Jean Hayot / Ayot

Biography

Jean Hayot’s life combined farming along the St. Lawrence River in what is now Québec, Canada, with journeys that could take him far from his household. A son of Thomas Hayot and Jeanne Boucher, he came from the Perche family that settled in New France while he was a child. In 1653 he married Louise Pelletier, beginning a family whose circumstances can be followed through censuses and an unusually revealing petition.

A family history drawing on the Jesuit journal records his capture at Cap-Rouge, upstream from the old center of Québec city, on August 21, 1658 and describes his subsequent escape through cunning. By 1667, the census placed his household in the Cap-Rouge area with twenty-five arpents under cultivation and one head of cattle.

Farming did not keep Jean permanently at home. On April 14, 1670, Louise petitioned the Sovereign Council, reporting that he had left on a journey intended to last three years toward the country of the Outaouais, or Odawa. She described being left with five children and without resources. Her appeal makes the cost of his absence visible: a distant undertaking could leave a growing family needing intervention at home.

The 1681 census finds Jean and Louise together at Neuville, also called Dombourg, farther upstream on the river’s north bank, with nine children. It records four cattle and six arpents cultivated. These household details place his travels within a longer history of settlement and family life. A record identifying Louise as a widow establishes that Jean had died by November 1691.