La Rochelle - dagenais

DAGENAIS
Chronicle of Our Branch of the Family
in North America
Frederick Dashner

Introduction
The current availability of online databases and the mass photocopying of searchable
historical documents have led to a renewed interest in genealogy, and it is now much
easier to fill in the basic outline of our family trees. Many are quickly fascinated by the
process of slowly leapfrogging back one generation at a time to learn the names of the
ancestors who are responsible for our existences today, and the continuity with the past
that we establish seems to give our lives an additional layer of meaning. In a sense, our
genealogical efforts write us into a history that we had probably not much appreciated.
The initial fascination with the past soon grows muted, however, as the sheer number of
our ancestors becomes apparent. The figure increases exponentially with each leap of a
generation back in the tree, and while four grandparents or eight great-grandparents are
relatively easy to get our minds around, by the time we arrive at a point only ten
generations back, there are more than 2,000 individuals to consider. Each is part of our
unique genetic heritage. Each piques our curiosity. Each also puts us in a difficult
situation. Our dilemma is that, on one hand, we realize that with enough time, effort, and
some luck, it is usually possible for us to know these ancestors to some degree; on the
other, we must also admit that because of the numbers involved this is not a realistic
endeavor. The monumental task of resurrecting the thousands of individuals who came
directly before us begs us to concentrate on a deeper investigation of specific individuals
or specific lines. Here, the social and psychological importance of the surname cannot be
denied since it is often the only inherited detail of the past that is with us in our daily
lives. We are subconsciously reminded of our paternal ancestors each time we say, hear,
or sign our surname, and this perhaps explains why this line of descent intrigues us most.
The dead of course cannot be interviewed, and our second task begins with the sifting of
any available historical information the line may have left. As much as we would like to
learn about our ancestors’ aspirations in life, their perspectives on social issues, and their
interpersonal relationships, we must admit that almost all of this type of personal
information lies beyond our reach. The majority simply lived lives that did not leave
particularly strong marks on history. Without written records such as diaries and
correspondence, most have left the minimum – dates and places in time recorded by
someone else. This “cold” data, often limited to a birth, a marriage, perhaps a few census
entries, and a death, constitutes a basic framework around which we can begin to
consider an individual, but it does not in itself give us the type of information that allows
us to appreciate them in much detail.
Nonetheless, all cold data exists against an historical backdrop of general information
that can be explored deeply, and carefully considering what is known of an individual
inside an informed reading of history can shed a significant amount of light on his/her
life. Carefully juxtaposing the two types of information allows us to draw inferences and
consider them in a much more humanistic light. If we cannot know our ancestors’ most
intimate details, we can still learn of their prospects at birth, the social conditions that
constrained them, and the occupations they chose, for example.
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Each ancestor has a life story to tell that, because they lie in a line of descent that ends
with us, we would like to hear. The following is a narrative of such a line, pieced
together in the spirit of exploring the historical continuity of a surname.
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Agenais
A good starting point in the Dagenais genealogy, therefore, is the surname itself, which is
rooted in Agenais, a former province of Ancien Régime France. Located in the
southwest part of the country, the region has a long and colorful history stretching back to
its origins as Gaulish Aginnum and Roman Civitas Agennensium. It was fought over by
various kingdoms and political entities for much of its 2000-year history. The region
today constitutes virtually the entire French département of Lot-en-Garonne.
Figure 1 France and the département of Lot et Garonne (47)
The French prefix de (d’ in its shortened form before a vowel) means “from”, and thus
the construction d’Agenais indicates something or someone from Agenais. As is the case
with the origin of many French surnames, people removed from a region and living
elsewhere would have been referred to with their forename, the de prefix, and the name
of the region they had left. Over time, many of these constructions became formalized as
surnames.
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The administrative seat of Agenais in ancient times was the city of Agen, as it remains
today. Residents of the city are also referred to as Agenais or Agenois, and the same use
of the d’ prefix was likely used to refer to a person who had come from this town. Some
may wish to point out that use of the uppercase De or D’ in French can also indicate
nobility, and there was indeed a Compte D’Agenais (Count of Agenais) for several
centuries until the French Revolution in 1789. Nevertheless, it is far more logical to
assume the connected uppercase D in Dagenais arose out of simplified spelling over time
than to attempt to claim an historical descent from nobility for which there is no historical
evidence. A few of the early recorded spellings of the surname in fact use the lowercase
d’. The surname Dagenais, therefore, means simply “from Agenais province” or “from
among the people of Agen”.
Figure 2 Agenais in southwestern France
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Over the last four centuries, the surname has been recorded as Dagenais, Dagenez,
d’Agenez, Dagenay, d’Agenais, Dageney, Dagenest, Dagenet, and Dagenets, all of which
sound identical in French. Explanations for the various spellings include poor
transcription, widespread illiteracy, and personal preference. Because of the rural roots
of most early immigrants to Québec and the harsh environment they lived in, several
generations of Québecois had no formal education and therefore simply did not read or
write. The adaption of anglicized forms like Dashner and Dashnaw for many U.S.
members of the extended family evolved out of an attempt to “sound” more American, as
was the case with immigrants from many countries. The wide variation in spelling has
made historical research all the more difficult. For the sake of clarity, the spelling
Dagenais will be used exclusively here.
Much of the genealogical information from the early 17 th century on in Québec, as in
France, can be gleaned from the baptisms, marriages, and deaths recorded in Catholic
parishes. This is fortuitous because civil records for much of this period are sparse. As a
rule, dependable entries in church registers are available from 1579 on, although some
baptismal records are available from earlier periods. The physical location of individuals
in time and information about them is therefore inextricably bound to their association
with a parish and will be mentioned repeatedly in conjunction with the life events of the
individual in question. Individuals not associated with a parish, for whatever reason, are
much more difficult to trace and often fall from the record completely.
The first Old World mention of the surname Dagenais in this line is a reference to
Renaud Dagenais of the parish of Saint-Sauveur in the port city of La Rochelle in the old
French province of Aunis about 250 km from Agen. Today, the city lies in the
département of Charentes-Maritimes (17 in figure 1) on France’s west coast. An early
transcription error would render him Arnaud Dagenais in many North American
genealogical documents. Renaud Dagenais’ residence in La Rochelle with his wife,
Andrée Poulet, in the early 1600s demands some speculation as to why a move away
from Agenais might have been made. Regardless of whether the family relocation to La
Rochelle was made by a single individual or took place gradually over a few generations,
there are some historical and intertwined motivations for such a move.
Agenais in the 15 th and 16 th centuries, like most of rural France, was almost completely
agricultural, and the remnants of the European feudal system had hung on there, as in
much of France, much longer than in the northern parts of Europe. The usual
arrangement, where a seigneur, or noble, owned the land and the local peasantry was
employed to work it for a percentage of the harvest, had been in existence for several
centuries. These peasants, almost universally poor, uneducated, and largely restricted to
the land they worked, were in many cases closer to serfs than to citizens and led lives
with little opportunity for social advancement. Their percentage of the harvest was
enough to keep them alive but was rarely enough to allow for the accumulation of
sufficient capital for significant social mobility. Prevented from owning land, they were
kept in check physically by the king’s soldiers and morally by the church. There were
also tradesmen, petty merchants, and the clergy in the various towns and villages who
managed to live somewhat above the fray, however, and the likelihood of a Dagenais
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attaining the rudimentary education and capital necessary for a move to La Rochelle lies
with the merchant class. The fact that Renaud Dagenais and his eldest son are later
recorded as merchants in La Rochelle lends credence to this line of thought.
A second motivation would also likely have been the fact that the Agenais region had
seen intermittent warfare for a period of over 200 years until 1453, control over the area
having been passed between France and England several times during this period. It was
permanently attached to the French crown only in 1592, just a few years before Renaud
Dagenais’ appearance in the record.
Regardless of the reason for leaving Agenais, the 250 km distance between Agen and La
Rochelle was a well-traveled route, both by land and by water. The large Garonne River
runs through Agen to Bordeaux, where a short sea voyage or overland trip north to La
Rochelle was readily available.
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La Rochelle
The dramatically different environment of the port city of La Rochelle as compared to
that of land-locked Agenais cannot be overstated. Here, citizens would have been privy
to information and had access to opportunities unavailable in Agenais. La Rochelle was
by far the largest port in France in the 17 th century and the second or third largest city in
France overall with about 30,000 inhabitants. The entrance to the port was framed by
two massive stone towers, les Tours Saint-Nicholas, which served as breakwaters for the
harbor and between which a massive iron chain was strung, controlling access to the city.
Residents would have heard the tales of fishermen, shipping merchants, and sailors
arriving from other ports along the Atlantic as well as those of early explorers returning
from the New World. It was a progressive, permissive, business-oriented enclave in a
restrictive, backward-looking empire and a relative haven for French Huguenots
(Protestants) and other persecuted minorities from across France. As a result, the city had
developed important religious, economic, and even military relationships with England
and Holland.
Figure 3 La Rochelle and the département of Charente-Maritime
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Figure 4 Jean-Baptiste Corot, La Rochelle Harbor
Figure 5 Horace Vernet, La Rochelle Harbor
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Figure 6 Aerial view of La Rochelle harbor today
Two factors in this rather dynamic environment would have had a heavy impact on
merchants like Renaud Dagenais. The first was the poor overall state of the European
economy, due mostly to the costly wars of attrition Spain, France, England, and Holland
had been fighting between them since most at that time could remember. Merchants in
La Rochelle and other port cities would likely have suffered commercially because of
hostilities but still been in a position to take advantage of the quickly-evolving
relationships between the nobility, the church, and the peasantry.
In the 17 th century the various French nobles were eager to replenish their coffers after
years of warfare and to keep budding peasant revolts at bay. The French peasantry
continued to seek ways out from under the yoke of poverty, and the French Catholic
Church sought to prevent the nobility from exercising too much political power while it
endeavored to maintain the moral stranglehold it had on the souls of the population. All
three groups saw access to the New World as a way to further their own ends. The great
European colonial powers of at the time had by this time explored different parts of the
two new continents, France eventually concentrating on North America. Explorers like
Cartier (voyages 1534-1541) and Champlain (voyages 1603-1615) returned with stories
of huge swathes of available land and exploitable natural resources, especially furs, in the
area that became known as New France. After some evolution, the idea of permanent
colonies in the New World was promoted, and all three layers of French society would be
needed to create them. Briefly put, the nobles were willing to finance settlement in the
new colonies with the aim of enriching themselves, the church to bless and oversee
colonization in order to have access to huge populations of potential converts, and the
peasants to serve as colonists in exchange for free land on which to settle.
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Figure 7 Cartier's voyage of discovery
Figure 8 Champlain's voyages to the New World
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Figure 9 Champlain on Hochelaga (Montréal Island)
The second factor was the religious conflict that rocked several parts of Europe during
this period, none more acutely than La Rochelle. While both Catholics and Protestants
there had enjoyed relative peace under the Edict of Nantes enacted in 1598, the
restoration of Louis XIII, a Catholic, to the crown in 1610 and the rise to power of
Cardinal Richelieu along with him made La Rochelle an immediate political target in
what became known as the Counter Reformation. Its large population of affluent
Huguenots had by this time made the city the virtual center of Protestantism in France,
and it enjoyed the financial and military support of both England and Holland. The
walled enclave suffered several attempts to re-Catholicize it in the decades that followed,
culminating in an all-out siege of the city by a force of 30,000 French soldiers in 1627. A
large entrenchment around the city and a sea wall across the mouth of the harbor were
constructed by order of Richelieu, and, despite English naval intervention, the city
capitulated 14 months later on 28 October 1628. Renaud and Andrée Dagenais likely
spent the siege inside the walls of the city and suffered along with the rest of the
population, which counted 22,000 deaths from casualties, disease, and famine by its end.
Only a sixth of the former population, some 5,000 residents, remained. The siege is the
historical backdrop for Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and the subject of a
well-known painting by Henri Motte, Siège de La Rochelle, depicting Richelieu
commanding troops from atop the sea wall.
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Figure 10 Cardinal Richelieu
Figure 11 Henri Motte, Siège de La Rochelle
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Figure 12 D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers in La Rochelle
The effects of the siege on the Dagenais family are not known, but because of the
widespread destruction in the city and the severe reduction of its population, much of
their lives probably had to be rebuilt. Still, Catholic forces had triumphed, and the simple
fact that that they had remained Catholic in a Huguenot stronghold probably worked
significantly in their favor. Most of the remaining Huguenots, in fact, eventually fled the
city for Holland, England, or the New World. (Some would found the city of New
Rochelle in the English colony of New York.) Merchants like Renaud Dagenais may
well have been left in an advantageous commercial situation in the devastated city as a
result.
Into this time of extreme strife but also apparent opportunity, Renaud Dagenais’ two sons
were born. Civil birth records did not exist at the time, but their baptisms are on record at
Chapelle Sainte-Marguerite in La Rochelle. The elder, Simon, was baptized on 17
September 1632, followed by Pierre two years later on 17 August 1634. Like the
cathedral and the other four Catholic churches in La Rochelle, the Dagenais’ home
church of Saint-Sauveur had been largely destroyed by Huguenots in 1568, the stones
used to reinforce the city walls against attack. As a result, Catholic services for all
parishes in the city were held at the smaller Chapelle Sainte-Marguerite until 1665 and
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ecords kept there. A new church would not be built in Saint-Sauveur until 1679.
Pierre’s baptism was conducted by the chapel priest, Monsieur Robert, and the act was
witnessed by Pierre Courvaige and Françoise Rabie. The idea that Renaud Dagenais’
social standing in the city remained significant is supported by his selection of Pierre
Courvaige as godfather, who is listed in the entry as sieur de la Tour et sergent royal (a
local noble and royal military appointee).
Figure 13 Pierre Dagenais' baptismal entry in the Ste. Marguerite register
Figure 14 Chapelle Ste. Marguerite, La Rochelle
Little is known of Renaud Dagenais’ wife, Andrée Poulet, other than the fact that she has
the same surname as the captain of a ship that made several voyages from La Rochelle to
North America transporting immigrants and supplies to the New World. Poulet was
already a popular surname in France at that time, however, and no link between the two
has been established. Women of the time were of course rather completely dependent on
their fathers or husbands, and their names appear infrequently in the civil record as a
result.
Simon and Pierre spent childhood and early adolescence in the streets of Saint-Saveur
which included the busy Maubec wharf along the Marans Canal. As La Rochelle reestablished
itself as a maritime hub on the Atlantic seaboard, the boys would have grown
up watching ships bound for the Antilles load wine and grain and those returning from
New France unload salted fish and furs.
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Figure 15 Sea-faring ships in La Rochelle harbor
Because of French inheritance laws of the period, a father’s merchant license could only
be handed down to one son, normally the eldest, who also often laid claim to the lion’s
share of the family wealth. Accordingly, Simon is listed as a merchant in the city in later
documents. The remaining siblings of such mercantile families were left to a trade or to
try their chances in another capacity. Pierre apparently trained for at least some time as a
tailleur (tailor), perhaps apprenticing himself to a master tailor from around the age of 12
or 13 as was customary. He would continue to claim this profession for many years on
documents in New France although there is no evidence he ever practiced the trade there.
Regardless, his position as second son in what were undoubtedly hard times may have
been a strong motivation for him to leave La Rochelle.
Records show that Pierre was already married by age 15 although the customary marriage
contract and entry in one of the city’s Catholic registers have not been discovered. This
suggests that his wife, known only as Marie, may have been Huguenot. Interfaith
marriages in La Rochelle were not uncommon, but such unions were certainly not
condoned by Catholic officials or performed in Catholic churches. Interestingly, the
crypt below the church of Saint-Saveur had been in regular use as a clandestine meeting
place for Huguenots even before the Edict of Nantes. In the new religious climate in
France under Richelieu, however, professing a faith other than Catholicism was a genuine
liability. The persecution of Huguenots at this time in fact only increased, and the young
inter-religious couple may have been either eager or encouraged to emigrate. This
constitutes a second strong motivational factor, and an immediate one, behind their
decision to leave for uncertain futures in the New World at such a tender age.
A third factor is undoubtedly the sense of adventure many young European men must
have felt at the possibility of life in a new world. The vast stretches of free land, removal
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from governmental supervision, and the possibility of turning hard work into a much
better life, albeit framed in uncertainty and danger, must have made the alternative of a
regimented existence under the status quo in France seem stale and predictable. Most of
those interested in emigrating were uneducated, illiterate, and idealistic, but these
qualities, together with the working class skills they possessed, made them perfect
colonists. To complement this situation, there was also a sort of religious fervor that
swept across France in the second half of the 17 th century which also conditioned many
such young men to see the savage lands of the New World as fertile ground for the spread
of Christianity. While the young Pierre was of course unaware he was on the cusp of
history, caught up in one of the world’s great migrations, on some level he nonetheless
must have felt the energy of an entire generation being swept across the Atlantic.
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Nouvelle France
The French had only recently founded four small settlements in North America at Port
Royal (1610) in present day Nova Scotia, and at Québec (1620), Trois-Rivières (1634),
and Ville Marie (1642) on the St. Lawrence River. Several voyages of exploration,
settlement, and supply had left from La Rochelle and the nearby ports of St. Nazaire and
Dieppe to the north. These became collecting points for supplies and especially for
colonists wishing to emigrate. The site at Ville Marie (later Montréal) had been selected
because of its relatively protected location on a large island the Natives called Hochelaga
(later the Île de Montréal) downstream of the last large rapids on the St. Lawrence near
its confluence with the Ottawa River. The original charter to settle all three of the
colonies on the St. Lawrence had been given to the Compagnie des Cent-Associés, a
group of 100 French nobles organized by Cardinal Richelieu in 1627 who were
responsible for encouraging the settlement and development of the colonies in exchange
for a royal monopoly on trade.
Jesuit priests were soon active across the region, establishing relationships with the
various tribes and setting up small Native missions. Their official log, the Relation, cited
their impressions and the main events that occurred in the missions. Now published, it is
another rich source of early frontier history, although it is of course recounted from a
religious perspective and deals mainly with Québec, the seat of Jesuit power in New
France.
Figure 16 17 th century Jesuit priest
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Figure 17 North America in the mid-1600s
Figure 18 Geography of the Île de Montréal
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The fledgling colony of Ville Marie, furthest up the St. Lawrence and the most recently
founded, was a bit of an anachronism in that it was originally intended only as a religious
mission for the indigenous population. Although not a Jesuit himself, its governor, Paul
Chomeday de Maisonneuve, was a humble, devout, and driven man who had lived in the
colony since its inception. He eschewed the economic aspects of colonization that had
taken root in the other settlements in New France in favor of an austere life converting
the Natives to Christianity. The rather idealistic objective of the colony was to settle a
small core of hired Frenchmen on the island who would build houses, schools, a church,
and a hospital. Funding would come from both the Cent-Associés and from other
wealthy nobles in France who saw conversion of the New World sauvages as an act of
faith. Maisonneuve’s best recruit for the project was Jeanne Mance, an equally devout
Frenchwoman whose ambition was to set up a hospital in the wilderness to care for the
Natives and who, fortuitously, had a wealthy patroness in Paris to back her.
In its first few years, the colony foundered. The harsh climate and Native violence
claimed many of the original 44 French inhabitants, and few new workers could be
enticed into the wilderness there because free land was not being distributed as in the
other settlements downstream. With his colony near collapse and its few inhabitants
hunkered down inside the walls of the wooden fort, Maisonneuve returned to France in
1647 in a rather unsuccessful attempt to win more support from the Associés and to
recruit employees. This time-consuming trans-Atlantic line of communication between
the residents of Ville Marie and the Associés in Paris would continue to prove an obstacle
for the colony, especially given its idealistic aspirations. Upon his return, he bowed to
the obvious and agreed to begin recruiting colonists instead of just employees to the
settlement in an effort to establish a more viable colony.
Taking matters into her own hands, the intrepid Jeanne Mance also returned to France in
1649 and secured a massive gift of 22,000 livres (pounds), ostensibly for her hospital but
which she also probably used as a carrot to entice new colonists. She left La Rochelle in
July 1650 onboard the Cardinal, a supply ship bound for Québec with 150 immigrants
for New France. Around 20 of these she had persuaded to sign on for Ville Marie.
Fifteen year-old Pierre Dagenais and his new bride Marie were among them.
Most recruits for New France were known as engagés (hirees) or, more commonly,
trente-six mois. They were men who signed contracts in France to work for a period of
36 months for the Associés or for other more established colonists in exchange for
passage across the Atlantic and an eventual land concession. Between 1608 and 1699
some 2600 mostly young unmarried men would arrive as engagés. In principal, only
Catholics were allowed to immigrate to New France, but because supervision was lax and
the need for colonists large, many Huguenots slipped through or were simply able to pay
their own passages across. At this time, the fee for passage to New France was around 75
livres, approximately a year’s wages for a working man. Since no trente-six mois
contract for Pierre Dagenais has been discovered, either he or, more likely, his father
probably had the money to pay for their passages, allowing Pierre and Marie to start
unencumbered upon arrival.
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Immigrants waiting to travel from western ports like La Rochelle were normally housed
at inns at their own expense, although Pierre and Marie surely stayed with their own
relatives since they both lived in the city. Ship captains had complete control over
departure, and they did not leave until the ship was fully loaded and conditions were
favorable. A voyage across the Atlantic in these latitudes at the time was dependent first
of all on the wind and the likelihood of running into storms. An average trip took seven
or eight weeks, but voyages as long as twelve weeks were recorded. Passengers were
also well aware of the possibility of being captured by English or Spanish vessels,
shipwrecked, or delayed for long periods in foreign ports. At a time when some still
feared falling off the edge of a flat world or being devoured by sea monsters, either the
courage or the desperation of the young couple must be noted. They were about to
abandon family, friends, and country for life across an unforgiving ocean in a barbarous
new environment.
Conditions on board trans-Atlantic ships at this time were deplorable, mostly because
shipping companies and captains considered immigrants more as cargo than as
passengers. The dormitory below deck where passengers had to spend most of their time
was a cold, dark, humid place where hygiene was poor and sickness common. The more
privileged hung canvas hammocks which offered some respite from the constant rocking;
the rest slept on mats on the wooden floor. All had to deal with the limited headroom,
between 1.2 m and 1.5 m (3½ - 5 feet) on nearly all ships, which did not allow a person
to stand up. There was also the almost unbearable stench of unwashed bodies, feces,
vomit, and animals being transported to the colonies. Rations - mainly salted pork,
smoked fish, peas, boiled grain, and hard tack – were of reasonable quality, but the
precious barrels of fresh water reserved for the crossing grew steadily more tainted and
unhealthy as the weeks passed. Many preferred to eat from their own provisions,
drinking cider or wine towards the end of the trip instead of the putrid water. All in all,
historians estimate that up to 10% of passengers died on an average voyage, the corpses
wrapped in canvas, weighted down with cannon shot, and thrown overboard into the
Atlantic.
Each morning passengers rose for mandatory prayers on deck; thereafter, they were free
to do as they pleased if the captain did not require anything of them. The educated could
pass the time reading, but simple conversation, games of chance, and the occasional
evening music organized by the crew sufficed for the rest. Rough seas and storms were
all too common along the route, relegating all passengers to the unsavory dormitory
below deck for long stretches. Many arriving colonists in New France complained that
life in the often dangerous wilderness of New France was still preferable to another
voyage across the Atlantic.
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Figure 19 Wilhelm van de Velde, The Gust, a 17th century ship at sea
The Cardinal landed at Québec on 8 September 1650. Most engagés for New France had
signed contracts for this, the largest and most developed of the three colonies, but those
bound for Trois-Rivières or Montréal also had to disembark in Québec because large
vessels could not navigate the narrower stretches of the upper St. Lawrence. In several
previous instances, colonists recruited for these colonies had been enticed by authorities
to stay on at Québec instead of continuing upriver. For these and other reasons, there
would be some rivalry between the three colonies for some years to come. After a brief
stay, Jeanne Mance and her recruits boarded one of the small boats owned and operated
by the Associés on 25 September 1650 and headed upriver to Ville Marie. Pierre and
Marie thus arrive in the new colony of about 50 colonists only eight years after its
founding.
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Figure 20 Lithograph of Ville Marie just after founding in 1642
Figure 21 Drawing of Fort Ville Marie 1645
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Ville Marie
Pierre and Marie could not have arrived at a more pivotal time in the history of the
colony. The most immediate concern was the constant threat of Native violence. While
the French settlers in the three colonies along the St. Lawrence had developed fairly good
relations with both the Algonquin who lived mostly east and north of the Île de Montréal
and the Huron who inhabited the vast region that stretched from the Île de Montréal to
Lake Huron, there remained serious problems with the unrelated and hostile Iroquois
confederation of tribes to the south. This loose confederation, the so-called Five Nations,
was composed of the Seneca, the Onondaga, the Oneida, the Cayuga, and the Mohawk.
Many Algonquin and Huron had begun to accept and even to integrate into French
culture, some females intermarrying with the surplus of French men and others nominally
adopting the Christian faith. The Iroquois, especially the Mohawk, however, remained a
separate, warlike people, and they had conducted raids on all three of the colonies since
their inception.
Figure 22 Native tribes in northeast North America
In the spring of 1649, only months before Pierre and Marie arrived in Ville Marie, the
Iroquois stepped-up their efforts to rid the area of both French settlers and other Native
tribes. They first all but exterminated the Huron and Algonquin north of the St.
Lawrence, sending refugees fleeing in several directions and making the region a desert
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oamed only by Iroquois warriors and hunters. Hundreds of dispersed Huron arrived in
the French settlements asking for food and protection. Many remained semi-permanently
encamped near French forts. This initially seemed to play into Jesuit dreams of a pacified
Christian Native population, and Maisonneuve took advantage of the bumper wheat crop
of 1650 to feed them in exchange for their presence at daily mass. Fearing Iroquois
attacks even in Ville Marie, however, they soon departed for safer conditions upriver near
Québec. With the Algonquin and Huron decimated, the juxtaposition of Christian
idealism and Iroquois savagery soon became almost comical, and the entire rationale
behind the colony at Ville Marie began to fade quickly. The Jesuits never seriously
considered the Iroquois a people able to be evangelized.
Victorious, the Iroquois next envisioned a united attack on all French settlements along
the St. Lawrence. Ville Marie and Trois-Rivières were most exposed and suffered the
brunt of the attacks. While the Iroquois far outnumbered the French, the protection
provided by walled forts proved very effective; the Iroquois lost many warriors to volleys
from French muskets, and they soon shifted tactics by beginning to conduct smaller
surprise attacks on settlers outside the walls of the forts where crops had to be tended.
Settlers of both sexes and of all ages were soon forced to live with an unsettling fear of
being killed or captured at any moment.
Of particular note was the Iroquois penchant for capturing French children to replace
warriors lost in battle and young French women as spoils-of-war brides, both of whom
were integrated into Iroquois society in significant numbers. Strikingly, after being
raised in Iroquois villages for several years, captured settlers sometimes refused to return
to the repressive Catholicism of French society in the colonies when offered the chance
and continued to live as Iroquois. On the other hand, the Iroquois seemed bent on
creating an atmosphere of extreme fear among the colonists with the prisoners they did
not intend to integrate. Here, Iroquois cruelty was legendary.
Enemies of the Iroquois that could not be taken away were invariably executed on the
spot with several blows of a tomahawk to the head and immediately “scalped”. The
corpse was turned face down and a quick incision from the top of the forehead to the
back of the neck was made. The warrior then put his foot on the victim’s shoulder,
pulled off the scalp with both hands, and gave a loud “death cry”. The scalp was then
fastened to the warrior’s belt, and he went on his way. After later drying the scalp in the
sun, painting it red, and fastening it to a long stick, the warrior returned to his village with
the scalp held high, proof of both his courage and that one of the enemy had been killed.
Adult French settlers and Natives not killed and scalped on the spot during raids were
brought back to Iroquois villages where they were either enslaved or suffered horrible
physical torture before being killed. Such torture was often an entertainment for the
village left to the women to conduct, each trying to impress their male counterparts with
ingenious acts of cruelty. Scores of recorded incidents across New France reveal the
details of methodically severed ears, noses, fingers and breasts before being “put to the
fire”, a ritualistic torture over a slow-burning fire that could last several excruciating
hours. Iroquois children were also known to participate by shooting arrows into the arms
25

