No record of the death and burial of Nicolas Peltier has been found. It is presumed that he was living in or around the Seigneurie d'Autray and that death occurred between October 1675 and November 1681. The closest Catholic cemetery was Saint-Pierre-de-Sorel, so it is presumed that, like his wife, Nicolas was buried there.

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NICOLAS PELTIER, 1596-c.1678

MASTER CARPENTER, HABITANT

Son of François Pelletier and Simone Pichereau, master carpenter Nicolas Peltier was baptized at the Church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul in Gallardon, France, on 4 June 1596.

Nicolas' parents had married about 1591-1592 and had four sons and nine daughters, all baptized in Gallardon. These children were:

1. Simone Pelletier, baptized 16 November 1592. Godfather: Jean Janson. Godmothers: Marion Bernard, wife of Marin Beauchesne, and Marie Pichereau, widow of Jacques Vigoureux.

2. Philippe Pelletier, baptized 18 October 1593. Godfather: Pasquier Pichereau. Godmothers: Philippe Garnier and Jeanne Riollet. On 26 January 1620 at nearby Bailleau-sous-Gallardon, she married Mathurin Bouret, a miller, son of Pierre Bouret and Étiennette Maurin.

3. Jeanne Pelletier, baptized 3 April 1595. Godfather: Marin Beauséjour. Godmothers: Jeanne Goissedet, wife of Jean Bernard, and Marie Pichereau, wife of Vincent Colibert.

4. Nicolas Peltier, baptized 6 June 1596. Godfathers: Nicolas Brebier, a carpenter, and Éloi Pelletier. Godmother: Mathurine Moinaut, wife of Pasquier Pichereau.

5. Marie Pelletier, baptized 11 March 1598. Godfather: Jean Martin. Godmothers: Catherine Derouet and Germaine Pelletier.

6. Marie Pelletier, baptized 10 February 1599. Godfather: Claude Dubois. Godmothers: Marie Garnier and Marie Delaroche.

7. Jeanne Pelletier, baptized 11 July 1600. Godfather: Georges Pelletier. Godmothers: Marie Pichereau and Jeanne Baudoin.

8. Éloi Pelletier, baptized 23 January 1602. Godfathers: Éloi Boudon and Jean Tulloue the Younger. Godmother: Jeanne Boudon, wife of Éloi Vassort.

9. Pierre Pelletier, baptized 18 November 1603. Godfathers: Pierre Beauchesne and Nicolas Pelletier, son of Éloi Peltier. Godmother: Jeanne, wife of Claude Dubois.

10. Noëlle Pelletier, baptized 10 April 1605. Godfather: Mathurin Bisson. Godmothers: Noëlle Noffret and Étiennette Jaret. She later married Jacques de Flandres.

11. Marguerite Pelletier, baptized 10 November 1606. Godfather: Jean Yesme. Godmothers: Marguerite Maugin and Mathurine Colibert.

12. Philippe Pelletier, baptized 22 February 1609. Godfathers: Philippe Desessarts and André Pelletier. Godmother: Adrienne Henry, wife of Michel Abraham.

13. Simone Pelletier, baptized 13 June 1610. Godfather: Gilles Colibert. Godmother: Jacqueline Abran.

Through his mother, Nicolas was related to the Pichereau, Colibert, Bisson, Vigoureux, Jaret, Mariette, and Denis families of Gallardon.

About 1612, Nicolas' father François died, and on 29 February that year, at Gallardon, Nicolas entered into an apprenticeship contract with a master carpenter from the nearby town of Épernon. The contract stated that for a period of four years, starting the following day, 1 March 1612, Nicolas would be the "apprentice and student" of master carpenter Michel Delaval, who agreed to "show, teach and instruct" young Nicolas in the art of carpentry, to "prepare his drink and food," to keep him "warm and clean" and to provide him with "clothes, linens and shoes," all at his own expense. In return for this, Nicolas would be "obliged to serve the said Delaval" and to perform all "honest and licit things that he be commanded to do," without "elsewhere serving" and "without paying him anything."

About 1632, on a date and at a place unknown to genealogists, Nicolas Peltier married Jeanne de Voisy. She was born about 1611-1614, though the exact place and date of her birth, as well as her parents' names, are all unknown. The following year, Nicolas and Jeanne had a son, Jean, followed two years later by another son, François.

In the spring of 1636, Nicolas and his brother Pierre, ages 39 and 33, were at the port city of Dieppe, Normandy, where, before embarking for New France, they ceded to their youngest brother, Philippe, age 27, their rights to their late parents' house in Gallardon; in the contract, dated 24 March 1636, Nicolas and Pierre were identified as residents of the Paris faubourg of Montmartre, while Philippe lived in the Paris periphery; all three brothers were carpenters.

