Pierre Poissant

Biography

Pierre Poissant was born at La Prairie, across the St. Lawrence from Montréal in present-day Québec, Canada, on July 13, 1749, the son of Jean-Baptiste Poissant and Catherine-Charlotte Gagné. He married Véronique Bouchard on January 29, 1776, when he was twenty-six and she was eighteen.

Their children were born over more than twenty-five years. The family account names daughters Marie-Véronique, Marie-Josephte and Louise-Amable, and sons including Pierre, Paul, Ignace, Pascal and Louis. It also preserves the shorter lives within the household: an earlier son named Pierre died in infancy, and Jean-Baptiste, Antoine and Marie-Suzanne died as young children.

Two of the boys were named Pierre. The first was born in 1779 and died in infancy; the second, born in 1781, lived to adulthood.

Pierre died at La Prairie on January 3, 1818, aged sixty-eight. Véronique survived him by twenty-two years. Her later burial entry names her as his widow and records Pierre Poissant and Ignace Poissant as witnesses, carrying familiar family names into the closing record of their generation.