and thighs of the roasting captives. Many victims were also subsequently eaten.
Witnesses to this ordeal who made it back to the colony, it was no doubt hoped, would
deter further French encroachment on Iroquois lands and send settlers fleeing in terror.
The years immediately after Pierre and Marie Dagenais’ arrival, from 1650 to 1653, saw
a spike in Iroquois violence, with the nascent fur trade coming to a standstill across New
France as Iroquois warriors ambushed the canoe parties of other western tribes which
descended the Ottawa and St. Lawrence to trade with the French each summer. A
retaliatory raid led by Major Lambert in October of 1652 was also massacred, leaving
colonists in a state of siege severe enough to promote talk of abandoning Ville Marie.
Figure 23 Iroquois attack on French fort
Figure 24 Lithograph of Iroquois attacking a French farm
26

Figure 25 Iroquois warrior with scalp
Figure 26 Iroquois women burning a settler
27

Figure 27 Iroquois torturing Jesuits from a print in the Historia Cadensis by Father de
Creux, 1664
Realizing his colony needed both more colonists and the ability to aggressively defend
itself, Maisonneuve made another voyage to France in an effort to recruit men with
artisanal skills who could also handle firearms. His success, largely dependent on the
explicit granting of free land and cash in exchange for a promise not to leave the Île de
Montréal for greener pastures, was a turning point in the development of the colony. He
returned from the port of St. Nazaire on 16 November 1653 with a huge contingent of 80
well-chosen men and 15 women, known in the history of Montréal as la grande récrue
(the big recruitment). Much of the credit for this recruitment that, by all estimations,
saved Ville Marie must go to Jeanne Mance who had promised to divert most of the
22,000 livres she had solicited for her hospital to Maisonneuve in order to lure the most
suitable candidates.
The Huron and Algonquin flotillas returned to trade in Ville Marie and Trois-Rivières in
the spring of 1654, and there was a period of relative peace as the Iroquois contemplated
how to deal with the influx of tough new Frenchmen. Little is known of Pierre and Marie
Dagenais during this time. Marie is recorded as godmother at a baptism in the Ville
Marie chapel on 6 November 1651, but Pierre is not listed among the first recipients of
cash and plots of land which were distributed in the elevated area east of the fort known
as Côteau St. Louis (Place Viger in Montréal today) beginning in January 1654. This is
perhaps because of his age. Despite the fact that the couple had weathered the same
atrocities as the other settlers, Pierre was still only 19 at this time and not legally
28

considered an adult. The names of a large number of the colonists who received these
early plots, however, have in fact been lost, and it is more than likely the couple was
awarded land around this time.
After Native violence, the next most immediate concern for newly-arrived colonists in
Ville Marie was simple sustenance in the harsh climate. Even though some rudimentary
assistance from the Associés was available, arriving colonists who took plots of land were
soon expected to fend for and support themselves. Colonists could hunt the sparse game
on the island or fish on the St. Lawrence, but nearly all were expected to clear their own
land for planting. This was a vital occupation for most of the men there since the entire
island was covered in forest and the population would be dependent on agriculture for
many years to come. To render the situation even more critical, aid from Maisonneuve
and the Associés became particularly sparse in 1657 and 1658 when another 200 men and
40 women immigrated to Ville Marie.
The granting of land was commensurate with a colonist’s capacity to clear it for
development. An average, hard-working défricheur (land-clearer) could hope to clear
two or three arpents of forest over two years – enough to support a small family. (1
arpent = .34 hectares or .84 acres). Successful défricheurs managed to clear their own
plots relatively quickly, plant a crop (usually wheat and/or peas), and then proceed to
lease additional land from other more-established colonists. Since there were at times
severe shortages of cash in the new colony, many of these transactions were made in
exchange for a portion of the harvest. Unencumbered residents were also free to employ
arriving 36 mois colonists as laborers who were paid on average the same 75 livres per
year they might have earned in France. Early on, Pierre appears to have put in his time
under this arrangement, settling on a plot in Côteau St. Louis. The area had a small
fortification for security, and Pierre may well have worked on the construction of a winddriven
grain mill that was built there in 1659, the experience preparing him for the
running of his own mill some years later. Pierre’s only appearance in the record is as a
witness in civil document on 5 August 1657.
Despite the fact that the increased population of Ville Marie resulted in fewer direct
Iroquois attacks and significant numbers of Iroquois dead during such attacks, many
settlers were now more exposed to danger as they tended fields on their own plots some
distance from fortifications. The Iroquois continued to assault and abduct settlers in their
fields from positions in the thick woods. By 1659, in fact, 24 of the 80 former grande
récrue arrivals had perished in such attacks at the hands of the Iroquois. Marie Dagenais
may have been among them, for she disappears around this time. Tellingly, her death and
burial are not recorded by the Jesuits in the parish register, as was the case when the body
of a deceased person was not recovered. This was the unfortunate fate of many who
simply vanished into the wilderness. The fact that she may have been Huguenot would
also have been grounds for the lack of an official funeral.
To combat the continuing violence, the early French colonists were soon organized into
local militias. The Ville Marie militia, La Milice de la Sainte-Famille, had 20 squads of
seven men each, and Pierre Dagenais was assigned to the 10 th squad with the other men
who had farms in his area: Jacques Testard, his son Charles Testard, Jacques Millot,
Laurent Archambault, Jacques Dufresne, and André Charly. Colonists were also under
29

strict rules from Maisonneuve for their own protection which included never going out to
clear land unarmed, working together whenever possible, rendering assistance to anyone
under attack, and remaining indoors after dark.
Pierre may have also worked at least part-time as a tailor at some point during his early
residence in Ville Marie. Suitable clothes were a valuable commodity in the New World
in general, and all textiles had to be imported at high cost on the supply ships that arrived
all too infrequently at Québec and brought upriver by boat. Settlers conserved the clothes
they had rather judiciously and adopted native dress made from buckskin. Although
tradesmen were heavily recruited by the Associés, few masters were interested in
relinquishing their positions in France in order to risk starting over again in an uncertain
new environment in the New World. As a result, the tradesmen who did come usually
had little actual experience in their respective trades. Regardless, few could have
managed to make a living solely on the basis of such trades in the early days of the
colony anyway. In early documents Pierre does identify himself as Pierre Dagenais dit
Léspine, tailleur, stating both his profession and using a semi-formalized dit nickname
that people of the period often gave each other. Léspine (modern French l’épine) means
“the thorn” and may have referred to the needles and pins a tailor would have used in his
trade. In an era before shops and storefronts, a tailor made his way around to the various
households taking measurements for clothes he sewed at home. The fact that none of his
descendants continued to use this formalized nickname supports the hypothesis that
Léspine referred to tailoring. The children of other settlers, on the other hand, often
incorporated such nicknames into the family surname when they denoted other things,
such as place of origin, and continued to use them historically.
Figure 28 Ville Marie Chapel and square about 1660
30

In 1661 and apparently after establishing himself, Pierre leases another plot of land for a
period of three years from his neighbor Laurent Archambault, clearing two arpents of it
over the next two years. On 23 November 1662 he signs another contract to clear a
further eight arpents for the Associés with a 36 mois employee of neighbor Charles
Testard. A year later on 29 October 1663, Pierre subleases the remaining year of his
lease on the Archambault land to Olivier Charbonneau, with whom he will have a strong
business relationship and friendship for many years. Charbonneau agrees to work the
cleared parts of the land in exchange for 12 minots (bushels) of wheat. Pierre signs these
civil documents with a flourished signature that indicates he can write well.
Figure 29 Signature of Pierre Dagenais (Dageney)
Civil documents at the time were recorded by notaires, licensed royal notaries who were
responsible for recording and preserving legal transactions between individuals.
Agreements and contracts of all sorts, including marriages, property transfers, leases,
arbitration decisions, debts, donations, estate settlements, and wills, had to be written
down according to French law and were enforceable by the local noble. They are another
rich source of historical detail in New France.
A third concern for the French population was the fact that 82% of the colonists in New
France who immigrated between 1632 and 1662 were men. A few had arrived with
families, many took Native wives, and others simply remained hopeful that the Associés
would encourage more French females to immigrate. Colonists were in fact encouraged
to take willing Native women as wives, and many French men found Algonquin women
both exotic and a good deal more sexually liberated than Catholic French women. A
fairly large Métis population of mixed-blood inhabitants with their feet in both cultures
sprang up in the colonies as a result.
We do not know the exact year of Marie Dagenais’ death and thus how long Pierre
Dagenais lead the demanding life of a défricheur alone. He appears to have been a
driven man, rising to meet the challenges before him by working several plots
simultaneously in the harsh environment. His perseverance is especially notable given
that, until 1700, more than two thirds of arriving colonists in New France either died of
unnatural causes or returned to France.
The situation took a positive turn in 1663 when, in an effort to jump-start lackluster
development in the colonies, Louis XIV revoked the charter of the Compagnie des Cent-
Associés and formed the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales which would be more
directly under the control of the crown and which would be required to make immigration
to the colonies a priority. Until 1663, most of the nobles and their respective merchants
31

operating under the Associés charter were much more concerned with the increasingly
lucrative fur trade in Trois-Rivières and Québec than with organizing permanent
settlements, especially in Ville Marie. To add a sense of further immediacy, the English
and Dutch colonies to the south were growing quickly at this time and threatened to
monopolize trade with the natives and dwarf the smaller French settlements. A large
contingent of 1200 troops, the Carrignan-Salières Regiment, was sent in 1665 to protect
colonists and to encourage the settling of new tracts of land all along the coasts of the Île
de Montréal. Maisonneuve was soon forced from power in Ville Marie, and governance
of the colony passed to the Sulpicians, an order of Parisian priests who would exercise
rigid control over the entire island for the next 150 years.
Figure 30 Map of French, English, and Dutch colonial areas in 1664
32

Figure 31 17 th century Sulpician priest
33
Figure 32 Carrignan-Salières soldier

Figure 33 Carrignan-Salières Regiment ship
Figure 34 Ville Marie 1680-1690 (Mont Réal in the background)
34

About this time, the Sulpicians verbally grant Pierre a tract of land on the St. Lawrence
eight kilometers northeast of Ville Marie in an area known as Côte St. François. Olivier
Charbonneau is also granted a tract there. Colonists who decided to leave the relative
safety of Ville Marie did so mainly for the chance to improve their lot through the
accumulation of land, but there were other factors, such as the opportunity to escape the
petty politics and religious squabbles that came with daily life in the settlement. The
Sulpicians were, after all, priests drawn from the noble class who maintained a rather
close moral watch over their colonist flock. Settling in an untamed area like Côte St.
François meant the chance to distance oneself from such supervised village life. Over the
next two years, Pierre clears land and builds a wooden house there with an overhead loft
and stone chimney.
New parcels of land at this time, referred to as concessions and located in large areas
named almost exclusively after Catholic saints by the Sulpicians, were granted free to
proven individuals who could be counted on to clear and develop them. Grantees were
required to pay annual rents to the Sulpicians, including a small part of the harvested
grain, game, and fish. The parcels were large, usually 30 to 60 square arpents (2 or 3
arpents wide by 20 or 30 deep). Pierre’s concession was a 30 arpent tract between those
owned by Michel Moreau and Claude Desjardins. Such narrow properties that extended
from the edges of rivers deep into the wilderness were characteristic of all new
concessions in New France for many years. In this classically hydraulic society, rivers
became the de facto highways of New France and the Native canoe its vehicle of choice.
As in the other colonies, all the new concessions on the Île de Montréal had frontage on
the St Lawrence which each habitant (resident farmer) used as an artery to remain
connected to the surrounding concessions and near which he built his house and storage
buildings. Later, colonists were expected to build and maintain interior roadways that
connected the succession of properties to the village by land. Since horses and carriages
did not begin to arrive until after 1665, and slowly at that, the early habitants became
hardy walkers by necessity, readily adopting the native snowshoe in winter. The main
roadway became known as the Chemin du roi (King’s Road) and can still be partly
traveled today. The habitants or their employees were also required to perform a few
days of work each year for the good of the community, such as helping erect church
buildings or grain mills. Once conceded, a parcel could be bought, sold, or leased freely,
but only after a minimum of two arpents of land had been cleared and a dwelling
constructed.
According to civil documents, Pierre travels to Québec in August of 1664 by boat to meet
with two La Rochelle merchants, Aléxandre Petit and François Roy, at the house of the
notary Pierre Duquet. Pierre Dagenais has been sent a document from La Rochelle
stating that his brother Simon Dagenais owes him 126 livres and that the money is on
deposit with the merchant Simon Baston in La Rochelle. This is a tidy sum at the time,
nearly two years’ wages for a working man, and may well represent part of his
inheritance. It could also indicate the death of his father in La Rochelle. Petit in effect
redeems the note for Pierre for cash and two days later lends Pierre a further 100 livres,
which Pierre promises to pay back via the first boat from Ville Marie to Québec the
following spring. Pierre stays on for some time in Québec and buys supplies before
35

eturning to Ville Marie. These must have given him an advantage over many of his
fellow colonists, most of whom had little in the way of proper agricultural tools and were
therefore dependent on the Sulpicians for help.
With several years in New France under his belt, some land under cultivation, and a
house to live in, Pierre marries Anne-Marguerite Brandon the following year on 17
November 1665 at Notre Dame Chapel in Ville Marie. The chapel priest, Gabriel Souart,
officiates, and the ceremony is witnessed by several long-time residents of Ville Marie.
Like all marriages in both France and New France of the period, the ceremony is also
preceded by the signing of an official marriage contract that followed the established
customs encoded in the coutume de Paris. Such contracts were usually formulaic,
stipulating that the couple would marry before a priest within a few days and spelling out
the financial details of what each party would bring to the union. In a time when early
death and remarriage were common, the succession rights of the surviving party and
questions concerning real estate were also normally included.
Figure 35 Notre Dame Chapel entry for marriage of Pierre Dagenais and Anne Brandon
36

Sedan
Anne Brandon’s early life and arrival in New France are also colorful. She was born 28
August 1634 in Sedan which was at the time a small independent buffer state between the
largely Protestant German and Belgian principalities to the north and east, and Catholic
France to the south. Like La Rochelle, Sedan had also become a relative haven for
French Huguenots, who enjoyed its tolerant religious atmosphere, relatively educated
population, and solid mercantile economy. Like La Rochelle, Sedan also lived under
persistent political pressure from Catholic elements in France. The once small village
had grown considerably as a result, attracting Huguenots and other refugees from all over
France. Its approximately 10,000 citizens were in fact about 85% Protestant, and there
was even a Protestant Academy serving the region. Anne’s parents, Daniel Brandon and
Jeanne Proligne, were from prominent Huguenot families in the area who kept an inn on
the outskirts of town. Sedan today lies only a few kilometers from the Belgian border in
the French département of Ardennes (08 in Fig. 1).
The political landscape in Sedan changed significantly at the conclusion of the Thirty
Years’ War, the bloody Protestant-Catholic conflict that decimated the countryside and
significantly reduced the number of males in the region’s population. Huguenots were
rounded up and burned at the stake in several locations. Sedan was seized and annexed
by France’s Louis XIII in 1642 when Anne was eight years old, and, in spite of the king’s
promise to respect the rights of all religious practitioners, his successor, Louis XIV,
undertook measures to destabilize the Huguenot population there. Several of Anne’s
relatives eventually took refuge in Holland, and Anne and at least one sister somehow
turned up in Paris. The death of Anne’s mother Jeanne at the birth of her last child in
1653 when Anne was 19 and the remarriage of her father the following year may have
contributed to their departure. A brother also relocated to Lyon at some point.
Figure 36 The Ardennes region and the village of Sedan
37

Figure 37 French Huguenots burned at the stake
Figure 38 French Huguenots burned at the stake
38

Huguenots of this period faced tough choices. Anti-Huguenot sentiment forced many to
openly renounce their faith in order to be able to live normal lives in France. Thousands
simply decided to leave for Protestant England, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland.
Many others left for the New World. Since there were strict prohibitions against
practicing Huguenots immigrating to New France, most in this category simply sought
passage to English or Dutch colonies. Still, because French officials at this time were
keen to increase the number of colonists in New France by almost any means, significant
numbers merely attempted to keep their faith to themselves in exchange for the
possibility of starting over in a French-speaking environment. What prompted Anne to
immigrate alone will probably remain unknown, for is there is no record of her
circumstances during this period, but at age 31 and apparently still unmarried or perhaps
widowed, she signs on as one of the early filles du roi (king’s daughters) and immigrates
to New France.
Most early filles du roi were from decent Catholic families in the provinces who had
fallen on hard times. Like Anne, many had found their way to Paris where some state aid
was available. A high percentage of them were orphans, and the French crown had
become financially responsible for their upkeep at orphanages and convents run by
Catholic nuns. Anne was definitely not an orphan, for her remarried father would live
until 1672, but like nearly all the filles du roi her family ties had probably been
irrevocably broken for some reason. Many of these girls had received a rudimentary
education either at home or at a religious institution and were actively encouraged at the
time to better their usually bleak outlooks in France by immigrating to New France to
become wives of the early colonists. It is worth noting that the state institutions and
convents that housed such women at the time were invariably in financial difficulty and
welcomed the commission they received on each fille they recruited. The young ladies
had their passages paid by the crown and were also given clothing appropriate for the
North American climate, some basic supplies, and 100 livres in cash as a sort of dowry.
It is possible Anne was one of 50 women housed at the Hôpital Général in Paris, a
Catholic welfare home for young women, and encouraged by the nuns there to emigrate
in 1665. These women made up more than half of the filles on Anne’s ship, suggesting
that it was perhaps mostly a dire situation that provoked her departure.
Regardless of her precise reasons for emigrating, Anne made the two-week trip from the
capital to the western port of Dieppe where she boarded the 300 ton French armed
galleon St. Jean-Baptiste in mid-August 1665 with 90 filles du roi and 130 engagés
onboard. The ship was already in regular use as a transport vessel, departing from ports
on the west coast of France with immigrants and supplies and returning with furs and
other exports from New France. Since this was one of the first large conveyances of
women to the colonies, the ship’s agents may have either been lenient in their acceptance
of Huguenot girls or failed to check into their religious backgrounds thoroughly. There is
a strong case for the latter, as communication between the provinces at this time was poor
and the need for women in the colonies desperate. Some of the girls were in fact outright
prostitutes culled from the streets of Paris. Conditions onboard the Cardinal were no
better than on other transport ships, and there were eight deaths among the 90 filles. Yet,
in spite of knowledge of these harsh conditions, nearly 1000 young ladies signed on as
39

filles du roi between 1663 and 1673 and immigrated to New France, allowing French
authorities to become progressively more stringent in their selection of candidates.
Collectively, these women can in some respects be considered the mothers of the modern
Québecois population, for their production of children would triple the population of
New France in just 20 years.
The St. Jean-Baptiste arrived at Québec on 2 October 1665, and Anne undoubtedly spent
some time in the settlement. The girls were expected to pair off with one of the eager
bachelors rather quickly, and there was generally little time or regard for courtship. The
girls had the right of refusal, but it is generally accepted that the men had the upper hand
in the selection process, in many cases pawing over the women like cattle at market.
Many girls were married within a few weeks and nearly all within six months. Settlers
were especially interested in strong farm girls from the provinces who could readily adapt
to both the harsh North American climate and the poor living conditions on rural farms.
Of the girls who disembarked, only 14, including Anne, did not remain in Québec and
were sent upriver to Ville Marie by boat. We can only speculate as to the reasons behind
this apparent relegation to the smaller and more dangerous colony. Although the
authorities in Québec were expected to “share” the arriving girls proportionally with the
other settlements, they were in fact known to keep the most marriageable girls there and
send the less-desirable candidates on to Trois-Rivières and Ville Marie. Perhaps her
unclear religious history, her urban upbringing, or the fact that, at age 31, she was past
what was considered at the time to be of prime marrying age all contributed to her
relegation to Ville Marie.
Regardless, if her experience was an average one, upon arrival from Québec, Anne would
have been housed for a short period of time in Ville Marie at a home for children and
single women called Maison St. Ange run by Sister Margeurite Bourgeoys before being
introduced to the many male colonists looking to marry. It is not known how long Anne
spent in Québec before arriving in Ville Marie or how well she was acquainted with her
future husband, but she was in New France for a total of only six weeks before marrying
Pierre Dagenais in Ville Marie. Pierre was also 31 at the time of their marriage, widowed
himself, and, because of his origins in La Rochelle, was probably not alarmed by Anne’s
Huguenot roots if she in fact revealed them. On the marriage document, she strangely
declares herself unable to sign and lists her parish of origin as St. Laurent in Sedan. Both
of these are deceptions; she was at least semi-literate, and the church of St. Laurent in her
native city was used for both Catholic and Huguenot ceremonies for much of its history.
40

Figure 39 Dieppe, Anne Brandon's port of departure on the English Channel
Figure 40 The port of Dieppe about 1665
41

Figure 41 Drawing of the French transport ship St. Jean-Baptiste
Figure 42 Filles du roi arriving at Québec
42

Figure 43 Marguerite Bourgeoys and filles du roi in Ville Marie
Figure 44 Marguerite Bourgeoys returning to Ville Marie
43

Côte St. François
Rather immediately and because the Carrignan-Salières Regiment would soon be
conducting punishing forays into the wilderness against the Iroquois, the couple moves
into the house on the Côte St. François concession in December 1665. Establishing
himself with other colonists eager to clear land in this new area of course meant living in
a more exposed environment than at the former concession in Côteau St. Louis. It was
after all a considerable distance from the Ville Marie fort. Still, settlement began in
several other directions on the Île de Montréal at this time as soldiers began to build forts
along the main waterways. In the 1666 census, the newly-married Pierre identifies
himself as both tailleur and habitant. In the more widespread census conducted the
following year in 1667, Pierre and Anne declare that they have two arpents of their land
cleared and planted, and they also have an infant son, Michel, born 29 September 1666.
His verbally-granted concession to the Côte St. François property is made official on 27
December 1666, and on 4 September 1667 the couple sells a second property he has
acquired near the port in Ville Marie for 90 livres to Charles Testard. This property was
located on the south side of today’s rue Saint-Paul between rue Saint-Gabriel and rue
Saint-Vincent. At this time, the population of the colony stood at 767. The document
has the educated signature of both Anne Brandon and Pierre Dagenais.
Figure 45 Location of Dagenais concession in Côte St. François
44