Setting sail from Dieppe on 8 May 1636, Nicolas Peltier, Jeanne de Voisy, Jean Peltier, François Pelletier, and Pierre Pelletier arrived at Québec the following month. In Canada, Nicolas continued to work as a master carpenter. In November 1639, for instance, he and Pierre were hired to give their expert opinion on the structural soundness of the house of the late Guillaume Hébert. After this, his sole appearance in the archives of New France, Pierre Pelletier disappears from historical view.

In 1645, the Peltier family moved from Québec and settled in nearby Sillery, a seigneurie of mostly untouched forest, where Jesuit priests operated a mission and ministered to the numerous Montagnais, Huron, and Algonquian who lived there.

It was on 12 September 1645 that the governor of New France conceded to Nicolas Peltier fifty arpents of land on the Côte Saint-François-Xavier in Sillery. According to the land grant, the bounds of this concession began along the bluff, or "côte," at a distance of 120 feet from the Saint Lawrence River, and continued inland to a distance of 72 feet from the "grand chemin de Kebec au cap Rouge," today Laurier Boulevard. On its southwest side, the concession abutted a tract of ungranted land, and on its northeast side, it abutted the land of the Mères Hospitalières, a religious order that operated a hospital in Sillery.

As noted earlier, Nicolas Peltier and Jeanne de Voisy had brought with them to New France two sons, Jean and François. At Notre-Dame de Québec Church, four more children were baptized:

· Marie Peltier, baptized 3 April 1637 or 1638. Godfather: Pierre Laporte, agent for the Company of New France. Godmother: Marie Giffard, daughter of Robert Giffard.

· Louise Pelletier, baptized 10 May 1640. Godfather: Pierre de Launay, agent for the Company of New France. Godmother: Louise Couillard, wife of Olivier Le Tardif.

· Françoise Pelletier, baptized 13 April 1642. Godfather: Jean Bourdon, Seigneur of the Seigneurie d'Autray. Godmother: Françoise Pinguet, daughter of Henri Pinguet.

· Jeanne Peltier, baptized 19 March 1644. Godfather: Father Gabriel Druillettes. Godmother: Louise Azarue.

In addition, in the Saint-Michel Chapel at the Saint-Joseph Mission at Sillery, two more children were later baptized:

· Geneviève Pelletier, baptized between 4 May and 25 July 1646. Godfather: Jean Juchereau de Maure. Godmother: Jeanne Boucher, wife of Thomas Hayot.

· Nicolas Peltier, baptized 2 May 1649. Godfather (and future brother-in-law): Nicolas Goupil, carpenter. Godmother: Anne Convent, wife of Jacques Maheu.

The Peltier daughters all married and established families in the area of Sillery, whereas the sons traveled broadly and eventually settled in more remote corners of the colony. François Pelletier and his younger brother, Nicolas Peltier, went on to take brides from the Innu (Montagnais) nation of the Saguenay-Lac Saint-Jean region. The Peltier children and their respective spouses are listed below:

· Marie Peltier married Nicolas Goupil in Québec City on 17 October 1650. They had two children, but after Goupil's death in 1655, Marie wed Denis Jean and with him had twelve children.

· Louise Pelletier married Jean Hayot in Sillery on 17 November 1653. They went on to have ten children.

· Françoise Pelletier married Jean Bériau in Québec City on 17 August 1654, but widowed soon after, she married Sébastien Liénard on 11 October 1655 in Sainte-Foy and with him had thirteen children.

· Jeanne Peltier married Noël Jérémie de la Montagne in Québec on 29 January 1659; he was an interpreter and agent in the Domaine du Roi (Saguenay-Lac Saint-Jean region). They went on to have fourteen children.

· François Pelletier, later known as François Pelletier dit Antaya, spent the winter of 1659-1660 in the Domaine du Roi and there married a baptized Innu woman known only as Dorothée; they had no children. After Dorothée's death in April 1661, he married Marguerite Morisseau on 26 September 1661 in Sillery. They went on to have ten children.

· Jean Peltier married Marie-Geneviève de Manovelly in Sillery on 21 August 1662. Her father had been "master of water and forests" in France, as well as a minister to both Louis XIII and Louis XIV, at Paris. Jean and Marie-Geneviève had one son.

· Geneviève Peltier married Vincent Verdon in Sillery on 5 November 1663 and was pregnant with their second child when Vincent died in 1665. In August 1669, she married Thomas Lefebvre, an interpreter and fur-trader with whom she had twelve children.

· Nicolas Peltier, also known as Colin Peltier, and, in the Innu language, "Nicolachich," married three different Christian First Nations women: First, in June 1673, he Madeleine Tegouchick, an Innu, with whom he had one daughter; she died in 1677. His second wife was Françoise Ouebechinokoue, an Algonquin with whom he had eleven children. In 1715, he married Marie Outchiouanich, daughter of the chief of Tadoussac, who would later tutor Jesuit priest Pierre-Michel Laure in the Innu language and assist him in the translation of prayers and the creation of a Innu dictionary and grammar book.

