♂Simon Cardinal

Simon Cardinal (born about 1619 – 9 August 1679) was a man of Marans, near La Rochelle, who signed on at La Rochelle in June 1659 to work for the Hôtel-Dieu, the hospital of Montréal, and crossed that summer with his wife, their children and the families of two of her sisters. He died at Lachine twenty years later. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Jacques Cardinal (born about 1652).

Marans

Simon was born about 1619 and lived in the parish of St-Étienne at Marans, a small port on the marshes north of La Rochelle. He married Michelle Garnier there about 1652. Five children are recorded at Marans, and the first years were hard: a son Michel, born about 1648, was buried in October 1652; a daughter Marguerite, born in December 1651, was buried a fortnight later; and a son Pierre, baptised in 1656, died in December 1658. Two sons survived France, Jacques, born about 1653, and Jean, baptised in March 1658.

Montréal

On 5 June 1659, before the La Rochelle notary Alexandre Demontreau, Simon was engaged for service in New France. Michelle’s sister Marie and her husband Olivier Charbonneau were engaged under the same contract for the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal and sailed on the Saint-André, and a third sister, Louise, came the same year with her husband Pierre Goguet.

Four more children were baptised at Montréal: Gabriel in 1661, Pierre in 1665, Simon in 1667 and Cécile in 1670; a nineteenth-century genealogical dictionary adds a son Étienne, born in 1663. In 1671 Simon stood as an uncle, through his wife, at the marriage contract of Marie’s daughter Anne Charbonneau, the document that proves the three Garnier women were sisters. He died at Lachine on 9 August 1679, and his widow married again the following spring.