The Dagenais homestead in Côte St. François was probably like that of the average
habitant anywhere in New France. Homes were built of horizontally stacked logs with a
stone chimney and a roof crafted from either thatch or wooden shingles. Since glass was
not available, translucent oiled animal skins were tacked over openings in the wall and
served as windows. Habitants nearly always had at least one other building which served
as both barn and stable. Cattle were highly prized as draft animals for plowing before
horses became available to the general population in the 1720s, and pigs (the early
ancestors ate a lot of bacon), turkeys, capons, and chickens rounded out the list of
barnyard animals. The habitant grew mostly a quickly-ripening strain of Norwegian
wheat, necessary in the short growing season, along with oats, a little barley, a great
quantity of peas, some flax, and tobacco. Sugar and syrup from the maple tree sweetened
the daily meals.
Over the next several years, Pierre continues to develop the Côte St. François property,
buying additional tracts, leasing parts of them out to other colonists, and reselling others.
His improving financial situation is visible when he pays 200 livres in cash for a 30
arpent tract he purchases from Pierre Lorain on 3 July 1670. After settling there with his
family, he sells his original concession in St. François the same year on 6 November
1670 to Antoine Dufresne. All the while, the Sulpicians continued to grant new
concessions east along the St. Lawrence. French immigrants quickly began to settle in
Côte St. Anne and Côte St. Jean until all the land along the river had been conceded. The
eastern tip of the Île de Montreal became known as Pointe-aux-Trembles, so named for
the quaking leaves of the aspen tree which grew abundantly in the area. Thereafter,
concessions proceeded west on the north coast of the Rivière-des-Prairies in Côte St.
Sulpice (later Côte de la Rivière) and Côte St. Domingue. All of these early concessions
were served by the newly-created parish of l’Enfant-Jésus de Pointe-aux-Trembles
established in 1674. After 1687, much of the northern coast would be incorporated into
the parish of Saint-Joseph de Rivière-des-Prairies
Figure 46 Settler home in winter
45

Figure 47 Early concessions on the Île de Montréal (Côte St. François on the St.
Lawrence.)
The French-Canadian historian Etienne-Michel Faillon records Pierre Dagenais as having
been one of the most serious and determined of the colonists in the new areas along the
coast. At the time of his concession, for example, only two largely insufficient winddriven
grain mills existed in the colony to process wheat for the population. Perhaps
putting his experience milling to use, Pierre and Olivier Charbonneau begin construction
of a larger water-driven mill further east on the rapids of the St. Laurence in Pointe-aux-
Trembles in 1665 to address the situation. They complete it by 1668 and become coowners.
Milled wheat was of course a critical staple food in the early days of the colony,
and both habitants no doubt benefited handsomely from the enterprise.
An interesting historical account concerning the Dagenais-Charbonneau mill is also
available in Faillon: Three seminarians were sent by canoe to deliver four minots of
wheat to the mill. Arriving late in the day, they unloaded the wheat on the mill dock,
alerted the guard, and then returned to the seminary. A carpenter from nearby
46

Boucherville took advantage of the situation and, under cover of darkness, stole the
wheat. He was discovered, tried, and convicted in one of the first acts of open theft in the
newly-settled area. To discourage future thievery, he was given a hefty fine of 60 livres
to be paid to the church construction fund and a 15-minute public exposition in front of
Notre Dame after the last mass on Sunday with the words “wheat thief” written in large
letters on a sign around his neck. Unfortunately, no traces of the Dagenais-Charbonneau
mill remain. The same strong currents that turned the grist wheel also gradually cut into
the land on which the mill was built and obliterated it over time. Much of the coastline
suffered the same erosion in the years that followed.
Figure 48 Location of Dagenais-Charbonneau mill in Point-aux-Trembles
47

Figure 49 François Boucher, The Water Mill
Figure 50 Meindert Hobbema, The Water Mill, 1666
48

Figure 51 Reconstitution of early concessions along the St. Lawrence
Pierre Dagenais spends several years in Côte St. François beginning a family and
dividing his time between agriculture and overseeing the mill. Taking full advantage of
his aptitude for clearing and developing land, he also establishes himself on a select piece
of land across the Île de Montréal on its north coast on the Rivière-des-Prairies like some
of his more eager neighbors. At this time, those well-connected and accustomed to the
political machinations of acquiring property knew to begin clearing land in the wildest
places even before a petition was made for a concession. The Sulpicians were also eager
to begin settling this part of the island and seemed to tacitly encourage such maneuvers.
Many other properties on the north coast of the island were also originally settled in this
manner. The land had in fact already been verbally conceded to Mathurin Martin by the
Sulpicians, but the concession was revoked because he had not begun to clear it. With all
this in mind, Pierre sells his farm and his share of the mill to Claude Raimbault on 19
October 1673, but negotiates to stay on there until 24 June 1674 until his concession is
made official. Pierre is indeed granted the large 180 arpent tract in Pointe-aux-Trembles
on the Rivière-des-Prairies as a concession on 25 November 1673. He will live out his
days on this property.
49

Pointe-aux-Trembles
The Rivière-des-Prairies had been a dangerous waterway and only sparsely settled until
1670 when Fort Pointe-aux-Trembles was built on the extreme eastern end of the island.
In 1672 several former soldiers from the Carrignan-Salières Regiment were given
concessions further upstream near Sault-au-Récollet, and the more substantial and better
located Fort Lorette was also built, replacing the Native mission at Fort de la Montagne.
The forts and a few other small redoubts along the coast made the area somewhat safer
for colonists, but serious Iroquois attacks would continue for several years. With free,
exploitable land on offer to both experienced habitants like Pierre Dagenais and newlyarrived
colonists, the area quickly opened up for settlement despite the dangers.
Figure 52 Pierre Dagenais concession in Pointe-aux-Trembles
In an increasingly comfortable financial situation, Pierre and Anne appear to have settled
down to a stable lifestyle on their farm near a large stream, the Grand Ruisseau des
Roches, in Pointe-aux-Trembles. They had as neighbors Rollin Billaud, Antoine
Beaudry, Jean Millet, and Paul Lauzon. Also in the area was Jean Grou at whose
marriage Pierre had stood as a witness in 1671 in Ville Marie. By the census of 1681,
Pierre and Anne were already 47 years old and in the middle of raising a family of five –
two sons and three surviving daughters:
50

Michel 29 September 1666
Françoise-Marie 03 March 1668
Marie-Cécile 12 April 1670
Pierre II 21 October 1672
Marguerite 26 May 1675, died at some point in infancy
Elisabeth 03 March 1676
Cunegonde 22 August 1679, died one week later
Death at a young age was common in the colony where about 25% of infants of the
period succumbed in their first year and 50% of children died before reaching adulthood.
The census also nominally lists Pierre as a tailleur in possession of three cows, valuable
assets in the early colony, and nine arpents of land under cultivation. The population of
the colony stood at 1412 at this time.
The elder son, Michel, organizes a fur trading expedition to the Ottawa country on 8 May
1685. As an indication of his father’s accumulating wealth and also as a sign of the
stature of the family in general, the 20 year-old Michel is able to hire two men, Jacques
Capron and Robert Jannot, to accompany him, and the document also interestingly
identifies Michel as sieur, a title acknowledging him as a respected landowner. It appears
the young Michel and his companions had at least some experience in the trade, but given
their age it could not have been much. The trio spends the summer and the following
winter trading for furs in Native settlements up the Ottawa River and returns the
following August to the Île de Montréal. Like several others who returned from similar
expeditions that summer, he has contracted typhus during the trip and dies on 17 October
1686 at the age of 21. The resulting outbreak in the colony is severe and kills
approximately 150 colonists or around 15 percent of the population on the Île de
Montréal. Other epidemics of typhus, measles, and purpura plagued the early years of
the French colonies and were a leading cause of death. Both Michel and Cunegonde are
buried in L’Enfant-Jésus Cemetery in Pointe-aux-Trembles.
Despite the protection of the Carrignan-Saliéres Regiment, outlying settlers like the
Dagenais in Pointe-aux-Trembles still suffered attacks by Iroquois raiders. Before the
construction of stone forts, settlers sought protection during attacks in the fortified grain
mills. The mills were, however, often little more than stone buildings surrounded by
wooden pickets planted in the ground. For the Iroquois, the Île de Montréal had never
really mattered much in a strategic sense; it was after all an island not easily accessible
from the mainland and did not have a significant amount of large game to hunt. Yet, by
the middle 1680s Iroquois raids on the island increased dramatically again for several
reasons. Besides continuing to resent the increasing numbers of French settlers settling
on their land and the losses they were suffering at the hands of French soldiers, the
Iroquois were growing steadily more dependent on the English and Dutch settlements to
the south for trade. Encouraged by their new alliances and the outbreak of new hostilities
between France and England – the first of the so-called French and Indian Wars known
as King William’s War - they boldly stepped up pressure on the Île de Montréal where
settlers began to live under increasing levels of stress.
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From the beginning of the colonial era in North America, Natives had recognized the
superiority of European rifles over the bow and arrow and quickly adopted their use. The
French were of course extremely reluctant to trade away rifles to the Iroquois, but with
France and England repeatedly at war in Europe, the English began to supply them with
vast stores of weapons and ammunition. They also encouraged a new round of bold
attacks on French positions.
The French retaliated en masse on 11 June 1687 with a coordinated attack on Iroquois
villages by 800 regular French troops, 1000 militia from all three main settlements, and
300 friendly Native warriors. No records of the actual participants of these raids survive,
but with the numbers of militia involved and Ville Marie suffering the brunt of Iroquois
attacks, Pierre Dagenais was surely required to be in the fray. The raids reduced the
number of native attacks over the next year, but also seem to have enraged the Iroquois
and pushed them even further into the arms of the English. Particularly irksome to the
Iroquois was the establishment of a French fort at Niagara in the middle of Iroquois land.
Events culminated on the stormy night of 4-5 August 1689 when approximately 1500
Iroquois raiders attacked the French settlement at Lachine west of Ville Marie, burning
56 farms, killing between 100 and 200 settlers, and retarding settlement in the area for
many years. Men were for the most part slaughtered and scalped on the spot, although a
significant number, along with some women, were taken back across the river and “put to
the fire”. The sentries atop the walls of French forts reported seeing many such fires.
Scores of children were also never accounted for after the attack and are presumed to
have been integrated into Iroquois society. Rumors of torture and cannibalism spread
across the island and terrorized the colony for months.
Some of the Iroquois raiders continued north and east by canoe along the Rivière-des-
Prairies towards the settlements of Répentigny and Lachenaie where settlers were also
killed. Along the way they passed by the Dagenais farm and killed Pierre Dagenais on
the night of 9 August 1689. His wife Anne was presumed abducted and either put to the
fire or taken prisoner, for she was never heard from again. Given her age, however, it is
likely she was also killed. Pierre and Anne were both 55 at the time. A visiting priest
from the parish of St. Charles in Lachenaie, Monsieur Barthelemy, collected many of the
settlers into the stone mill on the rapids of the Rivière-des-Prairies for protection during
the attack, possibly even the children of Pierre and Anne Dagenais, for they all strangely
survived. The body of Pierre Dagenais was discovered near the mouth of the Grand
Ruisseau des Roches, then called Pointe-à-Desroches, given last rites, and quickly buried
on the spot by another visiting priest from Lachenaie, Monsieur Brissac, out of fear of
further attacks.
Upon his return to Lachenaie, Brissac recorded these events on a piece of paper and
inserted it into his parish register. Lost for more than 200 years, this paper explaining the
end of Pierre Dagenais was discovered in some judicial archives in Joliette by historian
E. Z. Massicote in 1912. The paper also explained and confirmed the strange entry made
in 1729 by the priest Simon Saladin in the margins of the Rivière-des-Prairies parish
register. It stated that the bones of Pierre Dagenais had been unearthed and reburied in
52

the church cemetery that day, some 40 years after his death and initial internment at
Pointe-à-Desroches in 1689.
Iroquois raids along the Rivière-des-Prairies continued unabated until 1691, and many
more French settlers were killed or disappeared. The most historically significant was the
death of Pierre Dagenais’ friend Jean Grou and ten other Frenchmen at la Bataille de la
Coulée Grou the next summer on 2 July 1690 not far from where Pierre Dagenais had
been killed.
Figure 53 Iroquois attack on the Rivière-des-Prairies
53

In retrospect, Pierre Dagenais was an adventurous, self-confident, and financially astute
colonist. To have transplanted himself as an adolescent to an untamed, new continent
where, after losing a young wife, he bought, cleared, and sold several tracts of land,
operated a business, raised a family, and largely opted for the new and untested in life is
altogether remarkable and a colorful story from 17 th century Québec. He never returned
to La Rochelle, although it was well within his means to do so. His story reads like a
metaphor for the collective Québecois historical experience, and he is considered a
pioneer of the Île de Montréal. The pioneer image we may have of him, settling into the
life of an habitant on the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Rivière-des-Prairies, should
not be overly-romanticized, however, for it was one fraught with hard work and peril.
Ironically, his untimely and horrific death only seems to have heightened his position as
the patriarch of the thousands of Dagenais who live in North America today. As a
legacy, the Parc Pierre Dagenais dit Lépine, a wilderness preserve in central Montréal,
and the rue Pierre Dagenais, a Montréal street, are named for him.
Anne Brandon as well was dealt a particularly perilous set of cards early in life and is
already to be commended for having managed to survive the Protestant-Catholic conflicts
of her youth. In her native Sedan alone, hundreds of Huguenots in nearby towns and
villages were slaughtered, and most of the rest were either forced to renounce their faith
or flee the country. Whether she was coerced into immigrating to the New World
because of poverty or opted to undertake it because there was little left for her in France,
she succeeded in keeping a home and raising a family in the antagonistic environment
that was rural New France. Her enigmatic end lacks the closure of her husband's, and we
are left to ruminate on her possible torture and her orphaned children. Above all, she
remains the matriarch of the clan, and all Dagenais in North America trace their maternal
ancestry to her.
Figure 54 Parc Pierre Dagenais dit Lépine, Montréal
54

Coureur des bois
Pierre Dagenais’ only surviving son, Pierre II, was born and baptized on 21 October 1672
at Notre Dame in Ville Marie. His godparents were Pierre Devanchy, a carpenter, and
Mathurine Juillet. He grew up on the largely unsettled northeast coast of the Île de
Montréal and was 17 at the time of his parents’ deaths. By then, he had learned to read
and write, probably under the auspices of his mother since there were no formal schools
in the area yet. There were also his three surviving sisters: Françoise, 21, Cecile, 19, and
Elisabeth, 13, all of whom would marry and have children. The elder Françoise had
actually married Pierre Roy and moved across the Rivière-des-Prairies to Île-Jésus in the
months before the killings and appears to have taken in her orphaned siblings for some
time afterward. In the years that followed, Pierre II must have continued to farm his
father’s land as there are no civil records to show that someone else leased it. He spent at
least some time during this period living with his sisters and brother-in-law on Île-Jésus.
Tragically, Françoise’s husband Pierre Roy would also be killed by Iroquois raiders three
years later in July 1692.
Pierre II first appears in the record on 14 August 1691 in a document in which he and two
business acquaintances, Charles Courturier and Ignace Durand, borrow 300 livres in cash
and supplies from the Québec merchant Jean Perré for a fur trading expedition into the
Ottawa country. The three agree to repay the loan in beaver pelts the following August
upon their return from the expedition. Interestingly, all are recorded as living in Batiscan,
a small trapping settlement on the Batiscan River between Trois-Rivières and Québec.
Fifteen days later on 29 August 1691, the three are fronted four rifles and three carbines
valued at 149 livres for the expedition by René Frezeret, a Ville Marie merchant. Ignace
Durand appears to have been the older, more experienced organizer of the expedition,
having already made at least one such voyage the previous year and been successful
enough to have secured more than 2400 livres from several different merchants for their
expedition. With no experience and only 19 years old, Pierre II is not in a position to
borrow such sums himself, but is nonetheless able to capitalize on his father’s name
among merchants. There must also have been a certain amount of sympathy extended to
him as a result of the manner of his parents’ deaths.
As a young man in New France, it would have been difficult for him to ignore the
continuous stream of romanticized images that French soldiers and traders were painting
of life in the different regions of the West. The stultifying, transplanted existences that
colonists were forced to lead in Catholic settlements paled in comparison to the virgin
forests, exotic cultures, and seemingly unrestrained life that lay only a few days canoe
ride from the Île de Montréal. Farming the land like most of his compatriots was an ageold,
predictable, and secure method of survival, but the fur trade demanded intrepid
young men in the prime of life willing to confront all sorts of danger in exchange for the
possibility of playing the role of hero and returning wealthy. This sense of adventure and
the irresistible call of the wild probably bewitched every young man who lived along the
St. Lawrence at this time, Pierre Dagenais II included. A final catalyst to his departure
was the fact that he was no longer under the restraining influence of his parents who may
very well have been reluctant to let another son loose in the wilderness. Not to be
55

forgotten was the fact that Pierre II’s older brother Michel had died only four years
earlier in the same circumstances.
The small company of men leaves a few days later, and Pierre II thus spends the winter of
1691-92 away from the Île de Montréal in the Ottawa River valley gaining valuable
experience in the fur trade. They return in late August 1692 and sell their stock of
accumulated pelts, netting a very handsome profit. Pierre II’s interests in the fur trade
put him in the middle of a lucrative and adventurous commerce that was initially centered
in Trois-Rivières but which was soon to move to the Île de Montréal.
The most valuable commodity in the early North American economy was indeed fur.
The French trade in furs began in earnest in the early 1600s and expanded steadily for
three centuries. Colonist-traders sought otter, marten, fox, mink, raccoon, muskrat, bear,
deer, moose, wolf, and even seal pelts, but the fur most in demand was by far and away
that of the beaver. In Europe, the pelts were reduced to a fine felt, and there quickly
developed a craze for articles of clothing made from it, especially hats. Early on, the
Algonquin and then the Huron came to French buyers along the St Laurence in fleets of
canoes each spring to trade, but as fur stocks in the area were depleted and the Iroquois
exerted their influence in the area, the French were obliged to establish trading posts
along the smaller rivers north to Hudson’s Bay, along the Ottawa, and along the upper St.
Lawrence to the Great Lakes. Eventually, trading routes expanded to include the vast
areas known as le petit nord northwest of Lake Superior and le grand nord northwest of
Lake Winnipeg. The English had also established posts on the south bank of the St.
Lawrence east to the Great Lakes and competed fiercely with the French for a share of
the market. In the mid1600s, fur pelts accounted for nearly 95% of all exports from New
France to Europe, and as late as 1739, they still made up more than 70%.
In exchange for the pelts they harvested each winter, Natives desired a variety of
manufactured goods produced in Europe, especially French fabric (about 60% of trade),
metal tools and weapons (about 25% of trade), and brandy. The trade in alcohol became
an item of heated debate as Native abuse soon developed into a concern, and the
Sulpicians of Montréal at various times forbade its exchange. This was difficult to
enforce, however, and English fur traders continued to operate under no such restrictions,
invariably necessitating suspensions of the ban for the French.
Pelts could be obtained by traders operating individually or under companies of various
sizes, but all furs leaving New France had to be cleared through the Compagnie des Indes
Occidentales in Québec for shipment to France. Early on, mostly for reasons of security,
the region around Trois-Rivières was used as a gathering point for parties interested in
fur, and this is probably why we find Pierre II in Bastican in 1691. The Île de Montréal
soon became a hub for the trade, however, and remained so for nearly 200 years since it
was the last navigable settlement before “the West”. Merchants in Montréal became
well-acquainted with the intricacies of the business and gladly outfitted those who wished
to try their luck in the lucrative trade.
56

Figure 55 Early fur trading routes along the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa
Figure 56 Location of French forts in the “Up Country”
57

Figure 57 Early 18th century fur trader
Figure 58 Fur trader inspecting a pelt
58

Figure 59 Trading for furs
Figure 60 Fur trading post
59

Figure 61 Beaver pelts being stretched on willow frames
Figure 62 Finished pelts ready for shipmen
60

Figure 63 European felt hat from beaver skin
There were two types of traders. Those who left in an official capacity with a permit and
enjoyed the protection of the crown were known as voyageurs, but a significant part of
the trade was conducted by undocumented independent traders known as coureurs des
bois, who ran the risk of heavy fines, confiscation of furs, and even imprisonment if they
were caught, although enforcement was usually quite lax. Many coureurs des bois even
sold their fur pelts at English settlements across the St. Lawrence in present-day New
York to avoid detection. There was a significant overlap between these two groups,
however, and the distinction between them breaks down rather completely during some
periods. Since only voyageur expeditions were recorded in the civil record as formal
contracts, however, few of the coureurs des bois expeditions can be traced historically.
We therefore cannot be sure of how many such expeditions Pierre II eventually
undertook as a young man because at least some were likely undocumented. His original
associate, Ignace Durand, is recorded as undertaking several more official expeditions in
quick succession in the years that followed their return in 1692, but Pierre II does not
accompany him. Since he is in later years recorded on other expeditions, he remained a
player in the trade, but either his partnership with Ignace Durand was a strained one
which he chose not to continue or he simply concentrated on his own ventures instead.
Regardless of his activities over the next few years, Pierre II does seem to have
accumulated a fair amount of capital rather quickly.
On 30 April 1696, he marries a very young girl, Marie Drouet Grandmaison, at L’Enfant-
Jésus in Pointe-aux-Trembles. Marie was the daughter of a fille du roi, born and baptized
in Contrecoeur, a small settlement on the south bank of the St. Lawrence between
Montréal and Québec on 21 April 1681. Her parents had moved there from Québec
sometime after 1669 but were then living in Pointe-aux-Trembles. The witnesses to the
marriage are Laurent Archambault, the son of a long-time acquaintance of Pierre II’s
father, and Jean Duclos. Pierre is 23 years old. Marie has just turned 14 and is seven
months pregnant with his child. While children born out of wedlock at the time went
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unrecognized by the church and could not take a surname, those conceived before but
born after a marriage were considered legitimate. Marriage at a young age and the
production of many children were in fact highly encouraged by the Sulpicians, who,
under pressure to quickly increase the population of the colony, lowered the legal age at
which a young man could marry to 14 and that of a young girl to 12. On the other hand,
the father of an adult child who remained at home without marrying risked having to pay
a hefty fine.
Figure 64 Pierre II Dagenais - Marie-Drouet Grandmaison marriage entry
The next few years are relatively tranquil for settlers on the Île de Montréal. The English
and French signed a peace in 1697, formally ending King William’s War and any threat
of an outright invasion of the island by British troops. Their Iroquois allies, however, felt
abandoned by the treaty and continued to menace French possessions in the region,
although the heavy losses they had sustained during the war weakened their capacity
significantly. By 1701, they too bowed to the obvious and reluctantly signed a formal
peace which would last for many years.
Immigration from the motherland continued to grow, but by 1700 there were still only
about 3000 settlers spread out across the Île de Montréal and a mere 15,000 in all of New
France, far fewer than the hundreds of thousands living in the English colonies to the
south and east. The specter of unavoidable future conflicts along the frontier and the
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possibility of being swallowed up in a sea of Anglophones began to haunt French settlers
across New France.
Figure 65 Populations in North America 1700
The final act of settlement for Pierre Dagnenais’ estate does not occur until 16 February
1698, some nine years after the killings. This may be due to the fact that Pierre II and
three of his siblings were still minors at the time and may have had to wait for the
distribution of the proceeds. The act records the sale of Pierre’s considerable lands on the
Rivière-des-Prairies to Claude Crespin for 400 livres, the money presumably divided
between the siblings.
Continuing to show a good measure of his father’s versatility and business acumen, and
also no doubt wanting to install his nascent family in some comfort, Pierre II then
borrows money several times from the Ville Marie merchant Pierre Perthuys. Through
the location of the baptisms of his first few children, we know that his main residence
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continues to be in the Pointe-aux-Trembles area, but he signs documents that also place
him on Île-Jésus, in Boucherville, and near Ville Marie. His main ventures during this
period of prosperity outside the fur trade seem to have been the leasing of farms in
exchange for a portion of the harvest.
A year after the Iroquois peace, another political dispute embroils the European powers,
and war again breaks out between England and France. The conflict (1702-1713) is
referred to in Europe as the War of the Spanish Succession but in North America as the
second of the French and Indians Wars or Queen Anne’s War. Fighting in North
America was largely confined to naval battles along the eastern seaboard around Acadia,
mostly because the Iroquois refused to rejoin their former British allies in renewed
attacks inland. This made the war a distant consideration for those on the Île de
Montréal, but the Atlantic remained off limits to French shipping and severely depressed
the fur trade. Whatever Pierre II’s fur-trading activities, they must also have come to an
abrupt halt during this time.
Seemingly undaunted, Pierre II concentrates his energies on acquiring land further up the
Rivière-des-Prairies on the north coast of the island. On 15 September 1702, the 30 yearold
Pierre is granted a 120 arpent concession of un-cleared land in the newly-opened
Côte St. Michel in Sault-au-Récollet.
64