Now, at the time of his arrival in New France, Nicolas Peltier was already a master carpenter. In that capacity, in November 1647, he framed the steeple of Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix Church in Québec, for which he received 1,500 pounds, plus another 30 pounds for the "vin du marché," paid as a tip after the satisfactory completion of a project. The next year, he installed the roof of Fort Saint-Louis, the governor's residence, and over the next decade, he was hired to construct and maintain various houses and barns in the area.

In October 1649, he was contracted to inspect and repair a house and outbuildings belonging to Anne Gasnier de Monceaux on the Côte Saint-François-Xavier in Sillery, on a tract of land neighboring his. In April 1650, he negotiated a contract with Mathurin Trut, whereby he agreed to pay Trut 320 pounds for two years' service. That following October, along with fellow master carpenter (and recent son-in-law) Nicolas Goupil, he hired himself out to Jean-Paul Godefroy to construct a house measuring 55 feet by 24 feet, for 1,500 pounds. Later, in May 1653, Jacques Sévestre hired Nicolas, for 125 pounds, to work with André Renault to complete a barn begun by Renault and Jean Boyet. Finally, in December 1657, Pierre Niel hired Nicolas to frame the walls, windows and timber-frames of a house measuring 20 feet by 30 feet, all for the price of 250 pounds.

Ultimately, by the late-1660s, by which time he had already reached his seventieth year, Nicolas had begun to withdraw from his lifelong trade and appears in no more such contracts. He became instead a fulltime "habitant," a French-Canadian farmer, dedicated to cultivating the soil and raising livestock.

The census of 1667 reported that Nicolas Peltier was 77 years old (he was really 71), that Jeanne de Voisy was 53 years old, and that son Nicolas Peltier, who lived with his parents, was 18 years old. They all lived on the Côte Saint-François-Xavier in Sillery and had in their employ a servant named Pierre Cartier, also aged 18 years.

By the autumn of 1673, Nicolas Peltier and Jeanne de Voisy had moved upstream, closer to Montréal, and now resided in the Seigneurie d'Autray, where their eldest son, Jean Peltier, had himself moved with this family some two years earlier; middle son François Pelletier dit Antaya had been living in the area since about 1668.

About this same time, while living in the Seigneurie d'Autray, Nicolas Peltier and his son, Jean Peltier, each received from Philippe Gauthier de Comporté a concession of land in the northeast neighboring Seigneurie d'Orvilliers. Monsieur de Comporté, a former lieutenant in the Carignan-Salières Regiment, had received this fief on 29 October 1672 and would later sell it to François Pelletier dit Antaya and his wife, Marguerite Morisseau, on 22 October 1675. In the meantime, he made his donations to Nicolas and Jean, which he certified in a handwritten bill dated 23 March 1678 at Québec.

It was there, above the Isles of Sorel, where the Saint Lawrence River meets the western extremity of Lac Saint-Pierre, that Nicolas Peltier and Jeanne de Voisy spent the rest of their days in the company of their sons, Jean Peltier and François Pelletier dit Antaya, and many of their grandchildren. Nicolas appears to have lived past his eightieth year; he died sometime after October 1675 and before the national census of November 1681. Jeanne followed some eight years later, at the age of about 77, and was buried 12 December 1689 in Saint-Pierre Cemetery at the Seigneurie de Saurel.

In 1681, a half-century after their marriage, Nicolas and Jeanne's progeny included three sons, five daughters, over 70 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. A century after their arrival in New France, their descendants numbered nearly 1,000, making the Peltier family the tenth largest so-called "root family" in all of French Canada.

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Text by Gilles Brassard, translated into English:

At the National Archives of France in Paris, two acts preserved in the Insinuations of the Châtelet de Paris (Y//176, folio 338 et seq.) provide interesting information on the family of Nicolas Peltier just before his departure for New France. I am descended from Nicolas through my father.

Nicolas, as we know, is from Gallardon, in the current department of Eure-et-Loir. The small town is located between Chartres and Rambouillet, just over 70 kilometers from Paris. He was the son of François Pelletier and Simone Pichereau. The couple baptized 13 children in Gallardon between 1592 and 1610. In Nicolas Peltier's apprenticeship contract with Michel Delaval, a carpenter living in Epernon, dated the last day of February 1612, discovered by Benoît Pelletier of Nashua, New Hampshire, in 2005, we learn that Simone Pichereau is, at this date, widow of Francois Pelletier.

The two documents I spoke about above are dated from March to July 1636. They tell us that at least five of the children of François Pelletier and Simone Pichereau had moved to Paris and its southern suburbs.

