Nicolas Boyer

Biography

Nicolas Boyer first appears in Montréal, on the St. Lawrence River in present-day Québec, Canada, as a carpenter working in another man's household. In 1666 he was an engaged servant of Claude Robutel de Saint-André. Over the next several decades, purchases and payment receipts trace his acquisition of land around Pointe-Saint-Charles and the Rivière Saint-Pierre.

Baptized on September 29, 1637 at Le Poiré-sur-Velluire in France, Nicolas was the son of Étienne Bouhier and Perrine Payneau. He came to New France in 1664. In August 1667 he married Marguerite Maclin, widow of Jean Chicot. A marriage contract had been made the previous month before Bénigne Basset.

At that time Nicolas occupied a thirty-four-arpent holding at Pointe-Saint-Charles. In 1670 he bought two additional parcels totalling thirty arpents, and in 1672 another fifteen. The deeds did not end the business immediately: later agreements and receipts recorded payments, including a final discharge in 1677 for the fifteen-arpent purchase.

The 1681 census describes the household at work on a smaller cultivated area than those total holdings might suggest. Nicolas and Marguerite had eight cattle, a firearm and thirty arpents in cultivation. The children listed ranged from young Nicolas to teenagers, reflecting the household formed through Marguerite's two marriages.

That same year Nicolas bought another thirty-eight arpents between the Sault-Saint-Louis and the Rivière Saint-Pierre. By 1702 the Pointe-Saint-Charles property was recorded as a hundred arpents. He was buried at Montréal on May 24, 1714, after roughly fifty years in the colony.