Sault-au-Récollet
The area was ideal for settlement. There was an inhabitable island, the Île de la
Visitation, just offshore at the base of the last rapid, and the soil was found to be very
fertile. Although there had been a significant Native mission and chapel there, the
residents of this even newer, untamed area were served officially by the relatively distant
parish of L’Enfant-Jésus in Pointe-aux-Trembles or by Notre Dame in Ville Marie. The
settlement was named for one of the mission’s founding Récollet Jesuit priests who had
fallen from his canoe into the rapids and drowned there. Several hundred Huron
continued to live in the area around Fort Lorette for protection against the Iroquois until
1721, and they grew to have an interdependent relationship with the arriving French
settlers. The area developed steadily, and there was soon a regular visiting priest to serve
the population, but there would be no local church there until the founding of La
Visitation de la Bienheureuse Vièrge Marie in 1736. Pierre Dagenais would raise his
family and live out his days in Sault-au-Récollet. Historically, the extended Dagenais
clan would be a fixture there for many years to come, and hundreds of Dagenais
descendants continue to live there even today.
Figure 66 Sault-au-Récollet on the Rivière-des-Prairies
65

Figure 67 Diagram of Fort Lorette
Pierre II builds a wooden house on the property which he will keep until his death. In
fact, Dagenais descendents continue to live in the house, adding on to it and refurbishing
it, for the next 300 years. The now-restored house still stands at the corner of La Croix
and Jarry streets in the St. Léonard section of Montréal and is listed in the Québec
historical building register.
Figure 68 Restored home of Pierre II in Montréal
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Now a full-fledged habitant with a permanent abode, Pierre II continues to buy, rent,
lease, and sell tracts of land in different locations on the Île de Montréal for several years,
growing steadily more financially secure. He appears to be primarily involved in the
clearing of land for profit during this period, as evidenced by two contracts he signs in
the Bon-Secours section of Ville Marie. On 21 April 1704, he leases two draft horses and
a wagon from a toolmaker named Etienne Campot. There were few horses on the island
horses at this time, and they were highly-prized animals. The contract is thus evidence of
a significant level of entrepreneurship. A second, dated 21 October 1706, stipulates that
he will deliver a quantity of wood for heating to a Montréal merchant. (Ville Marie
officially became Montréal in 1705.) For those who lived in the more settled parts of the
colony and had professions, the timber that défricheurs like Pierre II cleared from land
was valuable as the only source of heat during the frigid winters and also as building
material.
Apart from his commercial activities, the period from 1702 to 1713 sees Pierre II and
Marie farming the Côte St Michel property and producing 10 children, seven of whom
live to adulthood:
Joseph-Michel 01 July 1695
Marie-Madeleine 31 May 1698
Louise 10 July 1699, died one month later
Marie-Elizabeth 11 February 1701, died nine months later
Pierre 24 November 1702
Marie-Josèphe 11 September 1704
François 06 September 1706, died two months later
Jean-Baptiste 24 November 1707
François-Marie 16 November 1710
Laurent 11 January 1713
Pierre II and Marie also appear to have raised another child, Marie-Charlotte (1696), who
was actually the fille naturelle (illegitmate daughter) of Pierre’s sister Cécile. The birth
rate in New France at this time was one of the highest on record historically, due in part
to generous subsidies offered by colonial leaders to have children. Annual payments of
300 livres for a family with 10 children and 400 livres for a family with 12 continued for
many years. The Sulpicians rather shrewdly calculated that it was cheaper to pay the
members of their flock to produce more colonists themselves than to have them
transported from France.
Like all able-bodied men 16-60 in New France, Pierre II was required to serve in the
local militia. Records of militia activity such as muster rolls and participation in military
encounters are sparse or have been lost altogether, so we cannot know the details of his
service early on. He was definitely assigned to a company of 50-80 men in his parish.
Militiamen were responsible for supplying their own weapons, clothes, and even food. In
a popular draw for the militia, settlers who could not provide their own rifles were
allowed to purchase them in installments from the government. These rifles could also
be used to hunt. With their knowledge of the backwoods and military tactics adopted
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from Natives, they were extremely effective in skirmishes against hostile Native tribes
but were of limited value in battles of the classical type against a trained European-style
army. There was, as a result, generally some subservience to the regular standing French
army stationed in nearby forts. Over the years, military operations of all sorts often
depended heavily on local militias, and in the wilderness an habitant militiamen was
generally considered to be worth two or three regular soldiers for his ability to deploy
rapidly in any weather. Each district’s militia operated relatively independently, and each
of the three major settlements, Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Montréal, wore distinctlycolored
greatcoats. The “Montréalers”, as they were known, wore blue.
Figure 69 Early 18th century militiaman
Figure 70 Montréal militiamen in winter
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Figure 71 Montréal militiamen in battle
The Treaty of Utrecht that brought an end to hostilities ceded large areas of New France
to English control. France lost Acadia (Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, and, most
importantly, the vast Hudson Bay region known as Rupert’s Land where the trade in pelts
had been particularly prosperous. France was left with a corridor along the St. Lawrence
and Ottawa rivers to the Great Lakes and the vast Mississippi River watershed known as
la Louisianne where the French fur trade would now have to be concentrated. Because of
the significant pent-up demand for pelts in Europe as a result of the war, fur trading on
the Great Lakes increased dramatically after 1713, but since traders now had to travel
much further upriver, they had to provision themselves more heavily, requiring large
advances at high interest rates from established merchants in Montréal and pushing most
independent coureurs des bois out of the market. Sensing enormous profits, larger
companies with access to the capital required to fund larger flotillas of canoes grew to
dominate the market, and they paid well for experienced French voyageurs who flocked
back into the booming industry.
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Figure 72 French territorial losses in the Treaty of Utrecht
Pierre II re-enters the fur trade at the war’s end, signing a contract at age 41 to go on an
expedition to the Great Lakes as a voyageur on 4 April 1713, the year of his last child’s
birth, and another on 1 October 1713 with Montréal merchant Jean Hervieux of Les
Associés de la Mer de l’Ouest (Western Sea Company). By then, the distances and
economies of scale involved began to dictate the players in the trade, and the term
voyageur quickly came to reflect its division of labor. Voyageurs who signed contracts in
the spring were known colloquially as mangeurs de lard (pork eaters). They worked
from spring to fall, first transporting supplies and trading merchandise to the distant
trading posts, then returning with loads of furs. Those who signed on in the fall were
known as hivernants (winterers), so-called because they overwintered either at trading
posts near French forts on the upper Great Lakes or at Native settlements. After
accumulating a winter’s worth of pelts trading, or in some cases trapping pelts for
themselves, the hivernants descended each spring from their outposts in the wilderness to
the larger trading stations with their bounty. Many came to live semi-permanently in
these regions and took common-law Native wives. Their Métis offspring became unique
players in the trade in the years that followed. Pierre II thus spends the summer of 1713
and the winter of 1713-1714 away from the Île de Montréal. It would also be his last
such trip
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Perhaps the 42 year-old Pierre II had forgotten that the hard life of a voyageur was meant
for younger men and decided to call it quits after this expedition. Perhaps it was a last
hurrah of sorts that, after a decade-long exile from the adventure he had known as a
young man, he simply wished to experience once again. Regardless, he does not appear
to have needed the money. His previous voyageur profits seem to have been substantial,
but in addition to his interests in the fur trade, he had also been able to accumulate and
develop several agricultural properties in the parish, all of which generated income. This
left him a man of growing financial and social stature among his peers.
The land on which he and his family lived in St. Michel is described in a 1725 accounting
of all the property held on the Île de Montréal. Executed primarily for tax assessment
purposes, it lists the head of each household and gives details about the land each
occupied. Like the other habitants, Pierre II’s concession had three arpents of frontage
on the chemin du roi, the road that connected the côte to other parts of the island. Its
depth was also the standard 21 arpents, giving him a total of 63 in the row of concessions
south of the road. He appears therefore, to have sold or leased out the other half of his
original 120-arpent concession. The family had 25 arpents under cultivation and three
cleared for pasture, leaving 31 still forested. Like most of the other families, there was a
house, barn, and stable. The Dagenais lived between Louis Pigeon and the elder Picard
family.
He also embraced the new French militarism of the post-war period. As two decades of
relative peace between the European powers set in, France sought long-term protection
for what remained of its possessions in North America by building several new forts and
heightening the readiness of local militias. By 1721 Pierre II had risen to the rank of
lieutenant in the St Michel section of the Sault-au-Récollet militia and was awarded
another concession there in recognition of his military service. Such properties were
considered perks and were usually left un-cleared to be quickly resold for a profit. Pierre
resells his to Jean Gauthier in 1723. At the summit of his militia career in 1729, he was
commissioned capitaine de milice (militia captain) for Sault-au-Récollet by the governor
general at the age of 57.
By any estimation, this was a high honor. Captains were selected largely on the basis of
their reputations and were generally popular landowners who had established records of
leadership in difficult or dangerous circumstances. This was necessary because the often
proud settlers in outlying parishes like Sault-au-Récollet were well-known to follow only
leaders they knew and respected. Captains were also normally men of some financial
means because the position was not a paid one, although they were exempt from rents
and levies on the land they owned. As Captain, Pierre II was responsible for training and
maintaining his fighting force, although from a military point of view the peace with
England that prevailed until 1754 meant that his militia was probably limited to monthly
maneuvers and local skirmishes with renegade Natives.
Socially, Capitaine Dagenais would have enjoyed a great deal of respect from the
colonists in the parish; politically, he was also its most powerful figure. Like his regular
army counterparts, he was entitled to wear an officer’s sword and high gold collar at
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social events. He also wore a gilded crescent-shaped “gorget” around his neck which
served as the sign of his authority. He sat in a specially-reserved pew in church next to
the noble and received communion before any of the other parishioners. As the liaison
between the colonial government and his fellow parishioners, he was also responsible for
communicating political information to them, usually done after Sunday mass at the
church. Other duties included overseeing public safety, fire prevention, the distribution
of grain after poor harvests, the mail, and the billeting of regular French soldiers in settler
homes. The latter was necessary and always a source of some contention because there
were few barracks to house soldiers in the early days of the colony. Many of these
billeted soldiers went on to marry the daughters of the habitants they lived with and
settled in New France. All in all, the institution of militia captain proved a very workable
arrangement in New France for more than 200 years.
One tradition from the period that illustrated the influence of the capitaine was the mai,
which took place on the last day of April. To show their appreciation for their leader,
four of the most prominent men of the parish and a dozen or so armed militiamen erected
a decorated fir tree in front of the house of the capitaine. After firing a volley from their
rifles, the capitaine would come out and offer them a round of drinks. Each new round
fired, often at the mai tree itself, brought another round of drinks, and the ritual could
continue until late in the evening.
Figure 73 Montréal militiamen with captain in center wearing sword and gorget
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Marie Drouet Grandmaison died at the age of 55 on 28 January 1736 at Côte St. Michel
and was buried the following day in the cemetery of La Visitation, one of the first official
acts at the new parish church. Pierre II lived on for another 13 years. He died at the age
of 77 on 18 December 1749 and was buried the following day next to his wife.
Like his father and namesake, Pierre Dagenais II flourished in the New World. Without
parents from a young age and in the same hostile environment, he nonetheless appears to
have followed the entrepreneurial example set by his father to achieve both financial
stability and social recognition. The lands he settled were extensive and served to
support an equally extensive family in Sault-au-Récollet. His father’s penchant for
adventure is also recognizable in his early expeditions to the West with the fur trade, and,
as a result, he is probably the first Dagenais to reach Michigan. To have repeatedly
plunged into the wilds as a young man in the prime of life on heroic journeys with other
intrepid young men is the stuff of classical dreams. North Americans in general carry
images if such iconic characters in their collective subconscious and many of us today
long to have lived in times when such missions were possible.
On a third front, the times he lived in also required collective self-defense. The same
eagerness and perseverance he demonstrated in other aspects of his life he appears to
have brought to the Sault-au-Récollet militia, and his appointment as militia captain was
public recognition of it. Although it is unlikely Pierre II experienced much organized
military conflict, his strengths lay in his ability to marshal a sense of camaraderie and
unity among his fiercely independent fellow parishioners. Like captains in the other
parishes, he would’ve had to have been a well-spoken peace-maker with a sense of
fairness.
His genteel later years as head of a large clan also left an enduring mark on the history of
Sault-au-Récollet, for these descendents would multiply quickly and densely populate the
area. Between 1736 and 1970, for example, there would be no fewer than 218 marriages
recorded in the parish where one of he parties was named Dagenais, more than any other
surname. Because he is the only surviving son of his father, Pierre, all Dagenais in North
America also trace their heritage through him.
His child bride Marie, on the other hand, cannot have seen it all coming. It is difficult for
us in the modern era to appreciate the efforts required to manage a home and mother a
large family in such a wilderness, let alone the fact that Marie was obliged to undertake
these responsibilities from the age of 14. The fact that such travails were par for the
course for girls in her time does not lesson the impact they must have had on her. The
physical demands of childbirth, child rearing, cooking, housecleaning, sickness, and the
pain of seeing the deaths of several of her children must have taken a psychological toll,
but she appears to have risen to meet these challenges stoically. Her later years on the
estate, surrounded by an extended family and occupying a position of respect in the
parish, must have been her happiest.
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Figure 74 Returning from midnight mass, Sault-au-Récollet 1725
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Voyageur
Pierre II’s last child, Laurent Dagenais, was born in Sault-au-Récollet on 11 January
1713 and baptized the following day at Notre Dame in Montréal. Laurent Lauzon and the
child’s elder sister Madeleine Dagenais stood as godparents. He spent his youth on the
property in Côte St. Michel, and by age 18 was already going upriver regularly as a
voyageur. His older brothers Jean-Baptiste and François-Marie were also heavily
involved in the trade. Between 1731 and 1754, he signs at least 10 voyageur contracts to
transport merchandise to various trading posts in the Great Lakes and return with furs. It
is likely that other expeditions he undertook either have not yet been discovered or went
unrecorded. He begins with at least three expeditions to Ponchartrain (Detroit) in 1731,
1733, and 1736 for which he was paid between 200 and 300 livres in beaver furs for each
voyage. Such expeditions were highly profitable for those willing to undertake them,
and, under the tutelage of their father, working as a voyageur became a lifestyle for
Laurent and his brothers.
The quintessence of such a lifestyle had both its romantic and realistic sides. Invariably,
voyageurs set out from Lachine on the western tip of the Île de Montréal immediately
after the ice on the rivers and lakes had melted. An early route was up the St. Lawrence
across Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to Ponchartrain, but as pelts in this region were
exhausted and English competition became too strong, the route up the Ottawa River
across Lake Huron to Kaministiquia (Thunder Bay), Sault Ste. Marie, and
Michillimakinac (St. Ignace) were soon in regular use. Later, a large post at Grand
Portage (near Marais MN) grew to serve the entire petit nord and grand nord. In general,
pelts from these colder areas fetched higher prices because they were considered of
superior quality.
Voyageurs left laden with trading supplies in large specially-designed white cedar and
birch bark canoes sewn together with watape (fine spruce roots) and caulked with resin.
These trees were plentiful in the region, and the lightweight canoes could be built in a
few days. There were several types of canoes, but two were in heavy use. For travel
across or along large bodies of water, a so-called Montréal canoe was used. Each 11-13
meter canoe could hold 8-10 men, around 65 pièces of trading merchandise weighing 40
kg each, and other supplies. The pièce was the standard unit of weight for both
merchandise going upriver and for compressed bales of pelts returning downriver. The
empty canoe weighed only about 150 kg but could carry 5 tons of crew and freight. For
smaller waterways, the shallower draft North canoe was need. It measured between 8
and 9 meters in length and could carry 4-6 men and 4 tons of cargo.
Traveling by canoe was dangerous, tedious, and uncomfortable. The canoe’s main
disadvantage was its fragility. A slight error in judgment could send it against a rock,
ripping a gash in the bottom, and evenings were often spent repairing damage sustained
by the canoe during the day. There was an experienced bowman at the front who guided
the craft, a steersman at the rear responsive to the bowman’s orders, and a milieu du
canot in the center who was in overall command of the craft. The rest of the crew rowed.
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At 40-50 strokes a minute and 10-12 hours a day on the water, the canoe could move at
about 7 km per hour and thus cover about 70-80 km per day.
Overturned canoes, wet merchandise, and drowning were not uncommon. There were
also several parts of the route that were not navigable because of rapids and waterfalls,
and both canoes and supplies had to be carried around them. These portages were
physically demanding and required each voyageur to carry two 40 kg pièces to the reentry
point further upstream or downstream. Most of the weight was supported on a
“tumpline” - a leather strap across the carrier’s forehead. As a result, many voyageurs
suffered from hernias and spinal disorders. They also had to ward off the clouds of
mosquitoes and flies that swarmed over the watery routes with bear grease and skunk
urine. As a protection against these and other hardships, an expedition’s first stop was
usually at the church of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, the patron saint of Normandy and
Brittany from where many of the early French settlers had come.
Figure 75 Montréal canoe
Figure 76 A pièce of compressed beaver furs
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Figure 77 Voyageur canoe shooting a rapid
Figure 78 A voyageur portage in a North canoe
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Figure 79 Navigation up the Ottawa River
Voyageurs consumed upwards of 5000 calories a day, much of which came from salt
pork (thus the name mangeurs de lard), biscuits, and peas. Native foods, especially
hominy (boiled corn) and pemmican (dried strips of buffalo), were available in quantity
from posts along the way, and there was always fresh game in the forests if supplies ran
low.
The men often sang while rowing, and many voyageur songs have been handed down to
modern Québecois as cultural folklore. They were entitled to smoking breaks every hour
or so, and distances came to be measured colloquially in pipes. Sleeping under the
overturned canoes at night for shelter, the men were usually back on the water before
dawn.
The big event for both groups of voyageurs on a trading expedition was the legendary
rendez-vous when the two groups met at the trading station to exchange cargoes. After
the long trip, they ate well, drank to excess, and celebrated before loading their canoes
and heading back to the nord with merchandise and supplies or to Montréal with furs.
The rivalry between the two groups was also legendary, hivernants often chiding the
mangeurs de lard from Montréal for not staying on to become “real north woodsmen”
like them. Fistfights, liaisons with Native women, and the establishment of bragging
rights were common. The romantic images of the voyageur, the canoe, and the trading
post in the vast wilderness of the nord are an iconic part of Québecois and Canadian
history, and these men are responsible for the opening up and settlement of large swathes
of Canada.
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Figure 80 A Vogageur folksong, "I Fear the Wolves Too Much."
Figure 81 Voyageurs leaving the rendez-vous
At age 23 and already financially stable, Laurent prepares himself for married life by
purchasing a 63-arpent tract of land in Côte St. Michel from his brother Jean-Baptiste
and sister-in-law Marie Proulx for 120 livres on 6 May 1736. The earliest concessions in
an area were routinely carved up by the patriarch into smaller properties to accommodate
the families of his sons and daughters. This also served to keep large tracts of land in the
same extended family for generations. Laurent’s tract was on the Rivière-des-Prairies
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adjacent to his father’s lands. He marries Elisabeth Brignon dite Lapierre from a
prominent pioneer family in the same parish at La Visitation on 5 November 1736 in
what was the fourth recorded marriage in the new parish. Elisabeth (sometimes called
Isabelle) was born in Sault-au-Récollet on 2 November 1713. Both are 23 years-old at
the time of their marriage. Neither is able to sign the marriage contract, dated 26 October
1736, and both initial with a cross.
Figure 82 Laurent Dagenais - Elisabeth Brignon dite Lapierre marriage entry
Over the next 18 years, Laurent manages his farm while continuing to make expeditions
further and further into the Great Lakes region as a voyageur, transporting merchandise to
Kaministiquia, Sault Ste. Marie, Michillimakinac, and far into the Illinois country.
Confident of his abilities, his Montréal agents name him milieu du canot and pay him as
such in his last few contracts.
Still eager to populate the region, the Sulpicians continued to pay large annual subsidies
to families willing to produce many children, and parents with tribes of 10 or more came
to be the norm in Québecois society. The resulting birthrate was extraordinary,
expanding from a mere 20,000 individuals in 1713 to more than 55,000 in 1750, the
largest such increase in all of Canada’s history. Laurent and Elisabeth contributed to this
phenomenon by producing 14 children in 15 years, only eight of whom however survived
to adulthood:
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Laurent 27 August 1737, died one month later
Marie-Anne Charlotte 12 November 1738
Laurent 21 November 1739
Marie-Elisabeth 17 December 1740
Louis-Gabriel 14 February 1742
Jean-Baptiste 30 April 1743
François 23 August 1744
Marie-Louise 21 October 1745, died eleven months later
Marie-Rosalie (twin) 06 December 1746, died twelve days later
Marie-Marguerite (twin) 06 December 1746, died at age five
Marie-Louise 16 January 1748
Joseph-Marie 17 March 1749
Marie-Archange 06 October 1750, died one month later
Marie-Geneviève 24 October 1751, died two weeks later
On 26 July 1739, Laurent’s widowed father, Pierre II, signs over his property to the
young couple with the consent of Pierre II’s other children in exchange for support and
care in his old age. This was customary at the time and often the duty of an elderly
parent’s younger children. On 28 October 1747, the couple also buys the succession
rights to the property of Elisabeth’s deceased mother.
Figure 83 Sault-au-Récollet about 1750
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Figure 84 La Visitation Church and rectory today
Figure 85 New France in 1750 before the last French and Indian War
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Laurent’s voyageur expeditions come to an abrupt halt in 1754 at the outbreak of new
hostilities between the French and British, the last of the so-called French and Indian
Wars. The conflict is known in Europe and in English Canada as the Seven Years War
and, tellingly, in French Canada as la guerre de la Conquête (the War of the Conquest).
Because much of it was fought in North America along the St. Lawrence and into the
Great Lakes, and also because the Iroquois who now controlled these regions were again
solidly on the side of the British, the French fur trade came to another virtual standstill
until 1762. The British navy also maintained an effective blockade of New France for
most of the war, restricting nearly all trans-Atlantic shipping. Although war was not
officially declared until 1756, fighting in the Ohio valley was already under weigh more
than two years earlier. Laurent and his brothers must have initially hunkered down in
Montréal but been required to serve in the local militia like all able-bodied men.
Most Quebécois bore surprisingly little allegiance to France. Many families had by this
time lived in the colony for several generations already and knew little of the mother
country. Born into a colonial situation, they only tacitly agreed to be governed from a
distance by the French crown. There was also no doubt the collective recollection that
most families had left France in order to escape the repressive conditions there. French
colonists feared the British more, however, mostly because of the sheer numbers of them
that had settled south of the St. Lawrence, but also because of their continuing close
relationship with the Iroquois. There was no effort to conscript settlers outright, but
during the hostilities local militias from Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Montréal
contributed some 15,000 men to the war effort. Most appear to have participated eagerly,
motivated primarily by the perceived need to defend their homes and farms and not out of
a deep sense of allegiance to France.
Out of a population of 257, Sault-au-Récollet sent a very high percentage of their men to
serve - 85 militiamen from 58 different families. Unfortunately, few records listing the
names of individual militiamen and their whereabouts during the conflict survive. Given
their ages, their deep knowledge of the theatres of war concerned, their experience living
off the land as voyageurs, and their father’s legacy as capitaine de milice in the parish,
Laurent (41) and his two brothers Jean-Baptiste (47) and François-Marie (44) were
certainly active militiamen. Their older brother Pierre III, already 53 at the outbreak of
the war, had also been capitaine de milice for Côte St. Michel from 1738 to 1750.
Furthermore, the French regular army was initially occupied with Prussia in the European
theatre of war, and local militias in New France were pressed into active duty away from
their homes almost immediately. Laurent’s production of children also stops abruptly at
this time, suggesting that he too was away from the island for a considerable time.
Regrettably, we can only speculate on the brothers’ military activities over the next seven
or eight years because few records from the various militia campaigns survive. From
1754 to 1760, however, Montréal militiamen and their Native allies served along the
waterways south of Montréal where many of the war’s battles were fought. The series of
British forts strung out across the current states of New York and Pennsylvania were
among their first objectives early in the undeclared war and included the captures of Fort
Necessity (1754), Fort Oswego (1756), Fort William Henry (1757), and Fort Ticonderoga
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(1758). The humiliating British defeat at Fort Necessity in the first battle of the war in
fact led to the resignation of a young George Washington from the British colonial
forces. A major defeat of French forces at the Battle of Lake George in 1755, however,
was more indicative of British military superiority.
With the heavy participation of colonial militias on both sides, the deciding factor in the
war was population. Although the birthrate had surged in its colonies during the early
part of the 18 th century, there were still only around 70,000 citizens in all of New France
in 1754. This figure was dwarfed by the more than one million English colonists and
their 300,000 slaves living to the south. This simple fact seemed to both underscore the
relative success of the English colonies and predetermine the outcome of the war in North
America. A reinforced British army soon sailed north to capture Québec and then
Montréal.
Figure 86 Forts and major campaigns of the last French and Indian War
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Figure 87 French attack on a British fort
Figure 88 Montréal militiamen at the Battle of Lake George by Frederick Coffay Yohn
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Figure 89 Native warriors fought alongside both the French and British during the war
Figure 90 The French Army surrenders at Montréal in 1760
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Figure 91 North America after the Treaty of Paris in 1763
Like all of New France, Montréal was under military rule from the de facto end of
hostilities in 1760 to the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Under the terms of the
treaty, France renounced her claim to nearly all territories in North America in order to
retain possession of its smaller but more lucrative holdings in the Caribbean. New
France abruptly ceased to exist as a French colony, and the 1,731 demobilized French
militiamen in Montréal technically became prisoners of war under a British
administration. This was only a formality of the capitulation, however, and militiamen
like Laurent and his brothers were free to return to their farms almost immediately. The
British victors were in fact quick to reassure the apprehensive French population that life
on the island would continue as they knew it with few changes.
After the war, Laurent seems to have wasted little time in returning to his voyageur roots.
In relatively the same life situation as his father had been in at the signing of the Treaty of
Utrecht in 1713, the reopening of the fur trade was also a mixed blessing of sorts for him.
No longer the intrepid young romantic he had been and now attuned to the realistic
horrors of war, he leaves for the wilds again in an effort to recapture what remained of a
simpler existence. The contract for this, his last recorded expedition to a post on
Georgian Bay, is dated 15 July 1762. At age 49, he is hired as milieu du canot and paid
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350 livres. Like his father, he perhaps came to the realization by the end of it that the
pays d’en haut was no country for old men.
Laurent then seems to have settled into the sedentary life of a gentleman farmer on his
estate in Sault-au-Récollet. He and Elisabeth live comfortable lives for many years in the
parish, although the details are somewhat murky historically due to the new British
presence on the Île de Montréal. Elisabeth dies at the age of 68 and is buried on 30 July
1781 in La Visitation Cemetery. Laurent dies four years later on 11 July 1785 at the age
of 72. He is buried under La Visitation church, a practice reserved for only the most
prominent parishioners.
Laurent Dagenais had a voracious appetite for nature and adventure that was unequaled
even by his pioneer forefathers. From early on and for much of his life, he appears to
have shunned the comforts of settled areas in favor of the wilds and the camaraderie of
his voyageur canoe mates and militiamen. Still, he was surely of relatively fortunate
birth and was able to parlay these appetites into a lifestyle because of what had been
handed to him. The fur trade was financially rewarding for him, and together with the
revenue his lands provided, it was more than enough to support a very large family and
become as respected a figure in the parish as his grandfather and father had been. In
terms of his ability to carve a niche out for himself financially, maintain the family's
status in the parish, raise an extended family, and still satisfy a measure of personal
wanderlust, he can be seen as a complement to both his grandfather and father.
Like his grandfather and father, he also came to know the crass nature of armed struggle
where, because of differing political ideologies, men were summoned to bludgeon each
other to death for the sake of a flag. Even from his unschooled perspective, the
experience may well have seemed absurd, for they were not purely rooted in the
immediate defense of his family and colony as had been the case with his father and
grandfather. His war had been orchestrated in a far-off continent, and he and his militiamates
had been sacrificed en masse as pawns in the same sort of royal chess game his
forefathers had sought to escape by emigrating. Left with seven years of conflict to
contemplate, his last escape to Georgian Bay may have given him the distance he needed
to both file away the cruelty of the war and consider how his golden years might be spent.
His wife Elisabeth, on the other hand, merits our sympathy. Fertile to the point of
absurdity, her 15-year state of almost permanent pregnancy is rendered even heavier by
the burden of seeing six of her children die young and is only slightly mitigated by the
fact that, like other wives in the line, her situation was a common one for many women in
18 th century New France. She must have felt at least some sense of abandonment at
seeing her husband leave to spend long stretches of the year away from home on his
expeditions, leaving her to contend with life on the farm. Hopefully, the reunions
between the two each fall, fueled by months of anticipation, were moments of joy and not
rancor. Like her mother-in-law, she must also have had to postpone a large measure of
her happiness until after the surviving children were grown and she could enjoy the quiet
of her estate as a prominent woman in the parish.
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Privilège
Laurent Dagenais’ and Elisabeth Brignon dite Lapierre’s first son, Laurent II, lived only
three weeks, and the second, born 21 November 1739, was subsequently given the same
name, a common practice after the death of a namesake at the time. As in many other
cultures, French families of the period often named a son after the father and a daughter
after the mother as a sort of continuity with the past. Other offspring were routinely
named after grandparents, uncles, and aunts, making the genealogist’s work all the more
confusing. As godparents, the child had a maternal uncle, Pierre Brignon, and paternal
aunt, Marie-Josèphe Dagenais.
Laurent II lived out his childhood and adolescence in the parish. He was 15 when war
with England broke out in 1754, and this fact alone probably determined that he would be
at first restricted to the Île de Montréal and then expected to serve in the militia when he
turned 16, no matter how much he may have longed to follow in his famous father’s
voyageur footsteps. Like the vast majority of the other militiamen in New France, his
service during the war is not known due to the loss of written records. What can be
assumed is that he served with his father in the same Sault-au-Récollet regiment and
probably had many of the same experiences. Due to the clannish demographics of Saultau-Récollet
at the time, there were many such father-son combinations during the war.
Laurent II’s younger brothers would have been too young to serve in the militia during
the combat phase of the war, leaving father and eldest son to forge a strong bond over
several years of deployment.
At the war’s end, the militia was dissolved and the two returned to Sault-au-Récollet. For
the most part, their prewar life also returned albeit under British control. The war had left
the Île de Montréal relatively unscathed; no major battles had taken place there and there
was consequently little destruction. The new British administration, headed by Thomas
Gage, was effective in convincing the population that, on the surface, little would change
in the way of commerce, religious worship, and local government. In a shrewd political
move, the Sulpicians cleverly negotiated to remain the practical leaders of the island in
exchange for granting British officers land concessions.
By then a prominent name in the parish, many of the families living in Sault-au-Récollet
had a Dagenais connection. Early on, Laurent II probably helped manage his father’s
considerable lands and, like the rest of his family, enjoyed a lifestyle commensurate with
that of a minor noble. This included several servants, either orphaned children the family
is recorded as contracting to work on the estate or the Métis offspring of other colonists
caught between two cultures. There has been much historical discussion about the extent
to which slaves were held in New France. The owning and importation of slaves had
been officially condoned since 1709 in the French colonies, but because of the nature of
the economy, which was not dependent on crops for export as was the case in the British
colonies further south, there was little need for vast numbers of them. In all, only about
2000 were ever recorded on the island until the institution was abolished in 1793. There
were actually very few Africans; most were natives that had been purchased upriver and
sold to wealthy fur-trading merchants in Montréal. Habitants who lived in other parts of
