A brief chronology of events in New France

July 3: Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec City. The facility employs 28 people. Over the winter, 20 of the 28 men die.

Louis Hébert, the colony’s first farmer, settled in Quebec City with his wife, Marie Rollet, and their three children.

Arrival of the Jesuits.

There were just under 100 inhabitants in New France, including less than a dozen women. – Cardinal Richelieu founds the Compagnie des Cent-Associés, dedicated to settling the colony.

Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye: England returns New France and [ Acadia ] to France.

On Champlain’s orders, Sieur Laviolette founded Trois-Rivières .

Population of New France: 400.

Arrival of the ‘Ursulines’ and the ‘Hospitalières’ congregations.

June 9: the Iroquois begin harassing the small Montreal community with a war of ambushes. They kill five settlers. Establishment of the New England Confederacy, formed by the English colonies of New Haven, Connecticut, and Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Our ancestor Jacques Lussier was born around 1646, in Paris.

1647: Birth of Charlotte Lamarche, Paris. First wife of Jacques Lussier

Sept. 22 Maisonneuve returns from France with 100 soldiers hired to defend Montreal against the Iroquois. On board the ship was Marguerite Bourgeoys, who had come to open a school. She writes that everything in Quebec City is so poor it’s pitiful. When she arrived in Montreal, she couldn’t find any school-age children because of the high infant mortality rate.

In Montreal, Marguerite Bourgeoys inaugurates her first school and founds the Congrégation Notre-Dame.

Two hundred people set sail from La Rochelle for New France, the largest effort to date to populate the colony. A good third of them died at sea, and only sick people were brought ashore in Quebec, introducing smallpox to the colony.

In spring, Adam Dollard des Ormeaux and his 16 companions set out on an expedition up the Ottawa River to fight the Iroquois. Some forty Hurons and six Algonquins join them. At the foot of the Long-Sault rapids, they barely have time to refurbish an old abandoned fort before they face 800 besiegers. After three days of fighting, the 17 Frenchmen were killed. General panic in Quebec City. Six Iroquois are captured, tortured and burned at the stake.

Jacques and Charlotte make their home in the seigneury of Cap de Varennes. In the summer of 1670, a contract was signed for the construction of their house.

Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette explore the Wisconsin, Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

La Salle sailed down the Mississippi to its mouth and took possession of this immense basin on behalf of the King of France. The French empire in America stretched from Quebec to the Mississippi delta.

Measles epidemic throughout the colony. In Sillery alone, 100 Amerindians died.

Population of New France: 10,303. Quebec City has 1,400.

Admiral Phipps lays siege to Québec. Frontenac replies to his emissary: “I have no reply to make to your general other than by the mouths of my cannons and with rifles. Frontenac defeats the English soldiers, weakened by an epidemic. – Acadia is reconquered by the English.

Madeleine de Verchères, aged 14, escapes the pursuing Iroquois by taking refuge in her father’s fort at Verchères. Mounted on the bastion, soldier’s hat on head, she goes here and there, letting the Amerindians believe that many soldiers occupy the fort. Then the cannon shot she fires at them causes them to scatter.

Signing of the Great Peace of Montreal with the 39 Amerindian tribes and the Five Nations of the Iroquois.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1701_au_Canada

The entire summer was spent on the alert, fearing that the English would once again attack New France, this time via the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. On the night of September 2 to 3, a storm threw Walker’s ships onto the rocks of Île aux Oeufs, 467 km downstream from Quebec City, thus sparing the colony from another English attack.

Signature of the Treaty of Utrecht, disastrous for France. England seized the outposts of the colony, gaining Newfoundland, Acadia, Hudson Bay and a protectorate over the Iroquois. New France is reduced to a long corridor along the shores of the St. Lawrence. But it remained peaceful until 1744.

In the winter of 1715, after receiving the last rites, it was Catherine’s turn to leave her family at the age of 68. On March 1, 1715, his body was buried in the Varennes parish cemetery.

For fear of being attacked again by the English, fortifications were built in Montreal and Quebec City. In Montreal, it was decided to surround the city with a stone wall flanked by bastions on the site now known as Faubourg-Québec.

Colony population: 24,951. – June 19: in Montreal, on the occasion of Corpus Christi, a harquebusier fires on the roof of the Hôtel-Dieu chapel: 171 houses burn down.

From Quebec City to Montreal, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, the Chemin du Roy is inaugurated, a four-year project involving 13 bridges. The journey from one city to another on a single horse now takes four days.

Production begins at the Forges du Saint-Maurice near Trois-Rivières.

Beaver pelts account for 70% of the value of exports.

In his account of his travels in New France, Father Charlevoix notes: “Nowhere else is our language spoken more purely. In 1756, Montcalm wrote: “I have observed that the Canadian peasants speak French very well.” The following year, Bougainville’s navigator added: “They speak with ease … their accent is as good as in Paris.”

Capture of the fortress of Louisbourg by the English, returned in 1748. In Quebec City, for fear of a new invasion, a permanent wall was built.

Voyage to New France by the Swede Peter Kalm. The men are extremely polite,” he observes. Here, everyone is Monsieur or Madame, the peasant as well as the gentleman, the peasant girl as well as the grandest lady … the country people [ … ] are always in a cheerful and gaudy mood … People of distinction in general have much more taste for natural history and letters than in the English colonies, where everyone’s sole concern seems to be to make a quick fortune…”

New France had a population of 55,000, and Quebec City 8,000. – The English colonies in North America have a population of around 1,500,000.

In July, Nova Scotia’s Executive Council unanimously decides to deport the Acadians. Before the end of the year, under the orders of English governor Lawrence, 7,000 Acadians left for exile.

The Marquis de Montcalm captures the English fort at Oswego. – France expels England from the Great Lakes region.

Summer and autumn of misery: poor harvests, ships seized by the English, famine, typhus and smallpox epidemics. In winter, for lack of food, horses were eaten for the first time in the colony.

In June, General Wolfe undertakes the siege of Quebec with a fleet of 39,000 men – September 13: Battle of the Plains of Abraham and defeat of Montcalm’s armies. Wolfe and Montcalm are killed. September 17: at noon, de Ramezay hands over the city of Quebec to General Townshend.