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Laporte - text by Robert Prévost, Éditions Libre Expression
Jacques Laporte dit Saint-Georges, one of the first Montréalistes
"We hardly dared step out of doors to fetch our basic necessities", writes Dollier de Casson in A History of Montreal, so great was the Iroquois threat to Ville-Marie. One of the settlers who persevered in this remote outpost, far from the settlement at Québec, was Jacques Laporte dit Saint-Georges.
The danger did not deter the Montréalistes, as the early settlers of Montreal were called. In 1664, two parties of hunters left the fort and made their way to some islands downstream. The expedition was so successful that they sent back a boat loaded with meat. But they were unable to return upstream against the Sainte-Marie current and the oarsman had to follow the shore, where the Iroquois were lying in wait. They killed or injured three or four of the hunting party. One of the attackers trying to seize the boat was “shot dead” with a rifle when “Messieurs Debelêtre (Picoté de Belestre), Saint Georges and other Frenchmen” ran to the aid of their friends.
This "Saint-Georges" was undoubtely Jacques Laporte, from Nocé in Perche. We do not know when he crossed the Atlantic. He was not among the recruits of 1653 who saved Ville-Marie; and he would have been only 14 years old in 1641 when a group of settlers sailed under Paul de Chomedey, who had a mandate from the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal to build a fort on the island of Montreal.
Jacques Laporte was baptized in Nocé on March 5, 1627. He was the son of an innkeeper and baker, also named Jacques, and of Marie Hamelin, who had married on June 7 of the previous year. In the Nocé church, there is an inscription dedicated to the memory of the colonist; it was the first plaque (March 10, 1963) installed in the churches of Perche under the aegis of the Association Perche-Canada.
From Mortagne-au-Perche, take the D 938 south to Bellême (17 km), and turn left onto the D 955 towards Nogent-le-Rotrou. After driving for 9.5 km, you come to the intersection of the D 9, which takes you north to Nocé. An alternative route is to take the D203 from Bellême directly to Nocé. Nocé merits more than a perfunctory visit. The church was completed in the late Middle Ages, and its apse is Romanesque. The square tower has angle buttresses at the corners. On the facade of the tower and on the buttresses are flamboyantly decorated niches housing statuary. Just 2 km from the church, on the D 9, stands the Courboyer manor house, one of the most beautiful in Perche. It has two storeys, with mullioned windows, on either side of an octagonal tower.
In 1655, Jacques Laporte must have decided to settle permanently in Ville-Marie. On August 31 of that year, the Sieur de Maisonneuve granted him a half-arpent lot within the city enclosure, enough land for a house and garden. And on August 23, 1657, before Jean de Saint-Père, he signed a marriage contract with Nicole Duchesne, daughter of François and of Marie Rolet. The Sulpician Gabriel Souart performed the marriage ceremony on September 3 in the presence of several witnesses, including the Sieur de Maisonneuve, Jeanne Mance, Lambert Closse and Charles Le Moyne.
The Laporte / Duchesne couple had 11 children, including seven sons. Five of these were married in turn; Jacques, known as Labonté, in 1687 to Madeleine Paviot (7 children); Paul in 1688 to Marie Lussier (4 children), and in 1695 to Marguerite Matou (13 children); Georges in 1689 to Marie-Madeleine Guertin (2 children); Louis in 1695 to Marie-Madeleine Massault (8 children), and Pierre in 1703 to Marie-Anne Han (11 children). Only two of the four daughters started their own families: Catherine in 1675 with Philibert Couillaud, and Suzanne in 1695 with Pierre Ménard.
We know that Jacques Laporte was a baker like his father. According to the censuses of 1666 and 1667, he was living in Montreal and does not appear to have been engaged in agriculture as he did not have any productive land. In the census of 1681, he was practising his trade in Boucherville, where Jeanne, his youngest child, would be born the following year. Jacques Laporte died in Contrecoeur in 1702.
Although other Laportes immigrated to New France, they did not make a significant contribution to the perpetuation of the family name. The most prestigious was undoubtedly Louis de Laporte, Sieur de Louvigny, who arrived in 1683. The following year, he married Marie Nolan, daughter of Pierre and of Catherine Houart. His military career was so active and he was given so many missions and expeditions that is a wonder that his wife managed to have ten children. We find him first in Hudson's Bay, then in Michillimakinac and Fort Frontenac where he served as commander, then south of the Great Lakes in the territory of the Fox tribe, whom he was sent to neutralize. In 1720, he was in charge of all the western posts, which he was expected to visit every other year. On a visit to France, he was given command of Trois-Rivières, but never assumed this post as he died in the wreck of the Chameau off Cape Breton Island in 1725. He was survived by his wife and four of his children, six others having died young. A son, François, embarked on a military career, but he may have returned to France as there is no record of his marriage in our registers. Two of his three sisters started their own families: Marie-Anne in 1718 with Jacques Testard and Marie-Louise in 1727 with Didace Mouet.
Another Laporte dit Saint-Georges, named Pierre, from Périgord, settled on Île Jésus. There, in 1707, he married Madeleine Fournier, daughter of Guillaume and of Françoise Hébert. The couple had five children including two sons: Joseph-Cécile and Pierre who married Angélique Nadon (1735) and Suzanne Labelle (1740), respectively.
Finally, we should mention Étienne Laporte, from Agen, and Michel Laporte dit Labonté, from Rochefort, who married, respectively, Suzanne-Élisabeth Charbonneau in Charlesbourg in 1716 and Marie-Catherine Girard in Québec in 1727. None of these couples has descendants now bearing the Laporte name.
Jacques Laporte the true patriarch of the Laportes of North America.
Robert Prévost, Éditions Libre Expression
Source: Please cite original sources.
Compiled by: J. K. Loren
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1627 - 1702 (74 years)