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the Île de Montréal like the Dagenais in Sault-au-Récollet as a rule did not own any as the
cost was prohibitive even for them, and there was no shortage of 36 mois immigrants
arriving from France whose contracts could be purchased.
From a cultural perspective, the 18 th century Québecois lived immersed in Catholicism.
A quarter of the days each calendar year were Sundays or holy days of obligation on
which work was normally not performed. Fasting days totaled nearly two months, and
many more were meatless. A large number of activities required blessings, votive
offerings, or processions, and these public displays were, in principle, mirrored by
lengthy daily prayers at home. The flock was kept in check by the local curé (priest), and
there was a palpable social pressure to keep one’s faith at the forefront of daily life, at
least in public.
The civil record from the post-war period continues to be slight, and little is recorded
under Laurent II’s name. At this time, there were many notaires recording official acts,
but most surviving documents have only a chronological index of entries and do not list
the actual names of the parties involved. On 11 January 1768, well after hostilities cease,
he marries Marie-Josèphe-Amable Lefèbvre at La Visitation in Sault-au-Récollet. She is
also from a prominent habitant family in the same Côte St. Michel part of the parish,
born there on 20 November 1746. At the time of their marriage, Laurent II is already 29
and Marie-Josèphe 22. As further evidence of the favored son status he had earned with
his father in the war, his parents cede the couple a 120 arpent tract of land in Côte St.
Michel two months later on 15 March 1768, seven months before the birth of their first
child.
Figure 92 Laurent II Dagenais - Marie-Josèphe Lefebvre marriage entry
Laurent II and Marie-Josèphe settle into a comfortable life in the parish and start the
requisite large family. The couple has at least 14 children, eleven of whom survive to
adulthood:
Marie-Josèphe 17 October 1768
François-Laurent 29 January 1770
François 15 July 1771
Jean-Baptiste 04 October 1772
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Etienne 01 December 1773
Amable 12 February 1775
Marie-Louise 20 October 1776
Marie-Marguerite 06 July 1778, died two weeks later
Joseph 08 July 1779, died six weeks later
Louis 27 September 1780
Paul 18 April 1783
Marie-Catherine 28 December 1784
Marie-Madeleine 08 December 1786
Marie-Sophie 31 July 1791, died two weeks later
Life on the north coast in Sault-au-Récollet was to a certain extent insulated from
changes that were occurring in the more cosmopolitan southern part of the Île de
Montréal. As the British continued to establish an administrative presence there, the face
of the colony began to change significantly. The arrival of British military officials and
English-speaking businessmen at the war’s end was followed ten years later by an influx
of American Loyalist sympathizers fleeing the outbreak of hostilities in the 13 American
Colonies, and the specter of another major war hung in over the island.
The American Revolution, like the French Revolution that would follow it 13 years later,
was a different kind of conflict altogether, however. It was not the drawn-out traditional
chess match between hegemonic autocrats that had characterized European relations for
centuries, nor would the lower classes be used once again as pawns to prop up existing
autocracies. This time it was the lower classes themselves who, encouraged by political
treatises that put the common man at the center of politics instead of the nobility and the
clergy, rose to challenge their own autocrats. Such ideas were indeed revolutionary at the
time, and when the American war broke out in earnest in 1775, the clergy in French
Canada predictably backed their British rulers. They went to the pulpit with the singular
message that these new political ideas were dangerously un-Christian. The Americans,
they said, were a people without god, king, or morality who would come to rape, pillage,
and destroy traditional Québecois culture.
Their appeals to the still uneducated population were largely successful, for when
American forces occupied Montréal at the onset of the war in an attempt to incite the
French-speaking citizens there to revolt against their British overlords, their efforts fell
on deaf ears, and the Americans soon withdrew. Only around 750 Québecois joined
American revolutionary forces during the war. On the contrary, the local militias of New
France that had been disbanded in 1765 were raised again in 1775 under British control.
Virtually the same structures were re-instituted, including the powerful position of
capitaine de milice. In a continuing display of influence in the parish, Laurent Dagenais
II is named capitaine for Sault-au-Récollet, the third generation of the family to hold
such a position of leadership in the area.
Although the military role of the various capitaines was largely ceremonial, Laurent’s
election granted him a great deal of civil power, even more than his grandfather had
enjoyed in the same position. In addition to the same civic duties they had fulfilled
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during the French era, under British tutelage the various capitaines also met each
fortnight and acted as judges, deciding both civil and criminal cases that could result in
fines, imprisonment, and even corporal punishment. This entente between local habitants
and the colonial government allowed for a small group of British officers to administer
the whole of the province of Québec peacefully and with great efficiency.
In 1776 Laurent II’s name also appears as one of the marguilliers (directors) of the
Fabrique de Sault-au-Récollet. This was another influential, elected post and also reveals
his standing among the other major land-owners in the parish. Founded in 1726, the
Fabrique was a large-scale works built on a dike over the rapids of the Rivière-des-
Prairies between the Île de Montréal and the Île de la Visitation. It is considered
Montréal’s first proto-industrial site and a major feat of French engineering. Three large
hydraulic wheels were constructed on the dike which used the flow of the river to power
a flour mill, a saw mill, and a wool processor. The site of intense commercial activity
until 1960, the remnants of the development can still be visited as a historically-preserved
park in Sault-au-Récollet today.
Figure 93 Earliest historical diagram of the dike between the Île de Montréal and the Île
de la Visitation in Sault-au-Récollet.
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Figure 94 Later image showing the Fabrique
Figure 95 Modern photograph of the preserved ruins of the Fabrique
Laurent II also appears in the record on 7 September 1777 when he generously donates a
set of five ornate candelabras to La Visitation Church. In a time before electric lights,
candelabras were an iconic part of every French church, and Laurent II’s donation can
still be seen in the church today.
On 12 February 1786, seven months after the death of his father, the couple uses the Côte
St. Michel property as collateral to buy a 40 arpent property on the banks of the Rivière-
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des-Prairies with a stone house, barn, stable, and other wooden buildings in the St.
Léonard section of the parish. The property was along the chemin du roi, today’s
Boulevard Gouin. The sale also included another 18 arpent property of cultivated land
nearby. The couple pays 1200 shillings for the properties, 200 shillings in cash at signing
and two consecutive annual payments of 500 shillings with no interest. (After 1763 all of
Canada had begun using British currency.)
As late as 1794, Laurent II is on record as the recipient of official communiqués from
British authorities in Montréal. Although no longer capitaine at this point, he is
nonetheless recognized as an influential habitant able to play a major role in the politics
of his parish.
By 1795, Laurent II and Marie-Josèphe are back living at the Côte St. Michel property.
They sell part of their land to their son François the same year. In 1798, they sell the
remaining part to their son Jean-Baptiste in exchange for support and care in old age.
Laurent dies on 22 November 1816 at the age of 77. Marie-Josèphe dies a few months
later on 12 January 1817 at the age of 72. Both are buried in La Visitation Cemetery.
Laurent II’s life must be considered differently from those of his forefathers. Born into
the privileged position in the parish that his father had created for him, he was
nonetheless pressed into military service and knew war from an early age. The pursuit of
any personal ambitions he may have had in the West was effectively squelched by the
long war, and it seems logical to assume he had had his fill of adventure by the war’s end.
At this juncture, he was still a young but no doubt hardened man of 24 and could well
have pursued a career in the fur trade, but he understandably chose to invest himself in
opportunities closer to home instead. The island was rapidly becoming settled, that is,
the vast forests were being turned into a series of interconnected farms with businesses
interspersed throughout, and he seems to have quickly risen to a position of civic and
economic leadership in the parish.
His role as capitaine accorded him a measure of power unmatched even by his
grandfather and required him not only to act as an intermediary between British officials
and his village, but also to sit in judgment of his fellow parishioners. This must have
come with heavy personal responsibility, and the position called for careful diplomacy.
His years in this capacity and the fact that he was still publically consulted after them
suggest his service was both effective and respected.
Marie-Josèphe, his wife of nearly 50 years, is another of the females in the line who, like
almost all women of the period, lived in the shadow of the men in their lives. As a result,
she unfortunately remains as mysterious as them. Like them, her life must have also been
rather completely invested in the management of her home and the raising of 14 children.
This was certainly a difficult task, but unlike them, she probably had the help of several
servants and was able to participate more fully in parish life. Her last child was born (and
died) when she was 45, and the 27 years that remained may well have been her best. As
the wife of Capitaine Dagenais, she would have enjoyed the stature and respect that
accompanied such a social position.
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Montréal
With the loss its former colonies south of the St. Lawrence at the close of the American
Revolution in 1781, London sought to consolidate what remained of its territory in North
America by turning its attention to Canada. It was from the beginning an effort to
manage the coexistence of two separate peoples. The stark linguistic and religious
differences that had characterized North America since its initial colonization continued
to polarize the dependency until the British officially divided it in 1791. Upper Canada
was to be an English-speaking territory west of the Ottawa River and Lower Canada a
predominantly French-speaking one east of it. But because Montréal continued to gain
economic prominence from its position as the hub of the still lucrative fur trade, it
remained a bit of an anomaly in that French and English speakers mixed by necessity.
British subjects from other dominions, especially Scotland and Ireland, also began to
establish themselves in the western parts of the main town, and Montréal remains a
largely bicultural, bilingual city as a result even today.
Figure 96 Official division of Canada along linguistic lines in 1791
Laurent’s and Marie-Josèphe’s fifth child, Etienne, was born 1 December 1773 and was
baptized the next day at Notre Dame in Montréal, witnessed by his maternal uncle and
namesake Etienne Lefèbvre, and Marie Turcot. The birth is enigmatic in that he is the
only one of 14 children born and baptized in Montréal. It is only the opening irregularity
in his life. He appears to have gravitated toward increasingly urban Montréal instead of
his family’s home parish of Sault-au-Récollet for some reason. Perhaps it was simply
that the sheer number of his siblings meant that not all of them could have inherited
property and remained gentleman farmers in the parish. His name does not appear in the
register until he marries Fleury Cummings on 20 April 1801 in Notre Dame in Montréal.
Etienne is 28 and Fleury 22. A little of out the ordinary, Etienne’s parents Laurent
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Dagenais II and Marie-Josèphe Lefèbvre act as witnesses. On the marriage document,
Etienne lists himself as a tanneur (tanner), a respectable merchant-class profession
centered in Montréal that was somewhat removed from his family’s habitant background
in Sault-au-Récollet. Like his forefathers, he is unable to sign the document. Fleury
signs as Flore Cummings.
Figure 97 Etienne Dagenais-Fleury Cummings marriage entry Notre Dame de Montréal
The curing of hides was a time-honored profession imported to North America from
Europe but was not subject to the strict rules of the guild that governed it in France and
England. There was little in the way of royal meddling, local monopolies, or long
apprenticeships characteristic of the trade in Europe, and the demand for leather to make
shoes, boots, clothes, and tack for livestock was high across Canada. Those in a position
to finance a small tannery, which required significant start-up expenditures and high
overhead, were free to go into business relatively unencumbered if they could afford to
do so. After some years in the trade, it appears as though Etienne’s father Laurent II set
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his son up in business in Montréal, although we have no historical information as to his
commercial activity other than the mention of his trade in the marriage document.
The city was already the site of many tanneries both large and small. Because of its
continuing position as the hub of the fur trade in North America, animals skins were
plentiful, as were the other raw materials used in the process. The tanning methods
employed in Canada in the late 18 th century were essentially the same as those that had
been used in Europe for centuries: animal hides were stretched, washed, soaked for
several days, scraped by hand with a dull knife in a process called scudding, and then
cured in one of several solutions depending on the type of leather desired. The three
most common in Etienne’s day were vegetable tanning with the tannin-rich bark of the
oak tree, brain tanning with oils made from the brains of the moose, and lime tanning in
calcium sulfide. Tanneries were often located on the outskirts of settled areas because of
the foul odors released during curing. Although tanners could make a good living,
working with the caustic chemicals used in the trade was hazardous, and tanners in
general were known to have shortened life-spans as a result.
Figure 98 Scudding hides in a 19th century tannery
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Figure 99 19th century tanner
At a glance, Etienne’s somewhat lower station in life and his residence in Montréal
demand some exploration. It seems as though his father’s wealth and status should have
been sufficient to set his son up in better circumstances. Perhaps Etienne was simply not
made of the same mettle as his father or brothers and was relegated to a trade in
Montréal. His father’s stellar life would certainly have been a tough act to follow, and as
we have seen it was not uncommon for patriarchs of the period to overtly favor one or
two sons over the rest because they were considered more capable of maintaining the
family’s wealth and status.
Another possible explanation lies with Etienne’s choice of Fleury Cummings as wife. As
her surname suggests, she was not Catholic, and this may well have been less than
completely acceptable to Etienne’s parents and peers in Sault-au-Récollet. Outright
disdain for those outside the Catholic faith is well-documented in the history of French
Canada and may well have been a factor in Etienne’s marginalization. Perhaps love
simply trumped tradition, and the couple was willing to pay the social price. It was, after
all, a dynamic new Montréal at the beginning of the 19 th century.
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As the war years faded from memory and British entrepreneurs and their families
continued to move into the area, Fleury Cummings can be seen as representative of the
new bicultural and often bilingual nature of life in Montréal. Her mother was a Frenchspeaking
Catholic from Montréal and her father an English-speaking Anglican from
Scotland. During the war, Fleury’s father, Duncan Cummings, had come to Canada in
1757 as a soldier with the Fraser Highlander regiment in support of General Wolfe’s
British regulars. The regiment acquitted itself brilliantly in the final years of the war in
several battles, including the assault on Ticonderoga in 1759, the historic battle at the
Plains of Abraham in Québec in 1759, and the siege of Montréal in 1760 that ended the
war for all intents and purposes. In recompense, Highlanders were extended the
opportunity to stay in Canada after disbanding in 1763. Many accepted land concessions
by the newly-appointed British officials in control of the Île de Montréal and married into
prominent Montréal families, Duncan Cummings included. (In many genealogies,
Duncan Cummings is listed with a hyphenated surname as Duncan Cummings-Brailleur,
but this is simply a misreading of his profession listed in the marriage document. He
exercised the trade of brasseur, or brewer.) On the muster roll of disbanded Scottish
soldiers in 1763, Duncan Cummings is listed as “invalid”, so it appears as though he had
been permanently disabled in some way since there was no serious fighting the last three
years of the war. Fleury and her siblings would have grown up bilingual and with their
feet in two cultures. Although she was baptized in Christ Anglican Church in Montréal,
Fleury and Etienne were married in a Catholic ceremony at Notre Dame, the staunch
rules against such marriages having also been reluctantly relaxed at the end of the war.
Figure 100 John H. MacNaughton, Fraser Highlander in the last French and Indian War
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Their first child, Etienne II, lived only a few days and was buried on 10 June 1802 in
Notre Dame in Montréal. A second son, Joseph Georges Dagenais, was baptized 10 May
1803 in Notre Dame in Montréal and is their only known living offspring. Thereafter,
almost nothing is known of the life of Etienne and Fleury, including their dates and
places of death, and they are the most enigmatic of the couples in the line. The absence
of any further records, including the birth of other children, is out of the ordinary and
suggests that they either died early or lived in relative obscurity. In the very least, they
did not enjoy nearly the same financial or social stature as had Etienne’s parents. (There
is a record of the death of an Etienne Dagenais, age 80, on 28 June 1850 at Notre Dame
in Ottawa, although there is no other family information in the record. His listed age at
death, however, is three years off the 1773 date of birth for our Etienne Dagenais, in itself
not a disqualification, but still genealogically troubling. Intriguing is the fact that this
occurs in the same parish that his son Georges belongs to at the time.) Until other records
are discovered, the couple’s later years will remain a mystery.
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Cooper
Etienne and Fleury’s son Joseph Georges is known to us as Georges and lives out his
youth in Montréal. He works as a cooper (barrel-maker) from early on, suggesting
further that his parents had either died young or had not occupied the prominent social
position characteristic of the line. Either way, he was left to a working class existence as
his father had been. Coopering was considered a skilled trade at the time and required
several years of apprenticeship. Coopers usually began at an early age, around 14, and
worked in the trade the rest of their lives. Georges was typical in this regard, and it
became his life-long occupation. Work was plentiful and provided a stable income
because the various size wooden casks they crafted were the standard containers in which
most products of the time were packaged and transported.
Working the wooden staves and the metal hoops that bound them required a set of
specialized tools and a workshop. Georges and tradesmen like him made casks of several
sizes, from 4½-gallon pins and 36-gallon barrels to 108-gallon butts . Dry goods like
grain or nails could be shipped in standard-quality casks, but material that needed to be
kept moisture-free such as gunpowder or flour required higher-quality dry tight ones.
Liquids like whiskey or beer demanded the highest craftsmanship – wet casks that
allowed for periods of longer storage with minimal seepage. There were also wooden
buckets, kegs, butter churns, tankards, and coal scuttles made for local consumption.
Figure 101 Lithograph of young apprentice cooper
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Figure 102 Cask terminology
Figure 103 Coopering tools
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Figure 104 Mid-19 th century cooperage
After mastering his trade and acquiring some stability, Georges marries Marie-Théotiste
Petit on 28 August 1826 at Notre Dame in Montréal. Georges is 23 and Théotiste, as she
was known, still a minor at 20 at the time of their marriage. Théotiste was born 6
October 1806 in Montréal and baptized the next day at Notre Dame. She had grown up
in Montréal and was also from a working class family; her father was a day laborer and
stone hauler. The couple immediately starts a huge family of at least 16 children:
Jean-Baptiste 24 June 1827, died one year later
Théotiste II about 1828
Georges II 30 May 1830
Noë Alfred 06 November 1832
Etienne Duncan 28 September 1834
Louis 15 May 1836, unaccounted for
Delphine 29 November 1837, unaccounted for
Marcel (twin) 29 September 1839, unaccounted for
Joséphine (twin) 29 September 1839, unaccounted for
Philomène (female) about 1841
Aléxandre 6 March 1841
Louise 4 September 1842
Gabrielle 26 July 1844, unaccounted for
François-Xavier 3 September 1845
Pierre 31 August 1847, unaccounted for
Joseph 2 August 1849
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Figure 105 Georges Dagenais-Théotiste Petit marriage entry Notre Dame d’Ottawa
Montréal became an increasingly distasteful place to live in the latter half of the 1820s.
The stream of English-speaking immigrants from Europe to Canada that began as a
trickle in 1763 had by this time turned into a torrent. The city’s population was growing
by more than four percent per year, and by 1831 it had already hit 34,000. Astoundingly,
French-speaking Catholics now made up less than half the total. Fully a third of the
residents were Protestants from England, Scotland, and the former American colonies,
and a quarter were Irish Catholic. This lack of linguistic and religious homogeneity
caused considerable political infighting between the various groups, with French-
Canadians often complaining of underrepresentation.
Immigrants and the poor crowded into flimsy wooden rooming houses. Sanitation
consisted of open or semi-open trenches behind buildings that trickled directly down into
the St. Lawrence from which all of the city’s drinking water was drawn, and garbage was
left in piles on the street for the many loitering pigs to consume. The stench was stifling
in the summer months. There was also a Dickensian darkness in the city, especially
during the long winter months; the first gas streetlights would not be installed for another
ten years. The situation deteriorated further when gangs of Irish Catholics and English
and Scottish Protestants began to roam the streets at night contesting for turf in the
various neighborhoods.
In the first week of June 1832, an overcrowded immigrant ship from Dublin, the Carrick,
landed at Québec with a few feverish passengers onboard. They were quickly diagnosed
with cholera, and then just as quickly the residents of Québec and Montréal found
themselves in the middle of an epidemic. The immigrant poor were the first to be
infected, but soon all classes were succumbing to the dreaded disease. As it spread, the
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various churches, especially the Catholic ones that catered to the needs of the Irish and
French-speaking working class, could not keep up with the number of carted bodies that
arrived each day. These often numbered more than a hundred, and rotting corpses began
to accumulate on church grounds. To prevent further contamination, city officials banned
funerals for a period and required most of the dead during the epidemic to be quickly
buried anonymously. Unfortunately for genealogists, this also meant that few of these
deaths were entered in parish registers. Most of the names of the dead that were recorded
during these months were either wealthy or were later gleaned from the memories of the
body carters who had brought them to the churchyards. The outbreak killed more than
4,000 in Montréal and around 7,800 across the province by the time it subsided in
September. (This may well have been the fate of Georges’ parents Etienne Dagenais and
Fleury Cummings, who disappear from the record about this time and for whom we find
no entry in their parish register.)
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Carleton
The overcrowding, infighting, and finally the cholera encouraged many to flee the city
for the countryside, including Georges and his family. After the birth of their fourth
child, he and Théotiste move up the Ottawa River to the outskirts of Bytown (later
Ottawa), the future capital of Canada in on the Québec-Ontario border in Carleton
County. Located west of the Rideau River, Bytown was a quickly-developing area even
more at the crossroads of French and English culture than Montréal. The settlement had
already seen a large influx of immigrants after 1826 when work began on the Rideau
Canal, a massive excavation project that made the area a transportation hub by
connecting the Ottawa River and Lake Ontario. The British had long desired a route
around the many rapids on the section of the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario to
Montréal, and the military was also keen to avoid dependence on the same stretch of the
river because it bordered the U.S. state of New York. During the War of 1812, the
American navy had controlled most of this artery, choking off the British supply route to
the Great Lakes and using it to launch an attack on Montréal. The project was a
grandiose one and is considered the Canadian equivalent of the Erie Canal in the U.S.
More than 10,000 mostly Irish and French-Canadian men worked on the canal, and many
stayed on to settle in the area after its completion in 1832, including several families of
Dagenais. Montréalers fleeing the cholera like Georges Dagenais added to their numbers.
The large area across from Bytown and east of the Rideau River was known as
Gloucester Township, and it had also developed quickly supplying the canal workers and
their dependents with goods and services. Provincial surveyors had prepared for the
arrival of thousands of immigrants by laying out a grid of 200-acre concessions across the
township with frontage on either the Rideau or the Ottawa. At the confluence of the two
rivers was an additional oddly-shaped area called Junction Gore. Because of its central
location just across the Rideau from the main town, it was one the first areas to be settled
outside Bytown proper, and Georges and Théotiste move onto a small property there at
the rear of Lot 14 in 1833. Arriving from the much more urban Montréal, Georges was
surely unaccustomed to clearing land and planting for a living like many of the other
settlers, but he quickly found work coopering in or near one of the sawmills along the
Rideau waterfront while Théotiste kept house. This area of Junction Gore, later called
Hurdman’s Bridge, was a busy place where ferries transported workers and material
across the river to Bytown.
Censuses in Ontario during this period are not especially dependable, but a series of welldocumented
annual property assessments for Gloucester County from 1835 to 1842 are a
rich source of information. By 1835, Georges is living in a one-storey log house with
Théotiste, three sons, and a daughter. The assessment also shows the area’s other
residents were mostly Irish, Scottish, and English. The family must therefore have begun
to learn to communicate in English about this time although large numbers of French
speakers were not far away. This is doubly troubling for Georges. He is illiterate and
finds himself in a sea of English speakers most of the time. As a result, his surname is
recorded by English-speaking assessors and census takers as Dasny, Desny, Deasny,
Diseney, Dachina, and for the first time Dashner in records from this period. Like the
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other residents of the area, transportation is also problematic for the family; the Dagenais
have a milk cow but no horse and carriage. Over the next few years, the assessments and
censuses show the addition of a succession of children to the family but also the loss of
several of them.
The relatively cheap price of the lots in Junction Gore and the two river frontages meant
that they were subdivided and changed hands frequently. Georges is no exception, and
the family appears to move at least once before settling in Lot 11 for several years.
Théotiste’s younger brother Louis and his wife Catherine also move to the same lot in
Junction Gore from Montréal and begin farming there.
Figure 106 The Rideau Canal
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Figure 107 Hurdman’s Bridge in Gloucester Township, Carleton County, Ontario
Figure 108 Location of Dagenais homes in Hurdman’s Bridge section of Junction Gore
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Catholic services for both the Irish and French-Canadians in the area, including the
baptisms of Georges’ and Théotiste’s children after 1833, were held at Notre Dame
Cathedral in Bytown, founded in 1827, although linguistic squabbles between the two
groups continued for several years and eventually resulted in the founding of separate
English-speaking and French-speaking parishes. The city’s informal division into a
mostly Irish and English Upper Town west of the canal and a French-speaking Lower
Town east of it also reflected these differences.
Figure 109 Preserved two-storey settler home in Junction Gore
Figure 110 View of Bytown (Ottawa) including Notre Dame Cathedral, 1855
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Figure 111 Robert Wichendon, Rideau River, Summer Afternoon
Unfortunately, Théotiste Petit dies of unknown causes on 20 March 1850 at age 44, less
than eight months after the birth of her last child, and is buried at Notre Dame in Bytown.
Her physical condition after producing 16 children in 22 years must have been poor and
no doubt contributed to her demise. As a result, the probably bewildered Georges was
left to raise a brood of children, none of whom were married, by himself. In the 1851
census, a year after Théotiste’s death, Georges is listed as a cooper in Junction Gore with
his nine surviving children. The eldest, Georges II, had likely moved out by this time,
and six others, Louis, Delphine, Marcel, Joséphine, Gabrielle, and Pierre, are
unaccounted for in the census and are presumed to have died at some point in childhood.
Death records for these children have not been found, however.
The eldest daughter, 24 year-old Théotiste II, marries Joseph Chartrand at Notre Dame in
Bytown a year later on 28 September 1852. The witnesses are Georges’ second-eldest
son Alfred and a 25 year-old woman named Sophie Vanier who appears to be wellacquainted
with the family. The marriage complicates Georges’ situation considerably;
he still has eight mouths to feed, the youngest of which is only three, and he has just lost
the help of his eldest daughter. His situation may well have been untenable alone, and it
is possible that Sophie Vanier was already helping the family in some capacity by this
time.
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The Vaniers were also an extended clan originally from Sault-au-Récollet parish, and the
two families would have known each other, at least in an historical sense, over a long
period of time. Some Dagenais had had lands adjacent to the Vaniers, and others had
even married into the family. Sophie’s parents, Jean-Marie Vanier and Marie-Hermine
Paquette, had moved from Sault-au-Récollet to St. Eustache on the north bank of the
Rivière Mille-Îles in the early 1820s. Sophie was born on their farm there on 19 June
1827, but her father passed away the next year on 5 October 1828. Hermine Paquette
remarried a cousin with the same surname, Louis Paquette, a year and a half later on 22
February 1830 in St. Eustache. The couple then moved to Junction Gore with Hermine’s
young children. They later purchased an un-cleared 200-acre lot several kilometers away
on the Ottawa Front when these became available in 1853.
Georges and Sophie are married a year and a half later on 21 February 1854 at Notre
Dame in Ottawa. Georges is already 51 and Sophie 27. Both list their residences as
Bytown on the marriage document, and Georges lists his occupation as cultivateur
(farmer). The document is witnessed by neighbors Benjamin and Josèphe Desjardins.
Figure 112 Georges Dagenais - Sophie Vanier marriage entry
In what appears to be either a magnanimous gesture on the part of a relative or, more
likely, a legal act related to the estate of his deceased wife, Théotiste Petit’s brother Louis
and his wife Catherine sell Georges and Sophie a 100-acre half lot for the token payment
of five shillings the day after their marriage on 22 February 1854. The property, the east
half of Lot 16 in the First Concession of the Ottawa Front, had three acres of frontage on
the Ottawa and was located about 10 kilometers east of their home in Junction Gore. It
was also not far from the Paquette property.
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Rather mysteriously, they do not move onto the property but quickly resell it a year later
on 7 April 1855 for 150 pounds to Joseph Birdo dit Lafleur. They use part of the profits
to buy a much smaller 6½-acre lot from Sophie’s parents, Louis and Hermine Paquette,
only two weeks later on 24 April 1855 for 37 pounds. This property was located at the
rear of Lot 17 of the First Concession of the Ottawa Front in Gloucester Township, away
from the river and south of today’s Queen’s Highway. Land speculation along the
Ottawa and Rideau during this period was intense, and Georges’ deal was both
financially advantageous and allowed him to move the family virtually next door to his
new wife’s parents. Sophie’s brother Félix Vanier had also recently bought a property in
Lot 17 from his parents the year before, and so Georges and Sophie enjoyed the support
of several relatives in the area. They also buy another 5½ acres at some point, giving
them a total of 12. Georges’ two sons Duncan and Alfred, also coopers, move out the
same year and buy a 100-acre half lot together a few kilometers away on 14 September
1855. Bytown is also officially renamed Ottawa the same year.
Figure 113 Location of Dagenais farm 1854-1874
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After the birth of their first child, Louis, on 5 March 1856, Georges and Sophie move to
the new property after a traditional log house and a workshop for coopering are
constructed. Incredulously, Georges has a total of six children over 12 years with Sophie:
Louis 5 March 1856
Théophile unknown 1858
Adelaide (Mathilde) 17 October 1859
Joseph (Georges) II 31 August 1862
Amable 16 November 1864
Guillaume 02 October 1866
Louis is baptized at Notre Dame in Ottawa, but the Dagenais become members of the
new parish of St. Joseph d’Orléans when it is founded several kilometers east of their
farm in 1858. All their remaining children are baptized there. As the surnames in the
land sales suggest, this area was much more Francophonic than the increasingly
Anglophonic Junction Gore, and the Dagenais must have been relieved to be among other
Québecois again.
Figure 114 Original stone church of Saint- Joseph d'Orléans
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In the 1861 census, the 58 year-old Georges and his family are again listed on their small
farm in Gloucester. Their 12 acres are somewhat dwarfed by the other larger properties
in the township, many of which are the original 100 or 200-acre concessions, but
Georges’ is still making his living coopering with his remaining sons in their workshop.
In fact, he will have taught nearly all of his sons the trade by the end of his life, and most
of them will go on to work as coopers professionally. The last of his children with
Théotiste - Aléxandre, Louise, François, and Joseph - have been joined by Louis,
Théophile, and Mathilde from his union with Sophie. There is also a 15 year-old servant
girl, Josephine LaFleur, from a neighboring family employed in the house. The family
supplements Georges’ coopering by raising peas, Indian corn, turnips, and hay on ten
acres of their land. The remaining two acres is still forested, and the farm is valued at
about 600$. (Canada adopted the dollar in 1859.)
Ten years later in the 1871 census, the 68 year-old Georges is again listed as a cooper
while Sophie, 44, is working as a seamstress. All six of Georges’ children with Sophie
are living there with them; the eldest, 15 year-old Louis, is already working as a teamster.
Even the youngest of his surviving children with Théotiste Petit have by this time reached
adulthood and are no longer on the farm. Of these, George II, Théotiste II, Alfred,
Duncan, and Louise have married and are living with their respective families in other
parts of Ontario. The youngest, Joseph, will also marry in 1877 and settle in the
province. Philomène will not marry and continued to live with her sister Théotiste and
family into the 1880s. Aléxandre drops from the record at this point, and François has
already immigrated to the United States and will be discussed in the next section.
Another of the mysteries that trouble research into this line is the fate of Georges and
Sophie in the years after 1871. As was the case with his parents, Etienne Dagenais and
Fleury Cummings, no further civil or church records regarding the last years of their lives
have been unearthed. There are a few clues that allow us to present a plausible narrative,
however. We know that his last four children with Sophie all suddenly leave Ontario
around 1874, suggesting that one or both of them die about this time. Georges would
have been 71 and already at the upper reaches of the average lifespan for men of the
period. The strain of having had to support such a large first family with Théotiste and
his attempt to raise a second so late in life with Sophie may well have shortened it
considerably. Still, it is puzzling that he simply falls from view. His presumed death
occurs at a particularly unfortunate time for his family, however. A severe 25-year
economic recession that had spread from England to Canada was already underway by
1870, hitting the Ottawa area hard and putting a large percentage of the workforce there
out of work. Many were forced to relocate and seek livelihoods elsewhere.
Sophie Vanier’s final years are just as enigmatic. If in fact she survived, upon the death
of a breadwinner 24 years her senior, she would have only been 47 but left with six
children and few means to support them. With no apparent prospects for a second
marriage, she appears to have bowed to the obvious and placed her children with
sympathetic relatives. Her eldest son Louis was already a working man of 18 at the time,
but he soon falls from the record too. Her second son Théophile surfaces later as a
carpenter in Ottawa, suggesting he may have taken up an apprenticeship there. The
114

