Toussaint  HUNAULT (HUNEAULT) dit DESCHAMPS

Marriage found at Notre-Dame de Montreal, Montreal, Quebec in Drouin Collection

Toussaint Hunault and Marie Lorguiel

Toussaint Hunault dit Deschamps (1628-1690) originated in St.-Pierre-es-Champs, on the border of Normandy and Ile-de-France. He arrived at Ville-Marie [Montreal], having engaged with la grande recrue de 1653, organized by le sieur de la Dauversiere, departing from La Fleche, and requested by the Governor of Montreal, Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve. A notarized contract of service exists, witnessed by Monsieur Olier. It may be said that this group of pioneers saved Montreal and New France... There were 102 men and 14 women who embarked from St. Nazaire, on June 20, 1653, on the ship St. Nicolas, to Quebec and then to Montreal. Some others, especially the women, departed from La Rochelle.

One of the passengers was a 15-year old girl, Marie Lorgueil (1638-1700), who originated from the village of Cognac in Charente, rather distant from La Fleche but near La Rochelle. As the patronym, "Lorgueil," did not exist in France at that time, it is supposed that it was a nickname, and her true name and birth certificate are still being actively researched. A trail is provided by the names which were given by her priest and confessor at Pointe-aux-Trembles in the records of her children: "Arcueil et..." We are put on the trail of Arcouet, a very frequent patronym in Charentes. A soldier by the name of Jean-Baptiste Arcouet, of the Carignan-Salt Box Regiment, a native of Marennes in Charente, "abjures the alleged reformed religion," and was hospitalized at l'Hotel-Dieu de Quebec in 1666.

We assume that Marie Lorgueil and Toussaint Hunault did not know one another before the departure, but they were married in the church of Ville-Marie on November 23, 1654. Governor Maisonneuve attended the ceremony. One can follow their trail through the religious and notarial archives because Toussaint made numerous land transactions which often required loans. They raised a family of seven children, who all married. Then, on a fateful day in 1690, a Naval lieutenant, Michel Dumont de Blaignac, son of a notable in Paris, killed Toussaint with a blow from his sword and escaped. Toussaint's widow, heavily in debt, had to give her right of recourse to a creditor, the merchant Charles de Couagne, who allowed her the family land "to the bottom of the island." This land of 2 arpents, out of 20, appears in the books of the Sulpiciens and the map of Vachon de Belmont of 1702, "from la Coulee St.-Jean to Bas-de-l'Isle", under the name Hunault. Five fields further to the east is found the small Fort Gervaise of Pointe-aux-Trembles, and the land (if not the inn) of Testard dit Folleville and ... Anne Papineau LaMarque, who originated in Bordeaux, a noble young lady sent by the King, according to the files of the convent of the Ursulines of Quebec, where she was a student from February to October 1663. (No known connection with Samuel Papineau).

Marie Lorgueil died near there, at L'Ile Ste-Therese, and was buried at Varennes, on November 29, 1700.

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