Rene Dumas

Biography

René Dumas received land on the western edge of the seigneurie of Chambly, a colonial landholding southeast of Montréal in present-day Québec, Canada, in 1673. His concession lay on the côte de Mont-Royal, along the river now called L’Acadie. The municipal history describes a long, narrow holding: two arpents across and forty deep.

A native of Sainte-Croix parish in Tours, in the Loire Valley of France, René had come to Canada as a soldier of the Carignan-Salières regiment. His surname also appears with the additional name Rencontre. On October 12, 1671, at Notre-Dame de Québec, he married Marie Lelong, a woman from Rennes, in Brittany in northwestern France, who had arrived through the Filles du roi programme. Their marriage contract had been drawn up five days earlier before Romain Becquet.

The family did not remain at Chambly. Local historian Albert LeBeau places their move to neighbouring La Prairie in the summer of 1678 and identifies René’s new holding on the côte Saint-Claude. That reconstruction follows the family along the road connecting the two settlements.

The 1681 census compilation nevertheless carries entries under both La Prairie and Chambly. Each names René and Marie, two cattle and a small cultivated acreage, but the children’s names and ages differ. The census entries conflict.

Marie died in December 1687. Their youngest recorded son, François, died the following February. René’s own death date has not been securely established.