emaining four - Mathilde, Georges II, Amable, and Guillaume - are too young to live
independently and are sent to live in the United States with their step-brother François.
Thereafter, there is no record of Sophie either.
Georges Dagenais’ most visible attribute was unfortunately his prolific inclination to sire
children – at least 22 of them over 39 years with two wives - the most of any Dagenais in
the line. This production, whether desired by him or not, surely determined his life to a
great extent and necessitated a long working career to support them. Tellingly, he chose
to remarry and start a second family rather late in life, an indication that extensive
offspring may have been a priority for him. On a secondary note, he was a craftsman,
that is, someone who necessarily grew to consider life primarily through what he
produced. He relied enough on coopering as the foundation for a stable life to found his
own workshop and start nearly all his sons off in the trade. Georges’ move to Ottawa,
away from mostly French-speaking Québec into English-dominated Ontario, was done
mainly for economic reasons and was concurrent with the migration of many Frenchspeaking
families westward in search of work and land. His many descendants and those
of several other families of Dagenais who settled in Ontario about this time account for
the thousands of Dagenais who live in the province today, nearly all of whom speak
English as a mother tongue.
Georges’ first wife Théotiste quite literally bore the brunt of his patriarchal vision,
however. Saddled with the continuing heavy societal expectations to produce and mother
children, she, like the wives of the other Dagenais males before her, must have found
herself inundated with familial responsibilities before she was able to consider any
alternatives. Sadly, there were few. The arrival of industrialization in Canada and the
masses of new immigrants that fueled it changed the slow pace of life in the countryside
that previous generations in the line had come to know. The simple clearing of land for
planting and the running of an estate as a lifestyle was nearing its end. Her sons and
daughters would live under a new set of expectations that required them to learn a trade
and participate in a more structured economy in order to survive. Her poor health and
early death serve as a sort of metaphor for the passing of a way of life in Canada just as
her motherless children must have reflected a generation of agriculturally-rooted French-
Canadians that looked apprehensively toward an uncertain industrialized future.
His second wife Sophie Vanier also lived surrounded by children, most of whom were
not her own. Her decision to marry a much older man seems questionable from our
vantage point but was probably one made under some duress. Unable to support
themselves independently, the lives of women of the period were still largely determined
by the circumstances of the men they married, and the simple getting of such a situation
as a means of survival was of paramount importance in the life a young woman. At 27
and with the prospects of securing such a match apparently dwindling, it appears as
though her decision to marry Georges was one of the many of the period based on
convenience and not romance. If, in fact, she was already working in the Dagenais home
prior to her marriage, the decision might even have been a natural one. Regardless, the
addition of six more children to the home must have created an environment few modern
wives would find appealing.
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We are left to speculate on the mysterious yet crucial period immediately after Georges’
death, but until additional information is discovered, our speculations will remain general
questions. Did she simply die at about the same time as her husband? If not, was she
unable to support her children and opt to give them the chance at a better life by placing
them with relatives? Why did she not accompany her four young children to the United
States? Did she break down at the loss of the life she had come to know? Was she
institutionalized? Such speculation is suggestive and unfair in a way, but for now it is all
that is possible.
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Carrollton
Georges and Sophie’s last child Guillaume was born on 2 October 1866 and baptized on
14 January 1867 at Saint-Joseph in Ottawa, as had three of his older siblings. His
sponsors were Hennriette Maisonneuve and Joseph Lafleur (to whom Georges had resold
his 100-acre lot in 1855 and whose daughter had worked as a servant in the Dagenais
home). The baptism occurs more than three months after his birth for unknown reasons
and is curious in that infants born to Catholic families at the time were almost always
baptized in the days immediately following their birth and often the same day. The death
of an unbaptized child, according to the rigid Catholic doctrine of the period, was tragic
and to be avoided at all costs. In such a state, the deceased child’s soul could not enter
Heaven because it was technically still stained with the “original sin” it had been come
into the world with. Such children were instead relegated to a lesser realm called Limbo
for eternity, and the parents of these children were left to face the fact that they could
never be reunited with them in the afterlife.
The anomaly of this late baptism therefore lies at the root of another major yet
undiscovered event in the lives of Georges and Sophie. William will be confused about
his exact age and date of birth the rest of his life; he will give different dates on several
official documents he signs later in life. In fact, he will die erroneously believing he was
born 30 August 1868.
From a larger perspective, there are now many hundreds of people with the Dagenais
surname in North America, although the variations in its spelling are manifold. Most use
the standard Dagenais, but there are also Dajenais, Dageneau, Dagenes, Dagnez,
Dagenet, and Dagenest. Like many Canadians at this time, several families of Dagenais
are attracted to the booming American economy across the border and enter the United
States in search of work. Some have already filtered into New England in the 1830s and
1840s, where the largest concentrations of American Dagenais still live. Others settle in
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Many return to Canada when the economy there
recovers, but most stay on in the U.S., and their descendants are now found throughout
the country. Most keep either the Dagenais spelling or use some variation of it. Dashner
becomes a popular anglicized form, but there is also Dashnaw, Dashney, and Dagenett,
among others.
The first Dagenais to set foot in Michigan were undoubtedly those involved in the fur
trade who visited Ponchartrain, Sault Sainte-Marie, and Michillimackinac in the early
1700s but did not settle in these areas. The first Dagenais to take up residence in the state
were the families of Joseph Dagenais and Jean-Baptiste Dagenais who settled in
Ponchartrain in the 1780s and 1790s. The first recorded birth of a Dagenais in the
Michigan area was that of Antoine Dagenais on 16 July 1793 at the settlement of
Sandwich just across the river from Fort Ponchartrain near the Canadian foot of today’s
Ambassador Bridge.
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Moises Dagenais and his family arrived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and settled in
Marquette in the 1870s. The discovery of minable iron ore there provided hundreds with
solid employment in the middle of the recession, and many of his descendents continue to
live in the area today. Other families of Dagenais arrived in central Michigan with the
westward-expanding, recession-proof lumber industry. Paul Dagenais and Emily Dufort
settled in Bay City in 1866 and later moved to Detroit. The first mention of a Dagenais
in the Saginaw area was Louis Dagenais, listed in Saginaw’s first directory in 1866.
Other than the fact that he was employed as a laborer and lived at 507 Throop St. on the
city’s west side, little else is known of him, and he appears to have only been in the area a
short while as an itinerant worker. The sons of Vincent (Voshon) Dagenais and
Marguerite Latour came from Oswego NY and settled in Saginaw in 1878. They also
have many descendants in the area.
A last family, that of the children of Georges Dagenais who are only distantly related to
other Dagenais in the state, came from Ottawa to the small village of Carrollton just north
of Saginaw. The fact that two Dagenais lines immigrated to the U.S. and settled only a
few kilometers apart is already coincidental, but several of the men in the two families
also worked as coopers, compounding the coincidence. This led to a belief over many
decades that the two families were more closely related than they actually are. It has now
been established that their common ancestor was Pierre Dagenais II, who lived more than
150 years before them.
Figure 115 Selected Michigan cities
118

At this time, Carrollton was attracting workers for its booming salt and lumberprocessing
industries which employed the majority of the men who lived there. The area
had been cleared of forest only since 1860, although a few early residents had lived there
since the 1830s. The stretch of river from Saginaw to Bay City, which included
Carrollton, had been a leading supplier of lumber for several decades, but production
ramped up significantly between 1860 and the turn of the century.
High-quality pine and a variety of hardwood trees were cut en masse from across the
region and floated down the tributaries of the Saginaw River to the sawmills each spring.
There, the logs were processed and the lumber exported to growing metropolitan areas
like Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo, and Albany. At the mouth of a huge watershed that
drained a densely-forested wilderness, the greater Saginaw area was ideally situated for
such an industry. The first sawmill was built in 1832; by 1858 there were more than 50.
At its peak in 1882, the Saginaw area was producing ten million board feet of lumber per
year, but by 1897 the forests of the Lower Peninsula had been completely ravaged and
the lumber barons moved on to Wisconsin and Minnesota. In fact, at the close
Michigan’s so-called Age of Lumber, there remained only one stand of old growth forest
in the entire state near Grayling. Most areas of the watershed were left barren stumpstrewn
fields after they had been logged, and these were slowly turned into farms by
arriving immigrants from northern Europe
Figure 116 The Saginaw watershed drains 22 counties in Michigan
119

Figure 117 Logging in the Saginaw watershed
Figure 118 Transporting logs to the river
120

Figure 119 Peak year of lumber production in Michigan watersheds
The discovery of a vast salt bed under the area also prompted the founding of several
large salt works. Wells were bored down into the aquifer and the brine pumped up to be
dried in large heated plants called “blocks” and shipped out in wooden barrels. Its purity
and relatively low price made the area’s salt a much sought after commodity. With an
average price of one dollar per barrel, Saginaw area businesses shipped more than
19,000,000 barrels of salt between 1860 and 1881. This was facilitated by a railroad line
finished in the late 1860s linking Zilwaukee and Carrollton to Saginaw and the rest of
Midwest. Ready access to the Great Lakes via the Saginaw River also made shipping
large quantities of both salt and lumber to other markets highly profitable. The trains and
ships that left with lumber and salt returned to the area with men in search of jobs, which
were plentiful in part because the American Civil War (1861- 1865) had drained the local
economy of a number of its workers. Saginaw, East Saginaw, Carrollton, and Zilwaukee
became veritable boomtowns in the 1860s and 1870s, and about half of the workers in the
various mills and salt works during these years were French-Canadians. Most had come
to escape the deepening economic depression that gripped other parts of the United States
and Canada from 1870 to 1896.
French-Canadian lumberjacks and mill workers were highly respected for their work
ethic and their familiarity with the harsh climate. They descended on the area en masse
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and found abundant work in the state. The legend of Paul Bunyan, a giant lumberjack
known for his strength, agility on the water, and fighting ability, in fact grew partly out of
the feats of a huge French-Canadian logger named Joseph Fournier who worked in the
Saginaw area in the 1860s and 1870s. Known colloquially as “Saginaw Joe”, he was the
subject of many folk stories involving his strength and eagerness to fight. True to legend,
he was murdered by a gang of jacks in Bay City in 1875.
Figure 120 Saginaw, East Saginaw, Carrollton, and Zilwaukee 1870
122

Figure 121 Carrollton - Zilwaukee area (Jackson St. four blocks from river)
Figure 122 Salt block workers
123

