Francois Garnier dit Pellerin

Biography

François Garnier's farm at Neuville, on the St. Lawrence’s north bank upstream from Québec city in present-day Canada, was recorded in the 1681 census with seven cattle, two firearms and fifteen arpents under cultivation. Behind that compact description lay years of migration, family formation and dealings over land and debt.

He was baptized on February 26, 1638 at Notre-Dame-de-Vair, in what is now Saint-Cosme-en-Vairais, France. His parents were François Garnier and Antoinette Boulay. He reached New France around 1662 and made a marriage contract with Jacqueline Freslon that December. They married the following January and first lived in the Québec–Sillery area.

A published account of his life describes repeated court appearances over unpaid debts and a seizure of his property in 1670. It also identifies a different role for him in 1675: representing inhabitants who resisted paying a notary for copies of their land-concession contracts.

At Neuville, François and Jacqueline raised a family whose children appear under the related spellings Garnier and Grenier. Their oldest son, Isaac-Joseph, married Marie Houde, while other children also formed households in the settlements along the river. François's own household still included seven children when the census was taken in 1681.

Jacqueline died in 1712. François remained associated with Neuville through the closing years of his life and was buried there on January 21, 1719. His French baptism and Canadian burial span more than eighty years.