of the seigneur of Longueuil, Charles Le Moyne^W. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Madeleine Chicoine (1672–1745).

Early life

Pierre was baptized at Channay-sur-Lathan, in the parish of Saint-Quentin, on 7 February 1639, “filz de Gilles Chicoysne et de Perrine Boisaubert”; his godfather was Martin Chicoysne the younger. According to the Fichier Origine, the register-checked file of French emigrants to Québec, he crossed to Canada in 1663 as an engagé, a man bound to work for a set term in the colony, and his mother died at Channay on 5 February 1664, the year after he left.

Marriage and family

The marriage register of Notre-Dame de Montréal names Pierre as the son of Gilles Chicoinne and Perrine Boisaubert, and Madeleine as the daughter of Toussaint Chrestien and Françoise Bertault, of the parish of Saint-Eustache^W in Paris. Both were single. The register names the first witness as Charles Le Moyne, son of noble homme Charles Le Moyne, écuyer, sieur de Longueuil, the lord of the land on which Pierre lived. Under the seigneurial system^W a settler held his land from such a seigneur.

The couple’s children were baptized over some twenty years in several parishes along the St. Lawrence: at Montréal in 1672 and 1674, at Boucherville in 1676, at Contrecoeur in 1681, 1684 and 1686, and at Montréal again in 1688 and 1691. Their daughter Marie Madeleine, baptized at Montréal on 11 March 1672, when her parents were living at Longueuil, married Louis Guertin. Four of the couple’s children married between 1700 and 1727, at Montréal, Varennes and Contrecoeur.

No record of Pierre’s death has been found; the Fichier Origine places it before 20 September 1692. A family compilation of 1994 gives his birth as about 1636, three years before the baptism in the Channay register. When his daughter Marie Madeleine was buried at Verchères in May 1745, the register called her the daughter of the late Pierre Chichoine.