♂Pierre Hardy

Pierre Hardy (10 January 1672 – 18 November 1728) was a Québec-born settler of Pointe-aux-Trembles and Cap-Santé, on the St. Lawrence above Québec, who had thirteen children and died captain of the militia at Cap-Santé. Under the French regime every parish mustered its men into a militia^W, and its captain, chosen from among the habitants, was the leading man of the parish. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marie Marguerite Hardy dit Chatillon (1701–1754).

Origins

He was born at Québec on 10 January 1672 and baptized the same day at Notre-Dame, with Pierre Lefebvre and Elisabeth Lequain as his godparents. He was the second of six children of Jean Hardy and Marie Poiré, who had married at Notre-Dame de Québec on 21 October 1669. His father came from the parish of Saint-François at Le Havre in Normandy and his mother from Saint-Laurent in Paris; a compiled list of the filles du roi^W, the young women the crown sent out to marry the colony’s settlers, counts her among them. The family later settled at Pointe-aux-Trembles, the parish west of Québec now called Neuville. About 1681 Pierre, then eight, was still living there with his parents, Jean Hardy and Marie Poiré.

Cyprien Tanguay’s^W dictionary enters the father as plain Hardy but the son as Pierre Hardy dit Chatillon, and René Jetté’s repertoire of Québec family names dates the pairing of Hardy with Chatillon to 1699, the year of Pierre’s marriage. The by-name most likely began with him; his daughter Marie Marguerite is entered in the genealogies as Hardy dit Chatillon.

Marriage and family

An inventory of the colony’s marriage contracts, compiled by the archivist Pierre-Georges Roy^W, lists his contract with Charlotte Lefebvre, drawn up before the notary Charles Rageot on 9 January 1699. They married at Pointe-aux-Trembles on 26 January 1699; the register gives his age as 27 and hers as 21, and names her parents as Simon Lefevre Ange and Charlotte Poitier.

The couple had thirteen children between November 1699 and January 1721. The first five were baptized at Pointe-aux-Trembles, and the fifth, Joseph Hardy, was buried there in January 1707 at five days old. By February 1708, when their son Philippe was baptized, the family had moved further up the river to Cap-Santé, where the other eight were born. The last were twin boys, born in January 1721: Francois de Sales lived, and Pierre was buried that March at a month old.

Cap-Santé

In 1715 he lost both his parents. He was present, with his brother Jean Baptiste Hardy, at the burials of his mother on 6 January and of his father on 28 June, both at Pointe-aux-Trembles.

At Cap-Santé the Hardys were bound to the Marcot family. In December 1722 Pierre witnessed the burial of Elisabeth Salée, the widow of Jacques Marcot, and in January 1724 her son Henri Marcot married his daughter Marie Charlotte Hardy. On 8 November 1725 his daughter Marie Marguerite married Jean Baptiste Marcotte, son of Jacques Marcot and Louise Beaudet; the register calls her Marie Hardi, of that parish, the lawful daughter of Pierre Hardi and Charlotte Lefebvre.

He died at Cap-Santé on 18 November 1728 and was buried there two days later, entered in the register as captain of the militia.

Notes

The marriage entry of his parents is dated 21 October 1669 at Notre-Dame de Québec. Tanguay’s dictionary and the compiled study of Norman settlers by Vaillancourt and Godbout place that wedding at Pointe-aux-Trembles, where the couple later lived.

His burial entry gives his age as 55; his baptism makes him 56. Tanguay’s dictionary dates the burial 21 November 1728; the register entry is dated 20 November.

The marriage entry of 1699 gives Charlotte’s age as 21; the 1679 baptism that Tanguay’s dictionary gives her would make her 19. The registers write her surname Lefevre, Angers, Anger and Auger; Tanguay enters the family as Lefebvre-Angers.

In the 1725 marriage entry the surname of the bride’s mother is faint; the name Lefebvre comes from the index of the act, and it agrees with the inventory of the 1699 marriage contract.