Figure 123 Salt being readied for shipment
François-Xavier Dagenais, Georges Dagenais’ son by Théotiste Petit, arrived in
Carrollton as a young man of 21 in 1866 and began work as a cooper in a saw mill. Then
a village of about 300, Carrollton was a mixed community of American, Irish, and
French-Canadian immigrant families on the Saginaw River. There were also many
German families farming in nearby Kochville and Zilwaukee to the north. Like many
French-speaking immigrants to the U.S., he anglicized his name to Frank Dashner. His
only known photograph is among a group of employees of the A.T. Bliss Lower Mill in
Zilwaukee in 1877, a rather short, bearded, wiry man with a broad smile.
Frank takes up residence on Washington St. and soon marries Marguerite Begin
(Margaret Bager) from another French-Canadian family living in Carrollton on 5
September 1869. They will live in the village for the rest of their lives and go on to have
10 children. Their daughter Clara is the first Dagenais born in the area on 21 August
1870. Early Catholic marriages and baptisms were conducted at St. Andrew on
Saginaw’s west side, but as the number of Irish and French-Canadian workers in
Carrollton grew, the need for a local parish there was met by the founding of St. John the
Baptist in 1887. Frank died of cancer at the relatively young age of 52 on 22 December
1897 in Saginaw.
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Figure 124 Frank Dashner at Bliss Sawmill 1877(short man, third row fifth from right)
Jean Dagenais arrived in Carrollton around the same time and also went to work
coopering as John Dashner. He is closely related to Frank; they lived and worked
together, but their precise family connection has not been established. He was born 27
December 1840 in Ottawa to Joseph Dagenais and Marie-Louise St. Amour and appears
to be a cousin. (The lack of information regarding Georges Dagenais’ siblings is the
problem here. It is highly unlikely he was an only child, and Georges and Joseph are
likely brothers.) Confusingly, there are at least two other John Dashners from other
families in Saginaw. John marries Delina Canell on 14 July 1870 in a civil ceremony in
East Saginaw. Delina is unable to name her father, and this, together with John’s murky
past, is perhaps why a Catholic wedding was not possible. A year later, there is a second
Dagenais born in the area when they have a daughter, Harriet, in 1871. They have
several more children in Carrollton before relocating to the Manistee MI area, another
logging center on the west side of the state, in the 1880s where John continued to work in
the mills. As luck would have it, there is no record of his death in Michigan either. In
all, the couple has 12 children, and they are the ancestors of the many Dashners who live
in the northwest and southwest part of the state.
Mathilde, Georges II, Amable, and Guillaume Dagenais all immigrate to the U.S. a few
years later around 1874. No crossing documents have been found, but immigration from
Canada at this time usually went unrecorded. William is only about eight years old. The
four anglicize their names to Matilda, George II, Amos, and William Dashner upon
arrival and take up residence in Carrollton, most likely at the home of their half-brother
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Frank Dashner and his family. All four later seem confused about the year of their
immigration; they give different dates on different censuses. More telling is that none are
able to accurately give their date of birth, especially William who at times claims a date
three years different than his real one. Like his siblings, he will also have some trouble
with his mother’s maiden name on the marriage document. William lists her as Sophie
Paquette instead of Sophie Vanier. Paquette was of course both the maiden name of their
maternal grandmother Hermine and the surname of her second husband, Sophie’s
stepfather. This suggests either that Sophie went by this surname from early childhood
since she was only a year old when her birth father died or, more likely, that the young
Dagenais were taken in for awhile by Hermine Paquette after their father’s death and the
children simply assumed that this was Sophie’s surname as well. The four must learn
only later of the her actual Vanier surname because the last to marry, Amos, identifies her
correctly as Sophie Vanier on his marriage document.
The eldest, Matilda, marries Joseph Ste. Marie (Joseph St. Mary) on 5 January 1879 at St.
Andrew in Saginaw. John Dashner and his wife Delina Cannell serve as witnesses. Like
many other men in Carrollton, Joseph works in a salt block. The new couple sets up
house next door to Frank and Margaret on Washington St. with Joseph’s two brothers,
Lewis and Jerry, and thirteen year-old William. William is listed as attending school the
following year in the 1880 census, making him and his brothers the first Dagenais in five
generations to learn to read and write. Matilda gives birth to four children over the next
six years, but her husband Joseph dies in a strange boating accident on the evening of 18
May 1886. Living only blocks from the Saginaw River, Joseph was out fishing in a small
boat when the steamer Burt approached Carrollton on its evening run from Saginaw to
Bay City. Joseph rowed out away from shore to allow the ship room to maneuver toward
the dock, but the ship was apparently not scheduled to stop there that evening and
continued down the middle of the river instead. Joseph’s small boat was overturned and
he was drowned, leaving Matilda a young widow with four small children. She remarried
seven years later to William McKay, a farmer from Ingersoll Township, but they would
eventually leave the area and resettle in Boone, Arkansas around the turn of the century.
Figure 125 The Wellington R. Burt
126

Figure 126 The steamer Burt (docked in center) on the Saginaw River
William’s brother Amos also appears on the 1880 census. He has curiously been adopted
by Mirinda and Olive Davis, an English-speaking family in nearby Kochville. The
fifteen year-old Amos looks to have been put to work part-time on the family’s farm but
also attends school. He will have a rather itinerant life, moving from job to job and
changing addresses frequently. He works as a farm hand in the Kochville area on the
large Leinberger farm for a few years, then moves into Saginaw and takes various jobs as
a hotel porter, bartender, ironworker, and eventually “helper”. At the age of 47, he
marries Julianne Devine on 25 October 1911 at St. John the Baptist in Carrollton.
William is a witness at his brother’s wedding. The couple settles on Saginaw’s east side
at 431 Ward St. but have no known offspring.
After reaching working age in the mid-1880s, William and his other brother George II
take jobs at A.T. Bliss & Co. in Carrollton, the saw mill and salt works where their halfbrother
Frank works. The company employed more than 50 men at the time, and its
grounds virtually surrounded the village. It is not known how old they were when they
went to work, but the mills regularly employed boys as young as nine or ten in limited
capacities. William and George are not this young when they begin to work because both
attended school for some time. George eventually works as a teamster and William as a
“boom-man”. The boom was the penned area along the river where logs arriving from
the tributaries upstream were collected and rafted together in preparation for cutting.
Men like William worked out on the floating log piles and used a long wooden pole with
an iron hook called a peavey to pry the logs with their company’s mark on them away
from the others and into position in front of the mill. This was often a challenging task as
nearly 1000 different logs marks were registered in the Saginaw courthouse during the
Age of Lumber.
127

Figure 127 Teamsters loading at Acme Planing Mill Saginaw 1897
Figure 128 Lumber boom-men
128

Figure 129 Lumber boom
Figure 130 Boom-man with peavey
129

Both brothers marry in the spring of 1888, George II on 30 April 1888 to Evaline Begin
(Eva Bager) from the same family as Frank Dashner’s wife at St. John the Baptist. The
couple lives until the mid-1890s on Water St. in Carrollton, but when work in the mills
draws to a close they resettle in the Freeland area where they farm and raise a large
family. William is godfather to their first son, George III, born 7 September 1890.
George will die on 25 September 1927 at the age of 65.
William marries Clara Mathilde Letellier, also from a French-Canadian family in a civil
ceremony in Saginaw on 27 March 1888. William is 22 and Clara only 14 at the time of
their marriage. On the marriage license Clara deceptively lists her age as 16, and the
ceremony is witnessed by William’s brother Amos Dashner and Clara’s sister Lena
Letellier. The couple is married by Father LeFevbre in a church ceremony at St. Andrew
a little more than two weeks later on 9 April 1988.
Clara Letellier was born 11 August 1874 in Saginaw, one of six daughters born to
Nazaire Letellier and Emélie Hébert. A family on hard times, Nazaire Letellier had
worked in a salt block in Carrollton until his death or disappearance in early 1874 in the
months before Clara was born. Emélie Hébert quickly remarried David Walters, a farmer
from Kochville, on 1 August 1874 and gave birth to Clara only ten days later. Clara thus
spent her first 14 years in Kochville with the English-speaking David Walters as stepfather.
There is a family story that she had been pressured to marry another man by her
parents but had run away. Emélie and David have a son, David II, in the year before
Clara’s marriage which probably had some influence on her decision to flee the home.
These circumstances at least partially explain the young age at which she was married,
and William and Clara may have met as a result of the proximity of the Walters farm to
that of the Leinberger farm where William’s brother Amos worked.
Figure 131 Clara Letellier's mother Emélie Héber
130

William and Clara take up residence at 316 Jackson Avenue in Carrollton. William will
keep the house there until his death, and the couple begins a family of nine:
James 14 June 1889
Alfred 15 May 1890
Maude Clarissa 19 January 1893
Delina 03 June 1896
Mae 13 May 1899
Marie 13 May 1899, died of pneumonia after nine months
Malvina 10 March 1901
Joseph 25 June 1903
Albert 13 May 1907
Figure 132 Clara Letellier Dashner at home with family on Jackson Avenue in
Carrollton about 1901 (children left to right: either Jim or Alfred, Delina, Maude,
Malvina, and Mae)
William no doubt continues to speak French to his relatives and to those older than him in
Carrollton, but because he has been exposed to English for several years, mostly in the
workplace, he can get by well in his adopted language. Clara, too, speaks French as a
mother tongue, but because she has been raised since birth in the house of an English-
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speaking stepfather, she is much more fluent in English than in French by the time they
are married. As a result, communication in their home is probably a hodge-podge of both
languages. Their children are thus the first Dagenais in the line to have English as a
mostly mother tongue.
Carrollton’s waterside location was ideally suited for the transshipment of lumber and
salt, but this also made it prone to flooding. Each spring the Saginaw River overflowed
its banks, and serious floods inundated the village in 1871, 1873, 1876, 1884, and 1904.
Many working-class residents, including the Dashners, were forced to relocate until the
water subsided in the two worst floods in 1884 and 1904 while many others lost their
homes to the waters.
In 1885, 77 saw mills and 58 salt blocks between Saginaw and Bay City went on strike in
one of the largest early labor disputes in the United States. In an unprecedented, quicklyspreading
action, more than 5,500 men and boys, including all of the 87 workers at the
Bliss mill where Frank, William, and George were employed, walked off the job on 1
July demanding better pay and fewer hours of work per day. At the time of the strike, the
daily wage in the mills was $1.77 for men and $0.93 for boys under 16. Both groups
worked either 11 or 11½ hour days. The slogan “Ten hours or no sawdust” rang out in
daily parades, speeches, and the media, but the strike was largely broken by hired
Pinkerton detectives from Chicago after only a month. A political compromise was
brokered by local officials behind the scenes, however, and new laws mandating the 10hour
day with no reduction in pay took effect anyway.
In the 1900 census, William is working as a laborer at the Acme Plank Mill but is listed
as having been out of work for two and a half months in the previous year, evidence that
the lumber industry has played itself out and workers were being forced to find other
work in the area or relocate. This resulted in the gradual loss of full-time mill work for
William, and financial difficulties likely began to plague the family.
In the 1910 census, William is listed as a sorter in a flooring factory and Clara as the
homemaker for the family of eight. At this point, almost all of the mills in Carrollton and
Saginaw have closed because nearly every old-growth tree in the Saginaw watershed had
been harvested. The lack of work contributes to the marital strife that William and Clara
have apparently been experiencing for some time. A year later in 1911, the couple
separates when Clara suddenly moves to 1511 North Oakley on the city’s west side with
six of the children while William remains on Jackson in Carrollton. Their strained
relationship continues to deteriorate over the next few years. In a last act of public
harmony, they stand as witnesses at the baptism of James Dashner II, their grandson by
James Dashner and Marguerite Harvie on Christmas Day 1913 at St. John the Baptist in
Carrollton.
Thereafter, their dispute can only be described as acrimonious. In the 1921 city
directory, Clara lists herself as William’s widow, even though her husband is alive. She
will not in fact acknowledge having been married to William on any civil document,
including her obituary, for the rest of her life.
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By 1923, James, Fred, Maud, and Mae have all married and left the house, leaving
Delina, Malvina, Albert, and Joseph at home with Clara on North Oakley. In that year’s
directory, William is listed separately as a trucker for Saginaw Products Co. in
Carrollton.
By the time of the 1930 census, Clara, her daughter Malvina, and her son Albert have
moved into the home of Philogène Rousseau at 1815 Hill, also on the west side. Their
relationship is a romantic one. It is also evidence of a bold inner strength in Clara. Her
decision to move in with another man was probably not well received by many relatives
given the strong Catholicism that ran through the extended family.
We need look no further than Clara’s own daughter for evidence of this. According to
family members in the same generation, Malvina is jilted by a man in 1939 at the age of
38 and joins the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary, an order of Catholic nuns, in
Bedford MA the same year. Unable to convince her daughter to stay, Clara is distraught
at her departure. Malvina returns as Sister Mary Valerian five months later 20 August
1939 but only to announce that she is being sent to do missionary work in the Fiji Islands
in the South Pacific. Realizing she will never see her youngest daughter again, Clara is
severely affected by the announcement and makes a memorable scene at the train station
a few days later. Malvina will return to Saginaw only twice, in April of 1967, well after
the death of her mother, and again in July 1975 to announce that she has inoperable
cancer. She dies a few months later in Fiji on 18 November 1975 at the age of 74 after
having served more than 27 years in the islands.
Figure 133 Sister Mary Valerian in Bedford MA 1939
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Figure 134 Sister Valerian on Fiji 1966
William dies of a heart attack at the age of 69 at home in Carrollton on 28 January 1935.
Funeral services are conducted by the Deisler Funeral Home and St. John the Baptist in
Carrollton on 30 January 1935 with burial at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Saginaw.
He had been dealt a thin hand of cards early in life. Deprived of parents from an early
age and sent to live in a foreign country with relatives he did not know, his story may
read to some like the opening chapter of a Victorian novel when considered from a
historical perspective, but these events must have had a profound effect on his childhood
and adolescence. Despite the fact that he was among the first in the line in many
generations to learn to read and write, he received only a rudimentary education and went
to work at a young age like all his working-class contemporaries. The 40 years he spent
in the Bliss, Eastman, and Mershon saw mills gave him a unique vantage point from
which to consider the Age of Lumber in the Saginaw Valley.
Like his contemporaries, he arrived on the scene during the early years of the boom and
found a niche working class existence under the powerful lumber barons, but he was left
bewildered when the forests gave their last to the dying mills only 30 years later. Over
the course of his working life he saw the rapid emergence of new logging and mill
technology that made the production of lumber cheaper but also threw large numbers of
hired men out of work.
Like the mills, he struggled somewhat in his later years. With mill work increasingly
scarce and no longer a young man, his employment became unsteady and no doubt
contributed to his marital difficulties. The stigma attached to his public separation from
Clara must have been humiliating, although he remained on good terms with his children
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who were known to visit him regularly. He lived alone in the house on Jackson in
Carrollton for 23 years after his separation from Clara, left to consider his part in the
vagaries of the era.
Figure 135 William Dashner
Clara marries Philogène Rousseau, with whom she has been living, in a ceremony at St.
Andrew on 10 February 1935, less than two weeks after William’s death. Presumably,
the couple has had to wait for the death of her spouse in order to respect the strict
Catholic ban on divorce and remarriage. They continue to live for another 12 years at the
house on Hill St. She dies after a two-year battle with multiple myeloma (bone marrow
cancer) at St. Mary’s hospital in Saginaw on 18 April 1847 at the age of 73. After
services at McIntyre Funeral home and St. Andrew, she is buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery
on 21 April 1847. In an ironic twist, William and Clara’s children decide to bury their
mother and father in plots next to each other. Philogène Rousseau dies a little more than
a year later on 18 July 1948.
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Her life began, ironically, with many of the same challenges that William faced. She also
grew up without a solid family environment, losing her father before she was even born.
Regardless of her reasons for fleeing her step-father’s farm, she was soon living a strange
new adult life before she was old enough to consider the gravity of her decision to marry
at 14. Nine children later, its weight was all too clear, and she was likely affected by the
same homebound ennui that previous wives in the line had known. By several accounts,
however, she was a strong-minded woman who did not mince her words or relent easily.
She accepted the challenges of mothering a large brood of children on a limited income,
but there were clearly some traits or behaviors in her husband she could not accept. The
same strength that allowed her to successfully raise a family from the age of 14 also
appears to have encouraged her to confront both her restricted situation and her husband.
We sense bitterness in her reaction but also clearness of purpose. Like the men before
her in the line who found stagnation unacceptable and ventured to change their
circumstances by moving to a new environment, she too is to be recognized for having
acted to change hers. Her relationship with Philogène Rousseau is iconoclastic in that the
two lived openly together at a time when there was heavy religious and social pressure to
the contrary. Their rush to marry only weeks after her first husband’s death seems an
attempt to redress this situation and probably allowed for a measure of satisfaction she
had not known for some time.
Figure 136 Clara Letellier
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East Saginaw
William and Clara’s second son Alfred was born on 15 May 1890 in Carrollton and
baptized two days later at St John the Baptist, the ceremony witnessed by William’s
brother George II and his wife Eva Begin. Clara was still just sixteen. She was also at
least somewhat estranged from her mother’s new family in Kochville and therefore
probably completely dependent on William and his relatives. Named after an uncle he
will never meet, their son is called Fred from early on. He spends his childhood at the
small, somewhat ramshackle, and crowded house of ten on Jackson in Carrollton. Like
his father, he continues to sign Dagenais on religious documents at St. John the Baptist
but Dashner on civil ones.
He attends the local Union School on Maple St. in Carrollton for a few years but, like
many young boys of the period and his father before him, he leaves to go to work at a
tender age. He worked at odd jobs in Carrollton and then in Flint as a laborer for an
unknown length of time with a good friend of Dutch extraction, Pierly Miller. The two
boarded at the home of a Mrs. Knight who appeared to take quite good care of the pair.
Fred will stop to visit with her periodically in the years that follow. In November of 1909
at age 19 he is hired as a helper at the newly-opened Wickes Boiler Co., a large-scale
manufacturer of industrial boilers with more than 350 employees where he will work for
the next 18 years.
Figure 137 Jim (left) and Fred Dashner 1890
137

Figure 138 Union School in Carrollton early 1900s
Figure 139 Wickes Brothers complex on Water St. in Saginaw
138

Figure 140 A Wickes boiler
Figure 141 Fred Dashner on the job at Wickes
139

Figure 142 Fred Dashner (right) at Wickes
About the same time, Fred’s brother Jim takes a job with the M.C. Railroad Co. in
Detroit. The brothers are close; only eleven months separate them, and they have grown
up together as the eldest males in a family with five younger sisters. Although Fred will
visit him in Detroit a few times and his brother will try to coax him into moving to the
much bigger city, Fred states on several occasions that he is very happy in the Carrollton-
Saginaw area and intends to settle there. His new well-paying job at Wickes is surely a
significant incentive to stay put. He is genuinely lonely without his brother, however,
although they continue to see each other every few weeks when Jim begins a relationship
with Marguerite Harvie, a French-Canadian girl from Carrollton.
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Fred also meets 17 year-old Irene Wade from the First Ward in East Saginaw sometime
in 1910. His sister Maude likely introduced the pair. They see each other for several
months as friends, but Fred is seemingly taken with the girl from early on. Their first
written correspondence is a short doggerel Fred writes in Irene’s book of souvenir poems.
Maude and several other friends also contribute pieces.
Irene was born 11 November 1892 to a local farmer and tannery employee, Edson Wade,
and a strong-willed French-Canadian mother, Frances Guiette. Her father appears to
have spent a fair amount of time away from home, and her mother apparently cared for
the family of nine children alone for long stretches at 1026 North Washington in East
Saginaw. Devout Catholics, Irene and her siblings attend the popular Holy Family parish
school of more than 300 students for several years. Her family is very protective of the
somewhat fragile girl, not least because she suffers from epileptic seizures on a regular
basis and needs the supervision. She and her family take great pains to conceal her
affliction, and, perhaps in part as a result, Irene develops a close bond with her sister
Edith, three years her junior.
Irene’s condition, ill understood at the time and undoubtedly a social liability, is severe
enough for her to be sent to live with her eldest sister Cora in Detroit in late 1910. Over
the next year, she sees a specialist who prescribes a regimen of fresh vegetables, long
walks, and an unknown medication. She and Fred correspond weekly during her entire
stay, and his surviving letters to her are a rich source of information on the couple’s lives
and also on the lives of their families that year. In them they both refer repeatedly to her
“sickness” and her getting “tired”, but it appears as though Fred is only marginally aware
of the nature of Irene’s illness. His tone is respectful and playfully persistent, referring to
himself in nearly every letter as “your true friend”, but he is clearly enamored and urges
her several times to return home as soon as she is fit. On the other hand, Irene finds parttime
work in the city and begins to imagine living there permanently. The three-hour
Saginaw-Flint-Detroit train ran several times a day, and Fred travels to Detroit to see
Irene and his brother at least once in 1911.
Fred’s letters also reveal that he is somewhat hesitant about writing in general. He has
had only a few years of schooling and suffers from the additional effects of having grown
up in a house with two spoken languages. He has clearly never learned to write in
French, but the types of orthographical errors he makes in English are typical of someone
who has heard both French and broken English most of his life. He struggles at times but
writes surprisingly well all things considered. He jokingly asks Irene several times not to
make too much fun of his mistakes, and she obliges by correcting them.
We also learn of Fred’s social life in Carrollton and Saginaw. He attends mass each
Sunday at St. John the Baptist with his family and helps install a new bell in the church
steeple. He goes out fairly often to dramas, concerts, and to play Pedro at a popular card
parlor in Carrollton. The game, similar to 500 and Euchre, was also a favorite of his
mother and sisters. He is often in the company of his cousins, his sisters, and several
friends from Carrollton, especially Pierly Miller. There is a well-developed streetcar
system in the city, but Fred also travels about on his “wheel” (bicycle). Carrollton was
only a short trip across the 6 th Street Bridge from the First Ward where he worked and
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where Irene’s family lived. In his letters to Irene he mentions that he stops to call at the
Wade home several times that year and is well-received, although he will also tell stories
later about the animosity that existed between the eastside boys and the Frenchmen from
Carrollton.
Edson Wade’s health begins to deteriorate toward the end of 1911, a skin cancer he has
contracted as a result of his work in the tannery. A large tumor on his face eventually
spreads, and he is soon bedridden. Irene comes home in early 1912, presumably to help
tend to her father, but he dies eight months later at the age of 56 on 19 August 1912.
Irene is still 19 and shaken by the loss, the first of many strong reactions to deaths in the
family. Fred is quite content to be able to comfort and court her again, admitting that
their time apart has been difficult for him. Irene also takes part-time work at Jacobson’s
Laundry where her brother Lawrence works.
Fred’s parents separate the same year, and as the eldest son living locally, he goes with
several of his siblings to live with Clara on North Oakley in Saginaw. Despite the
acrimonious split, the children all remain on good terms with their father in Carrollton,
and Fred will actually spend time at both residences over the next six years. He is also
promoted to assistant engineer at Wickes, where he learns to maintain the production
machinery. In the fall, he appears as a witness with Irene at the marriage of his brother
Jim and Marguerite Harvie at St. John the Baptist on 9 October 1912. The realization
that his brother and his new wife will relocate permanently to Detroit stirs Fred to
consider marriage himself, and he begins to hint at the possibility with Irene.
Figure 143 Jim Dashner-Marguerite Harvie wedding. Fred and Irene top right
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Irene, however, continues to experience seizures and returns to Detroit for treatment in
the summer of 1913. The couple again exchange letters, but Fred appears increasingly
bothered by the fact that they live so far apart, especially since Irene has verbally agreed
to marry him in principle the previous February. Fred continues to suggest dates, but
Irene is content with the idea of marrying “in a few years”. In the letters we also learn
that Fred buys his first automobile that year, discovers his first grey hairs, and hurts his
hand on the job badly enough to have to take several days off. Irene spends time in both
cities over the next few years, working as a seamstress and then as a machine operator,
but the couple seem to have an on-again, off-again relationship.
War breaks out in Europe in 1914, and while production at Saginaw factories like Wickes
no doubt benefit from supplying the Allied war effort early in the war, the city’s workers
fear that American involvement in the broadening conflict will result in a military draft.
Their fears are justified when the United States enters the war in 1917, resulting in the
eventual conscription of more than three million Americans. Fred is required to register
like all men aged 21 to 31 but is fortunate to have begun work at Wickes. His World War
I military registration card, dated 5 June 1917, states that he is to be given a deferment
because of the nature of his employment at Wickes, considered vital to the war effort
because the company produced equipment for a new class of U.S. naval craft. Several of
his friends and his cousin are not so lucky and are drafted for service in The Great War.
His fears allayed and now 28 years old, he marries 26 year-old Irene Frances Wade after
a more than six year courtship on 26 June 1918 at Holy Family Church in Saginaw.
Figure 144 Edson Wade, age 44
143

Figure 145 Frances Guiette
Figure 146 The Wades about 1906. Back row left to right: Irene, Edith, Cora, Jane
Front row: Clarence, Lawrence, George, Gertrude, Art
144

Figure 147 The Edson Wade family at home at 1026 North Washington Ave. in Saginaw.,
Figure 148 Irene and Edith Wade
145

