St.Pierre St.Paul church of Gallardon, july 14, 2005
Photo : ©2005 Pascal Pelletier private collection.

• Latest News About Nicolas Peltier and His Family in Gallardon (NEW TEXT AND PICTURES)
• In memoriam of Nicolas, a plaque, a monument (NEW TEXT AND PICTURES)
• The Antaya family name
• The First 5 generations online (UPDATED VERSION)

A Historical Glimpse of Nicolas Peltier and His Family in New France:

The first Pelletier family to settle in New France was that of Nicolas Peltier (1596-c. 1679), who arrived in early colonial Québec City accompanied by his wife, Jeanne de Voisy (c. 1612-1689), and their two sons, Jean and François (c. 1633-1692 and c. 1635-c. 1688, respectively), during the mid-1630s.

Nicolas Peltier was originally from the parish of Gallardon, found in the Beauce region of north central France, southeast of Paris at the confluence of the Voise and Ocre rivers. The parish church, like many Catholic edifices, is dedicated to saints Peter and Paul. Consecrated at the beginning of the eleventh century under the auspices of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the church was consecrated definitively during the thirteenth century. Enlarged and expanded over the course of two centuries, its construction evinces three architectural movements, Roman, Gothic and Renaissance. It was at the Church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul that Nicolas Peltier was baptized on 4 June 1596.

Photos : ©2005 Pascal Pelletier private collection.

Arriving at the “Habitation” of Québec City about 1636, Nicolas Peltier and his wife Jeanne de Voisy lived there until 1645 and Nicolas worked there as a carpenter. In 1639, he and fellow carpenter Pierre Pelletier appraised the timber frames of the house of the late Guillaume Hébert [The identity of this Pierre Pelletier is unknown; he might have been Nicolas’ younger brother; he is not the ancestor from Saint-Martin-de-Fraigneau, who was still in France at this time – Ed.]. Later, in 1647, Nicolas constructed the steeple of Notre-Dame de Québec Church, and the next year he installed the roof of Château Saint-Louis, the governor’s residence. Finally, on several occasions over the next decade, Nicolas hired himself out to construct and maintain various houses and barns in the area. On 12 September 1645, Governor Charles Huault de Montmagny granted Nicolas a concession of fifty arpents of land in the nearby seigneury of Sillery, where the Peltier family settled soon after.

Nicolas Peltier and Jeanne de Voisy arrived with two sons, Jean (c. 1633-1692) and François (c. 1635-c.1688), and over the years, their family grew to include eight children: Marie (1637-aft. 1711); Louise (1640-1713); Françoise (1642-1707); Jeanne (1644-1715); Geneviève (1646-1717) and finally Nicolas (1649-1729). As is true for many other pioneers, the children and grandchildren of these early colonists went on to settle in different regions New France, and several ventured west to explore the American continent. Two sons in particular, François and Nicolas, went on to pursue a life of adventure. The first is known to have been a fur-trader in the company of Noël Jérémie dit La Montagne, who wed François’ sister Jeanne in 1659.

Many years later, on October 22, 1675, François Pelletier dit Antaya and his wife, Marguerite Morisseau purchased the Seigneurie d’Orvilliers from Philippe Gauthier de Comporté. Found on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, this fief ran one and a half miles along the river and extended three miles inland. François and Marguerite went on to bequeath one-half of their estate to son Jean-Baptiste dit Pierre Pelletier dit Antaya (1676-1757), while dividing the remaining half among their other surviving children: Michel (c. 1674-c. 1744), Marguerite (1666-????), Marie-Angélique (1662-1741), Geneviève (1668-aft. 1716), and Catherine (c. 1672-aft. 1716).

Nicolas Peltier the Younger, the last child born of the Peltier family, lived at the trading post at Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay River, and was the first Frenchman to settle permanently in the Saguenay-Lac Saint-Jean region. He has also likewise given rise to many writers’ imaginations.

Inspired by Victor Tremblay’s “Histoire du Saguenay,” Claire Domey’s novel “Ilinishu, Enfant des Bois” recounts the lives of Nicolas Peltier the Younger and his son, Charles, called “Ilinishu” in the book. Elsewhere, author Arthur Buis imagined a fantastical character and wondered if this Peltier was a “coureur des bois,” a philosopher, or a hermit.

An extract from the “Almanach historique du Saguenay,” which appeared in Chicoutimi’s Le Quotidien newspaper in June 1988, reads, “A unique character, Nicolas Peltier lived on the shores of the Saguenay, at a place that today still bears his name. In fact, on the map of the Domaine du Roi that shows the part of the region visited by land surveyor Joseph-Laurent Normandin in 1732, we can see the location of the home of a particular ‘Monsieur Peltier,’ 183 miles from Lac Saint-Jean.”

All the same, not everyone has spoken admirably about this early pioneer, like Monsignor Amédée Gosslin, who made this harsh remark: “He was neither a philosopher nor a hermit, but a ‘coureur des bois,’ a mere errand-boy, and, worst of all, a French-Canadian with the morals of a Savage.”

We end here by recalling the thoughts of Mona Gauthier, who spoke at the second annual Pelletier Family Association Reunion, which took place in Laval in 1988. Reminiscing about a time when she snow-shoed along the Saguenay in Saint-Fulgence, she said, “I wanted to know the man who had admired, as I was doing, the magnificence of the Saguenay, at this place where the river is lost among the mountains, having formed in its flow the famous Baie-des-Ha.” Indeed, with her words, Ms. Gauthier reveals her search for this individual who, surely never dreaming of it during his lifetime, left his name to as poetic a spot along the Saguenay as “Anse-à-Peltier.”

Claude E Pelletier, m.g.a. and Laure Gauthier, m.g.a.
Text translated by Benoit Pelletier Shoja, October 2005 (Revised december 2009).