Nicolas  MARSOLET

Biography
MARSOLET DE SAINT-AIGNAN, NICOLAS, interpreter, clerk in the fur trade, ship’s master, trader, and seigneur, coming from the neighbourhood of Rouen – perhaps from Saint-Aignan-sur-Ry, as his name suggests; b. 1587, if the burial certificate is to be believed, or 1601, according to the 1666 census; d. 15 May 1677 at Quebec.

Historians do not agree as to the date of Marsolet’s arrival in New France: some favour 1608, others 1613 or 1618. The only affirmation that is at all explicit comes from Champlain; recounting the events of 1629, he wrote of Pierre Raye, Étienne Brulé, and Marsolet that he had taken them “upon our expeditions over fifteen or sixteen years before.” Now we know that Champlain had in fact left France in 1613 for a sixth stay in Canada, during which time he went up the Ottawa River as far as Allumette Island in the Algonkin country. In our opinion it was in this year that Marsolet, a future interpreter of the Montagnais and Algonkin languages, landed in the colony,...Read full story


Dictionary of Canadian Biography (www.biographi.ca)

1666 Quebec
Nicolas Marsollet ...........................65 bourgeois
Marie Le Barbier ............................47 sa femme
Jean Marsollet ..............................14 fils
Marie Marsollet ..............................4 fille
Et Jean Belleville ..........................22 domestique engaigé
The first census of New France (1666)
The French In North America: 1500-1783