Pierre Paradis

Biography

Pierre Paradis brought a craftsman’s background to a life that became closely tied to land in New France. Baptized at Notre-Dame in Mortagne, in the Perche region west of Paris, on July 20, 1604, he was the son of Jacques Paradis, a cutler, and Michelle Pesle. Pierre also became a master cutler. In February 1632 he and Barbe Guyon made their marriage contract in France; two decades later they crossed the Atlantic with their children and joined the wider Guyon family around Beauport, now part of Québec city in Canada.

The records of his Canadian years concern acquisitions, cultivation and the changing use of land. A published family account reports that his household possessed eight cattle and had twelve arpents under cultivation in 1667. The following year, Pierre exchanged a strip of property with the intendant Jean Talon so that it could be used for the public road between Bourg-Royal and Bourg-la-Reine. He received other land in return. The transaction connects his individual holding with the expansion of settlement around Québec.

An illness in 1670 prompted Pierre to make a will while at the Hôtel-Dieu. According to the published account, he asked for burial in the cemetery for the poor and made gifts for that purpose, for the chapel of the Virgin, and for the church at Beauport, leaving the remainder to his wife. These provisions record his religious commitments and his concern for Barbe’s position. Pierre lived for almost another five years after making these arrangements.

He died on January 29, 1675; the published account places his burial the next day at Sainte-Famille on Île d’Orléans, the St. Lawrence River island just downstream from Québec city. His surviving record spans a trade learned in France, a household established overseas, and property decisions that helped shape a developing colonial landscape.