Jean-Baptiste Chevalier

Biography

Jean-Baptiste Chevalier worked as a voyageur in the network linking Montréal, on the St. Lawrence River in present-day Québec, Canada, with the upper Great Lakes. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography identifies journeys to the Saint-Joseph post in 1730 and to Michilimackinac, in the Straits of Mackinac region of present-day Michigan, in 1735, the latter undertaken for La Vérendrye. He had married Marie-Françoise Alavoine in Montréal in 1709.

At Michilimackinac, his family became a recurring presence in the parish register. Children appear in the early baptismal summary, including Anne-Charlotte-Véronique in 1726. Later entries identify Marie-Françoise as the wife of Chevalier the voyageur and record her as godmother. In 1744 she sponsored René-François, the child of their daughter Anne-Charlotte and René Bourassa.

The same register documents enslavement in the Chevalier household. In July 1746 the priest baptized Angélique, a newborn daughter of an Indigenous woman described as belonging to Chevalier. The mother identified Louis Fleurs d’Épée as the child’s father; Esther Chevalier was godmother. The record gives a trace of an unnamed woman whose life was subject to that household’s power.

The scholarly biography places Jean-Baptiste’s death in late 1746 or early 1747. His wife continued to appear in the parish records afterward.

Christina Dickerson’s scholarship places his family at Michilimackinac in 1718 and describes repeated journeys through the trading region.