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Abraham Fiset: New Beginnings in New France

My great-grandfather, Ernest Fiset, was born in Ste-Christine-de-Portneuf in 1895, but his Fiset ancestors arrived in New France much earlier. Join me in the coming months as I piece together their story over the generations. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2:


… After months aboard ship, timbers creaking, sails flapping, living in tight quarters, young Francois-Abraham Fiset must have been excited to finally sight land and enter the wide mouth of the St. Lawrence River. The journey upstream would have been carefully navigated, dependant on weather, winds, and tides.

 

He arrived to a land rich with trees, animals, fish, and rivers, and filled with indigenous peoples, some friends – others foes…. When Abraham stepped off the ship, he would have seen the Ville de Quebec, a small outpost of about forty timber-framed homes. The lower town housed the merchants, sailors, and artisans, while the upper city and fort, built atop an escarpment overlooking the river, was where the elites – government officials and clergy – lived.[1] Beyond the fort walls, farms were being carved from the wilderness, churches built, and mills raised. Though the swing of the axe cleared the land, thick forests surrounded the fledgling colony, a doorway into the mysterious hinterland.

In 1653, the year he arrived, the French toehold in the New World was precarious, with just 2,000 settlers.[2] A decade later – the year his future wife, Denise Savard, would arrive with her parents from Paris – that number had crept up to 3,500, still far fewer than their colonial competitors to the south – the English and Dutch – who had nearly 90,000 people between them.[3]

 

Populating the land was the only way the French could maintain their holdings, so the fur trade companies – who had promised the king to establish a strong colony – busily recruited servants and labourers. Like most of the poor who arrived in New France, Abraham was brought over as an engagé. These indentured servants contracted to work for one of the colony’s employers for thirty-six months, during which time they couldn’t do any independent work or get married. In exchange, the employer paid for the costs of their journey from France, provided clothing, room and board, and a salary. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. Thousands of indentured servants came from western France throughout the seventeenth century, including 2,000 from Francois-Abraham’s city of Dieppe.[4] Although we don’t know if he knew anyone from home, with their shared dialect and culture, he would have fit right in.


Engraving of sailing ships in foreground with cliffs and town in the background.
A VIEW OF QUEBEC FROM THE SOUTH-EAST, ENGRAVING, IN ATLANTIC NEPTUNE, 1781. JOSEPH FREDERICK WALLET DESBARRES | BANQ COLLECTION LITERARY AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF QUEBEC

Ship arrivals were a happy occurrence, the chance to catch up on news, receive letters, replenish stores, and welcome new arrivals to the colony. Shortly after he arrived in Quebec City, through that first harvest and winter, Francois Abraham worked for prominent local, Jean Bourdon, a seigneur, cartographer, surveying engineer, and eventual attorney general. Bourdon lived on a 50-acre property on the outskirts of Quebec, that contained a large house, “chapel, two barns and three granaries.”[5] Bourdon must have seen in Abraham an affinity for woodworking; it’s even possible that Abraham had followed the carpentry trade in Dieppe. Rather than keep him as a servant on his own land, Bourdon facilitated an apprenticeship agreement between 20-year-old Abraham and 41-year-old carpenter, Paul Chalifour. …

 

On April 25, 1654, the three men met at notary Guillaume Adouart’s office to sign the agreement. In exchange for three years of work, Abraham would receive clothing and 60 livres at the end of each year. Chalifour promised to willingly share his trade, keeping no secrets from him. Bourdon signed with an elegant flair, Adouart with professional confidence, Chalifour with the tool of his trade – a hatchet – while Abraham Fiset couldn’t sign at all.[6] …


APPRENTICESHIP CONTRACT BETWEEN JEAN BOURDON, PAUL CHALIFOUR, AND FRANCOIS-ABRAHAM FISET, SIGNED APRlL 25, 1654

For the next three years, Abraham would live on Chalifour’s farm and develop his carpentry skills, a trade that would stand him in good stead in a world where almost everything was made by hand. Abraham put in his time, becoming a part of Chalifour’s family until he finished his apprenticeship. Many contracts included a provision: if, at the end of three years, the engagé wanted to go home, the employer agreed to pay for the return journey.[7] In spite of the opportunities that New France afforded, it was a hard life, and many returned to France. An estimated 5,200 indentured servants came to New France during the seventeenth century, but only about 900 – or 17%  – remained in the colony.[8] 

 

Abraham decided to stay.

 


Man holding an axe sitting in front of a log cabin next to a river.

 

SOURCES:

[1] Marc Vallières, Quebec City, A Brief History (Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2011).

[2] Statistics Canada, “Early French Settlements (1605 to 1691).” 1608 data from: Champlain, Edition Laverdière, Volume III, page 173. 1653 data from: Mère Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettres Historiques XLVIII.

[3] Statistics Canada, “Early French Settlements (1605 to 1691).” 1663 data from: Leclerq, Edition 1691, Vol. II, pages 4 & 66; Boucher, Edition Canadienne, page 61.

[4] Leslie P. Choquette, Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of French Canada (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997), 197.

[5] Jean Hamelin, “Jean Bourdon” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

[6] Michel Langlois, Les Ancêtres Beauportoi, 1634-1760 (Beauceville, QC: Impremerie L’Éclaireur, 1984), 208.

[7] Peter Gossage and J. I. Little, “La colonie de peuplement”, in Une histoire du Québec: entre tradition et modernité (Montréal: Les Éditions Hurtubise, 2015), 54.

[8] The French Canadian Genealogist, “L’Engagé(e): The Indentured Servant.”

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