The first is a deed of donation from Nicolas and Pierre Pelletier to their brother, Philippe:

… Know that before the royal notary in the viscounty of Arques, were present Nicolas and Pierre Pelletier, brothers, sons and co-heirs in the succession of the late François Pelletier and Simonne Pichereau, residing in Paris, faubourg of Montmartre, being in this town of Dieppe, ready to leave for Canada. Which, of their good will and frank will [————–] and confessed to having given and hereby give by irrevocable gift both for themselves and for their heirs or having cause to Philippe Pelletier, their brother also co-heir in the succession of the said late Pelletier and Pichereau, residing in the parish of Houissous near Chilly, present and accepting, to wit, all and such right share and portion of a certain house and building located in the town of Gallardon, in Beausse, rue Basse, near the crossroads of Petit Presoir, with another small building, all with nothing reserved or retained, the said house and building coming from the succession of their deceased father and mother….

The act was signed before the royal notaries of Dieppe on Monday, March 24, 1636, and insinuated at the Châtelet in Paris on Saturday, July 26, 1636.

·         We learn in this text that Nicolas and his brother Pierre were, on March 24, 1636, in Dieppe, ready to embark for New France. They are said to be from Paris, residents of the Faubourg Montmartre. I have not yet found any trace of them in Paris.

·         The act also confirms that Pierre Pelletier, found in a 1639 act in Quebec, where he and Nicolas appraised the timber frames of Guillaume Hébert's house, is indeed Nicolas' brother, which some had already suggested without being able to prove it definitively. It seems that this act of 1639 is the only trace of Pierre Pelletier in New France, where he has been present since 1636.

·         Philippe Pelletier was living in Wissous, in the current department of Essonne. Baptized on February 22, 1609, in Gallardon, he was 27 years old.

At the bottom of the same page of Insinuations du Châtelet de Paris is another act of donation. Philippe Pelletier, wife of Mathurin Bouret, miller at Moulignon Mill in Saint Fargeau sur Seyne (Saint Fargeau Ponthierry), and Noëlle Pelletier, wife of Jacques de Flandres, laborer at the same place, the two sisters being daughters of the late François Pelletier and of Simonne Pichereau, gave to their brother Philippe, a carpenter living in "Houissou", the shares and portions of a house located in Gallardon which they inherited from their parents' estate. The donation contract was drawn up in Ponthierry on April 1, 1636, in the notary's office, read to the two Pelletier sisters who approved it on April 3, both declaring that they did not know how to sign. The contract was finally insinuated at the Châtelet in Paris on July 26, 1636.

Philippe, who receives donations from his two brothers and two sisters, is said to be a carpenter, the profession of his two brothers. A few years later, a Philippe Pelletier, carpenter, was present in Paris.

Mathurin Bouret, son of the late Pierre and Etiennette Maurin, and Philippe Pelletier, daughter of the late François and Simone Pichereau, were married on January 26, 1620, in Bailleau-sous-Gallardon.

Isabel, daughter of Mathurin Bourret and of Philippe Pelletier, was baptized on January 13, 1631, in the hamlet of Moulignon, in Saint Fargeau Ponthierry. AD 77, 5MI2583 1597-1699, view 178/393 left page.

On December 15, 1631, Philippe Peltier was godfather to Charles Gilles, son of Vincent, baptized in the chapel of Moulignon. The mother is not named.

On June 3, 1635, Philippe Peltier was godfather of Pierre Basset, baptized at the Moulignon chapel.

Nicolas seems to have arrived in Quebec with, in addition to his brother Pierre, his wife Jeanne de Vouzy and two children born in France. Did he meet and marry Jeanne in Gallardon, in Epernon where he did his apprenticeship, in Paris, where he resided before leaving for Dieppe to embark, or in the south of Paris, Wissous, or Saint Fargeau Ponthierry?

The five siblings named in these deeds are:

·         Philippe, baptized on October 18, 1593, in Gallardon. She married Mathurin Bouret in 1620 and lived with him in Saint Fargeau Ponthierry in 1636.

·         Nicolas, the pioneer, baptized on June 4, 1596, in Gallardon.

·         Pierre, baptized on November 18, 1603, in Gallardon, who traveled to New France with his brother, but who left few traces there. Did he die in Quebec, did he return to France?

·         Noëlle, baptized on April 10, 1605, in Gallardon, who married Jacques de Flandres, with whom she lived in Saint Fargeau Ponthierry in 1636.

·         Philippe, baptized on February 22, 1609, in Gallardon. He lived in Wissous in 1636, the year he accepted donations from his brothers and sisters. He then seems to have settled in Paris.

[Source: https://conversationsancetres.wordpress.com/2019/04/26/57-nicolas-et-pierre-pelletier/]