Figure 149 Frances Guiette and Edson Wade
Figure 150 Irene Wade (at wheel) with girlfriends in an early Model A Ford
146

Figure 151 Poem from Fred Dashner to Irene Wade October 1910
Figure 152 Saginaw County marriage license for Fred Dashner and Irene Wade
147

Figure 153 Irene Wade on her wedding day
Figure 154 Fred Dashner and Irene Wade
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The French-Canadian parish of Holy Family that Irene’s family attended and where Fred
and Irene were to be married had only recently been organized, and the new church itself
was in fact still under construction. As a result, they were actually married on the second
floor of the parish school located at 1515 South Washington. They are both of French-
Canadian stock and will soon join the parish as a family themselves, but like many of the
children of other second and third generation families there, Irene and her siblings do not
speak French at all. The ceremony is witnessed by Fred’s friend Albert Wichlacz and
Irene’s sister Edith Wade.
After the marriage, Fred moves in with his wife’s family on North Washington where
there is ample room. The couple shares the house with Frances Wade and her two
youngest children, Gertrude and Lawrence. They begin a family the next year with the
birth of the first of their four children, only two of whom will survive:
Marie Frances 19 June 1919, died 18 days later
Gertrude Marie 22 August 1922, died at age four
Alfred John 15 March 1929
Gerald Joseph 21 April 1932
Marie Frances dies after only 18 days at the tail end of the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza
pandemic that killed around 600,000 in the U.S. and more than 50 million worldwide.
The victims took sick suddenly, accumulated large volumes of fluid in the lungs and
nasal passages, and died of suffocation within a few hours of infection. The outbreak in
many places was worsened by the fact that there was a shortage of doctors in the country,
many having been deployed in Europe to treat wounded American soldiers during World
War I. Also of note on the child’s death certificate is the mention of an additional
contributing factor, “convulsions”, which strongly suggests the child had also inherited
epilepsy.
On 16 June 1919, only three days after the birth of Marie Frances and thus probably in
very high spirits, the couple uses a good portion of their savings to buy a city lot at 224
North 6 th . The property has a run-down house and small outbuilding on it, and the seller,
Theresa Marande, had in fact abandoned it. The low selling price of $1300 reflects the
poor condition of the dwellings, but Fred means to have them torn down in order to have
a new house and garage built. He signs a contract to do precisely this with builder J.W.
Gale on 3 April 1920 and takes out a 10-year mortgage for $3500 from The People’s
Building and Loan Association two days later on 5 April 1920. Fred is both frugal and in
good physical condition; to save on building costs, some of the lumber used in the
construction of the house is to come from the existing structures, and he agrees to dig the
foundation himself. By the time of the publication of the 1921 city directory the
following year, the couple has moved into their new home, where they have a very
manageable weekly mortgage payment of $8.57. They will lead an interwar, workingclass
lifestyle there for the next 25 years.
149

150

Figure 155 Contract to build the Dashner house at 224 North 6 th
The couple suffers another tragedy when their second child, Gertrude Marie, is born the
next year with a developmental spinal condition which will prevent the child from ever
walking. She dies two months short of her fourth birthday on 1 July 1926. The death
consumes Irene for several years, and the couple will visit her grave in Mt. Olivet
Cemetery nearly every Sunday for the better part of the next decade. Irene will also
remain unable to speak of the child without shedding a tear for much of the rest of her
life.
Figure 156 Gertrude Marie Dashner May 1926
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Misfortune continues when Irene’s mother Frances descends from a streetcar and is
struck by an automobile while visiting her children in Detroit in 1927. Her shattered leg
is poorly set and does not heal properly. As result, she is left unable to walk without the
aid of crutches for the remaining 25 years of her life. In need of home care, she is taken
in by Cora and her husband in Detroit.
Fred also changes jobs and takes a position as stationary engineer at St. Mary’s Hospital
in Saginaw the same year. He is responsible for running a coal-fired steam boiler, which
he knows well, and doing general mechanical maintenance for the hospital. Working
under him are an assistant engineer and some firemen to stoke the boiler. The city of
Saginaw, however, requires all industrial boiler operators to be licensed by examination.
With little formal education, Fred studies privately for the engineer’s test and, with the
help of his engineering workmates at Wickes, passes it before beginning employment.
Figure 157 St. Mary's Hospital, Saginaw 1910
152

Figure 158 Fred Dashner's first engineer's license
In a letter to Irene in November 1930, Frances writes to her daughter that she is not
entirely happy with the arrangement at Cora’s in Detroit. Although she says she has tried
to contribute as best she can for three years, she feels underappreciated in the busy home.
A discussion on the matter ensues, and Fred arranges to have Frances come and live with
them. Although her condition restricts her enormously, she is in fact needed in the home.
The concern is the continuing severity of Irene’s epilepsy. Increasingly unable to cope
with the frequent seizures alone, Fred appreciates the years of experience with the
condition that Frances can offer. The mutually beneficial living arrangement will last for
more than ten years.
The addition of two healthy sons to the family, Alfred John in 1929 and Gerald Joseph in
1932, reverses their fortunes even as the nation’s economy spirals downward around
them. In fact, Fred’s new position at the hospital puts the family in a relatively fortunate
situation during the Depression years as they have a steady income all through the 1930s.
Several relatives find themselves out of work, and the couple helps support them as best
they can. On the contrary, Fred is able to afford to build an addition to the garage and
buy his wife a top-end sewing machine as a Christmas present for $185 in 1929.
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The couple is also eventually in a position to take advantage of rock-bottom real estate
prices during the Depression and purchase the house next door at 220 North 6 th in
November 1937 from the Bader family. Financially unencumbered since paying off their
mortgage in January of 1930 and with a steady income, they take out a small eight-year
loan for $1500, buy the house, and separate it into front and rear apartments. These
become an important source of income for the couple for the next 30 years. They also act
as witnesses at the remarriage of Fred’s mother Clara to Philogène Rousseau in 1935
after the death of William Dashner.
Figure 159 Irene Wade's bill for delivery of son Gerald Joseph Dashner
Tragedy returns at the end of the decade when Irene’s closest sister Edith and her
youngest sister Gertrude both begin to experience marital difficulties. Gertrude has
married a Canadian citizen, Claude LeFleur, and lives in Windsor with their adopted son
Ronald. Claude runs a gas station there but is increasingly plagued by mental troubles.
He is eventually institutionalized, and Gertrude is forced to move back to Detroit in 1938
with her son to look for work. All along, Edith has been living in Detroit with her
husband, John Spandle, but is distraught over the fact that he is seeing other women. She
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flees the home the next year for Gertrude’s apartment where she stays for some time.
Her depression worsens, however, and she soon disappears. She surfaces a few weeks
later in Chicago and takes work as a children’s nanny for several months but eventually
returns to Detroit in a very depressed state. She commits suicide and dies in a Pontiac
hospital on 29 July 1940. Her body is given a home wake at Fred and Irene’s in Saginaw,
and Fred quietly arranges funeral services at St. Mary’s Cathedral. Never an emotionally
strong individual, the strain on Irene is severe.
Gertrude and Ronald return to Saginaw the same year and take up residence in the rear
apartment on North 6 th . Gertrude agrees to begin caring for Frances, and the three move
to the front apartment a year later. By war’s end, Gertrude’s work in an armament
factory allows her to purchase a house on Simoneau in Saginaw, where Frances will also
live until her death in 1955.
Figure 160 Fred, Irene, and unknown couple at the rear of 220 North 6th
155

Figure 161 Backyard of 224 North 6 th about 1940. Left to right: Gertrude Wade,
Frances Guiette, Irene Wade. Foreground: Gertrude’s son Ronald, Irene’s son Joe
Dashner
Figure 162 Rear of 224 North 6 th . Back row left to right: Irene, Edith, and Jane Wade
Front row: John, Cora Wade, Joe, Frances Guiette, Ronald, Gertrude Wade
156

Figure 163 Frances Guiette Wade
Apart from the horrors of the Second World War, the next decade is a relatively quiet one
for the family. Fred’s responsibilities at the hospital increase along with his annual
salary, which rises steadily from $2,420 in 1943 to $4,929 in 1951 and ushers them into a
solid middle-class existence. The widespread adoption of the national 40-hour work
week after the war also gives Fred an extra day off, although at least some of his increase
in salary is due to payment for overtime. With Frances now living with Gertrude and
Ronald, the home environment is also more their own, and Irene settles in to her role as
homemaker. The family eats traditional rustic fare, mostly cuts of ham, chicken, and a lot
of soup made from both. Irene is a good cook but a better baker, using the cherry and
pear tree crop from the trees in the backyard to make pies and canning the rest of the fruit
in an annual rite of spring. In true French-Canadian fashion, Fred also cooks and
consumes prodigious amounts of bacon.
In a personal journal she kept most of her life, Irene records that Fred took sick around
10:30 P.M. on Friday, 14 March 1952. He suffered a heart attack in bed three hours later
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and was transported by ambulance to the same St. Mary’s Hospital where he worked at
1:30 A.M. He remained under the care of the nuns there for another six days but suffered
a second, more serious attack and died at the age of 62 at 7:50 A.M. on 21 March 1952.
After a showing at Deisler Funeral Home and a funeral at St. Mary's Cathedral, he was
buried near his parents in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Saginaw. Sadly, his death occurred
only two weeks before the birth of his first grandchild.
By all accounts, Fred Dashner was a responsible, hard-working, and very generous
individual. Jovial at work, pensive at home, and often a rather private person, he was in
part the product a heavy load of familial obligations. His separated parents, many
younger siblings, the Depression, an invalid mother-in-law, two lost children, and his
wife’s epilepsy were all outwardly addressed with strength, humility, and magnanimity.
He was a much-appreciated pillar of support for those around him, yet he was quietly
affected by the cumulative strain of these responsibilities in his private moments.
He was a working man from very early on. Just as his father’s employment had been
framed by the city’s commitment to lumber, Fred’s bore the mark of its embrace of
machinery. Both situations highlight the impact of mass industrialization on the hourly
employee. Whether it was lumber or boilers in production, the factories provided an
employee’s sustenance but also demanded much of his existence. The slow progression
of 40-hour weeks over many years led to a certain estrangement from other parts of a
man’s life and forced him to consider himself primarily in terms of where he worked and
what he produced. He became, as Marx suggested, in part a mere factor in the means of
production, one that was usable, interchangeable, and ultimately disposable. Becoming
aware of this process and addressing it can be a defining moment in the life of an
individual. As was the case with his mother, the evidence is that he did act, and his midlife
change of employment can be seen as a meaningful self-defining achievement. By
his own admission, the 18 years he spent at Wickes had been hard on him, and the 25 at
St. Mary’s represented a saving grace of sorts.
His long wait for what he desired most, a quiet married life, only seemed to make him
indulge in it all the more when it was finally his. He was surely saddled with more than
he bargained for in terms of responsibility, but he also seemed to accept and even relish
the fact that those around him depended on him.
Predictably, his social life revolved around his family, with whom he spent the majority
of his free time. Apart from a few drinks with fellow employees after work on Friday, he
did not appear to care much for traditional nights out with the boys. He was nominally
active in the Altar Society and the Holy Name Society at St. Mary’s Cathedral, but these
were largely organizations that solicited volunteer labor for religious projects. He was in
fact known to have helped install the electric lighting system at Holy Family Church and
was highly regarded by the nuns at St. Mary’s, presumably for his mechanical aptitude.
Because his brothers all lived outside the Saginaw area, the couple socialized mostly with
Irene’s relatives, especially her younger brother Lawrence and his wife Lula. They
hosted regular card parties, enjoyed films at the Mecca and Temple Theaters, and went
out often for ice cream.
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But Fred enjoyed home life and the role he played as provider more. Accordingly, he
was a man of few words who preferred to cook breakfast on Sunday and tinker in his
workroom in the basement. Several have said that he could fix just about anything, and
he took great pride in his tools and his home maintenance projects. He also tended a
large backyard garden behind the rental house, and Irene became an avid canner as a
result. His other favorite spot was camped out on the front porch swing, where he could
spend long hours watching the world go by and observing the neighborhood drama.
He maintained a healthy relationship with his parents, although like many in the family,
he was somewhat reserved around his mother’s second husband Philogène Rousseau.
His yearly Christmas reunions with his brothers and sisters at the family home in
Carrollton and the family vacations each summer at Shady Shores, a retreat used by the
Wade family in northeastern Lower Michigan, were remembered by those who knew him
as among his happiest moments.
Figure 164 Fred Dashner
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Figure 165 The Dashners at Fred’s home 31 January 1935 at the funeral of their father.
Standing left to right: Jim, Fred, Joe, Al. Seated: Delina, Maude, Clara, Mae, Malvina
Figure 166 Left to right: Joe, Clarence Boyer, Al, Jim, and Fred Dashner 1948
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Figure 167 The clan gathers on the front porch of 224 North 6 th in Saginaw about 1949
Figure 168 Fred Dashner and Irene Wade, about 1951
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Figure 169 Shady Shores, near Lupton, MI
Figure 170 Dashner cabin at Shady Shores
Irene was devastated by her husband’s death. Economically dependent on him like
nearly all women of the period, she had not worked outside the home or played a
significant role in the management of the family’s finances. As breadwinner, her
husband had made nearly all the key decisions and purchases that concerned the family,
giving his wife a weekly stipend which she used to buy groceries and keep house. She
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now found herself in the very unfamiliar situation of having to forge an independent
lifestyle with limited resources.
All told, Fred had left his wife in relatively sound initial fiscal shape. His nearly $5,000
ending annual salary as the hospital engineer is an indication that he was highly valued
there, and the money had provided the couple with a solid, dependable income for nearly
three decades. The house had been paid off for many years, there were substantial
savings on deposit in two bank accounts, and two life insurance policies would pay Irene
a total of $150 per month until August 1956. The rental house next store provided
additional income: the rear apartment generated $11 per week and the front $45 per
month. Both her sons were also working and could provide some assistance, although
John had just seen the birth of the first of six children and Joe would be drafted into the
army by the end of the year. Both appear to have been generous in their support.
Her mother Frances, who had previously provided bedrock support for her in tough
times, unfortunately suffers an incapacitating stroke the next year on 7 August 1953. She
would linger in bed in need of round the clock care at Gertrude’s for more than two years
before dying at the age of 94 on 18 November 1955. Thereafter, Gertrude, also single,
agrees to rent out her house and move in with Irene on North 6 th while her son Ronald
attends a Catholic seminary to study for the priesthood.
On the other side of the equation were Irene’s living expenses, the upkeep and taxes on
two houses, and the monthly $25 payments on a $2500 second mortgage that Fred had
taken on the rental house only four months before his death. The most worrisome longterm
consideration was the fact that her husband had not been vested in the nascent postwar
social security system, so she did not qualify for any government assistance as his
widow. When the insurance checks stopped four years later, she faced a second abrupt
change in lifestyle that would mandate a new source of income.
Her prospects for employment were of course poor. She had little work experience and,
at age 66, was effectively out of the job market anyway. On account of her epilepsy, she
had never learned to drive. She could, however, count on the many social relationships
she had cultivated over the years, especially those in the charitable religious groups she
belonged to such as The Daughters of Isabella, The Knights of St. John Auxiliary, and the
League of Catholic Women. In a humanistic gesture from one of these acquaintances,
she is hired to work in the home of Dr. Richard Mudd to do light housekeeping and care
for his ailing wife. Her employment there, at $25 per week, lasted several years. This
was long enough for her to qualify for the minimum pension in the social security system,
which she began to receive at the rate of $30 a month in July 1958. (Of genealogical
interest is the fact that Dr. Richard Mudd was the grandson of Dr. Samuel Mudd, the
physician who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after he assassinated Abraham
Lincoln in Washington in 1865. He tried in vain to have his grandfather’s conviction for
complicity in the affair overturned for most of his life.)
Another of Irene’s survival skills was the extreme meticulousness with which she began
to keep tract of her income and expenditures. She maintained a detailed monthly doubleentry
ledger, calculated to the penny, from her husband’s death in 1952 until her own
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nearly 30 years later. It is a rich source of information about her and her family. In it, for
example, we learn of the many masses she purchased for her friends and family (most for
a dollar), her contributions to the various collection plates at church on Sunday
(sometimes a mere 25 cents), and the scores of birthday and get well cards she sent to
people. Above all, there is voluminous evidence of a frugal lifestyle that allowed her to
somehow pay off the mortgage on the rental house early on 7 September 1955.
Throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s, she took work caring for various elderly
or sick people in their homes until they recovered or passed away. In addition to her first
employment with Dr. Mudd, there were long stints with the Boyd, Edwards, Krawczak,
Perry, and Campbell families. Her frugal lifestyle continued unabated, and from her
ledgers we are able to glean that, from 1958 on, she basically managed to live off her
monthly social security check and earnings from homecare, saving nearly all of her rental
income. This was no small achievement, for she was eventually able to put $2500 down
on the $15,560 land contract purchase of another rental house on the west side of the city
at 1121 Malzahn in October 1960.
The purchase is interesting for several reasons. First and foremost, it was done without
the approval or even the knowledge of her two sons, who would not learn of it for another
18 months. She was clearly a good deal more independent (and secretive) than many at
the time gave her credit for. It is also further evidence that she continued to avail herself
of the personal relationships she had cultivated. Her friend and employer Dr. Mudd, for
example, may well have had a hand in arranging the lawyer and real estate agent in the
transaction. It is likely she also sought the counsel of her brother Lawrence. Above all,
she appeared to understand finance and was willing to take risks. The house she
purchased was already divided into upper and lower apartments with a combined rent of
$160 per month, which gave her another steady source of income after the $90 monthly
payment on the land contract.
Saginaw became an increasingly polarized city along racial lines during the same period,
with the Saginaw River coming to serve as a de facto border between a largely Black and
Hispanic east side and a White west side. Full scale race riots would in fact break out
later in 1967 and 1968. With race relations deteriorating in the neighborhoods she had
known since childhood, Irene decides to sell her home and move to the house on
Malzahn. The sale of 224 North 6 th is again arranged without the knowledge of her sons,
and both the loss of their childhood home and the disclosure that she has already
purchased a house on the west side only minutes from both of theirs come as a great
surprise. The renters of the lower apartment on Malzahn move out, and Irene moves in
on 8 June 1962. She continues to rent out the upper apartment and also keeps the rental
property at 220 North 6 th .
Now 70 and in a new environment, Irene is able to enjoy the proximity of both St.
Steven’s Catholic Church, only a block from her home, and the growing families of her
two sons, who also live nearby. Their support is soon needed, for she suffers a broken
ankle in 1963 and must undergo an operation to remove a tumor on her bladder in 1964.
In an increasingly frail physical condition and with a relatively stable income from two
rental properties and a monthly social security, she ceases to work and accepts a series of
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invitations to visit relatives in Seattle, California, and Danville, Illinois. Gertrude again
agrees to rent out her house on Simoneau and move in with her sister about the same
time. The two will spend nearly a decade there together.
By 1968, she has sold the increasingly run-down North 6 th St. apartment on a land
contract for $7700, although the buyers eventually renege and the house is later
demolished by the city in 1974. Thereafter, her health begins to fade in earnest. Poor
circulation, heart problems, and a series of illnesses slow her down considerably and lead
to a minor stroke on the church steps on 22 July 1972. She recovers, but is in need of
home care at several junctures, especially after her sister Gertrude remarries later the
same year on 30 September 1972 at the age of 72 and moves out. A live-in care-giver is
hired for a period, and her sons visit her nearly every day. She becomes increasingly
housebound, and grows dependent on visits from friends and family. A granddaughter,
Susan, who has ironically inherited a mild form of her epilepsy, also moves in for a spell
some years later in February 1979 to care for her.
The handwriting in her journal deteriorates visibly in 1980, and her last ledger entry, for a
$2.25 payment for gasoline, is dated 6 October 1980. Upon the recommendation of her
friend Dr. Mudd, she is moved to the geriatric section of Saginaw Community Hospital
later that month, where she dies on 9 April 1981 at the age of 88. After a visitation at
Deisler Funeral Home and a funeral at St. Stephen, she is buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery
next to her husband and the two daughters who preceded her.
Irene Wade’s life was stamped with the rise and fall of East Saginaw. Once separate
cities, East and West Saginaw were joined in 1889, three years before her birth, and the
first bridges spanning the Saginaw River that separated them were built in 1894, just two
years after it. The lumber boom had made the east side of the river a bustling,
economically-vibrant enclave with fashionable storefronts along its main thoroughfares
and a diverse working-class population that had roots in several European countries.
Trolley lines, ferryboats, a network of railroads, and shipping companies facilitated local
transportation and connected the town to the outside world. The city’s second and third
generation immigrants, mostly from Ontario, Québec, Ireland, Scotland, Germany,
Poland, and New England, still tended to worship together in their respective churches,
but the melting pot metaphor often used to describe ethnic assimilation in America was
on steady boil in Saginaw, too. Irene’s father’s English roots in Ontario and her mother’s
French ones in Québec were a case in point. The assimilation did not extend to other
races, however, for when large numbers of Blacks and Chicanos began to arrive from the
south during World War II, White families relocated to the west side in droves, taking the
economy with them. By the time of Irene’s death less than 50 years later, much of the
east side was an impoverished wasteland of abandoned houses, high unemployment, and
the dubious distinction of being among the most violent places in America.
She held the family bond in high regard, the result of a childhood and adolescence spent
in the close-knit home environment created by her mother. Her closest relationships were
with her younger siblings, Edith, Gertrude, and Lawrence, and she lived for more than a
decade as a married adult with her mother. She was, in fact, dependent on them from an
early age to ease her through her seizures and to help conceal the highly misunderstood
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condition from the outside world. She was 60 before anticonvulsant medication to treat
epilepsy became available and virtually eliminated the episodes.
Her one romantic relationship, with her husband Fred, began when she was 17. Their
very long courtship is rather curious for the period, and one is left to speculate on how
much of a factor her illness was in it. She evoked a measure of sympathy from others
throughout her life, and Fred settled in as her sympathetic protector during the years of
their marriage. She did seem to know how to solicit favors from friends and family with
her mere demeanor as well and, given her circumstances later in life, gradually grew to
depend on them.
Of defining importance was the pivotal role religion played in her life. She was a devout,
god-fearing, old-school Catholic who attended church at least twice a week, recited the
rosary weekly, and purchased masses for the departed. She was known to keep a supply
of holy water on hand to protect her home during storms and borrow statues from the
church to pray the novena. The knowledge that Fred’s sister had gone overseas as a
Marist missionary to Fiji and her nephew Ronald was an ordained Catholic priest seemed
to reassure her that the tragedies she had known in life were somehow just stones to be
smoothed over on her own road to heaven. As its end drew nearer, she often exclaimed
aloud how she was “coming to join you, Fred”.
Figure 171 Irene Wade
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Epilogue
The 350 years of Dagenais history recounted here was compiled from hundreds of
historical documents and took years of research. The information gleaned from visits to
libraries and historical societies in Québec, Ontario, Michigan, and Indiana as well as that
available from online databases has been carefully screened for inaccuracies.
Inconsistencies, of which there were many, have been rectified whenever possible, and
every effort has been made to use only data that can be corroborated by source
documents and academic articles, most of them in French. This has led to the simple
addition of information to existing genealogies in most cases but also to the overturning
of long-held beliefs in others. One case in point is the arrival of Pierre Dagenais in New
France several years earlier than previously thought; another is the Huguenot roots of
Anne Brandon. Additional information has been left out for stylistic purposes.
As mentioned in the preface, the placement of so-called “cold” data against its historical
background is the prime methodology used to make inferences here in an attempt to
breathe life into genealogical charts that rarely allow for the consideration of individuals
in much depth. Some readers may well draw other conclusions at several points in the
narrative, especially where some speculation was necessary, and I warmly encourage the
emergence of new perspectives.
Had I the desire to continue to search, the discovery of additional information would
surely lead to refinements in the story and the filling-in of irritating gaps, but this would
come at the expense of my own life’s narrative which also requires attention at the
moment. I leave it then an open work in progress primarily of interest to those who have
a connection to the line but also as point of departure for others in the family who may be
inclined to do additional research. In particular, the military activities of Pierre II and
Laurent Dagenais in the French and Indian Wars, virtually the entire life of Etienne
Dagenais in Montréal, and the final years of Georges and Sophie Vanier in Ottawa need
to be fleshed out. I am happy to supply leads for anyone interested. There must also be
great piles of relevant information now held privately that would benefit us all.
All Dagenais in North America are part of this story at some point, although the further
back in the narrative one goes, the more likely the connection if your name is Dagenais.
The entire document with a forum for discussion is available at www.dagenais.us
Visitors are encouraged to read, copy, amend, and add to the narrative responsibly for
their own purposes in English or French. There is no copyright.
Lastly, the reader will notice that this branch of the Dagenais narrative ends with the
deaths of Michigan Dagenais in the late 20 th century. This is not to say that this branch of
the tree withers here, but is intended to encourage those in this branch who are now
aware of their place in history and still have life to record their own narratives so that
their descendants might enjoy a fuller picture of you.
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Frederick Dashner

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