Louis Hébert

  General Notes:

IMMIGRATION: 1617; had earlier been member of expedition to Acadia from 1606 to 1607
OCCUPATION: Pharmacist

The first settler to build his own independent house at Québec was Louis Hébert, pharmacist, who, in 1617, built a house on the cliffs overlooking the original settlement and began cultivation of the land. Hébert is credited with being the first European to establish a farm in Canada.

First family established in Québec, in 1617. (Tanguay, v.1, p.301)

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LOUIS HEBERT from "Our French-Canadian Ancestors" by Thomas J. Laforest

Let's speak of the man, who is rightfully called the first Canadian settler, Louis Hebert. Born in 1575, in Paris, he was the son of Nicolas and Jacqueline Pajot. Nicolas and Jacqueline were married in Paris in 1564. Jacqueline was the daughter of Simon and Jeanne Guerineau. Simon Pajot was a bourgeois in Paris and Nicolas Hebert was an apothecaire, thus attesting to the comfortable background of Our Ancestor Hebert.

Nicolas Hebert was a physician to Catherine de Medici, Queen Mother of France. It is likely that as a boy Louis had opportunities to see court life with his own eyes. It was not an edifying spectacle, at this point, in French history but, it had one advantage: the royal chambers buzzed continuously with talk of the great country across the Atlantic.
Louis followed his father's example and became an apothecary, perhaps as a means to an end. At any rate, he was the first to answer the summons and sail with his cousin, the Sieur de Poutrincourt, when that gallant gentleman asked for an apothecary to come along to Acadia. Louis sailed to the New World for the first time in 1606, aboard a vessel named "JONAS", part of the expedition of Du Gua de Monts which had set sail from La Rochelle. Louis witnessed the ambitious birth of Port Royal, in the Annapolis Basin of Acadia but, in the spring of 1607, the settlers learned that, their charter had been revoked. They were directed to abandon the enterprise and return to France. On August 11 of that year, an unhappy lot of people packed their belongings into the ships. They arrived back in France in late September 1607. Louis visited Port Royal again, with Poutrincourt, in 1610. After three years in Acadia, the year 1613 finds him at Mount Desert (Bar Harbor, Maine) trying to establish a new colony. There the English captured him a short time before they burned Port Royal. Thus, he was compelled to return to France.

CHAMPLAIN REQUESTS HIS SERVICE
His adventures in Acadia only served to fuel Our Ancestor's enthusiasm. Louis had married Marie Rolet in 1602 in Paris, before his travels to the New World. On return, he reopened his shop in Paris, but his mind was fixed on a land where mighty rivers flowed through the silence of great forests and he took little interest in the mixing of laxatives and the rolling of pills. He renewed his friendship with Champlain in 1616-1617. He was offered what seems like splendid terms to go to Quebec as a resident physician and surgeon for La Compagne de Traite des Fourrures, which offer he gladly accepted. He was to be maintained for three years and receive a salary of two hundred crowns a year. Hebert promptly sold his shop and his house in Paris and the next year took his wife and family to Honfleur for embarkation.

Here a shock awaited him. The commercial element was in the saddle at the moment and the only sentiment which prevailed in the Company was the desire for more and more profits. The bewildered Hebert was told that Champlain had exceeded his authority and that the agreement would not be honored. He would receive only one hundred crowns a year for three years and after the term of the contract expired, he must serve the Company exclusively and for nothing. He was forbidden to engage in the fur trade and if he farmed, he must sell his produce to the Company, at prices they would fix.

The gentleman, who informed him so brusquely of this late change then, had an agreement drawn up for Hebert to sign. Our Colonist realized that he had no choice in the matter. He had disposed of his shop. He had cut loose from his snug moorings, and now he could not turn back. He signed the outrageously unfair paper and took his worried family aboard ship. They sailed, on March 11, 1617.

BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE
The ship dropped anchor off Tadoussac on July 15, to take on fresh water and a pilot before proceeding to Quebec. They arrived on a warm summer day, with the sun shining brightly overhead and an invigorating breeze blowing across the majestic river. Our First Settler went ashore with hopes so high that any thought of the chicanery of the directors did not disturb him. It did not matter that the chapel in which a Recollect father said Mass was a flimsy structure made out of the branches of trees and that a cloud of mosquitoes descended upon them. It did not matter that the Indians [who] watched them land at the dilapidated supply sheds were dirty, practically naked and openly sullen. This was the New World and to stout Louis Hebert, the great wall of rock above the tumbled-down houses in the lower-town was a symbol of the New World which would arise about it. He was so anxious to begin that he led his family to inspect the six arpents which had been allotted to him on the crest. There, they spent the first night under a tree. The exact spot, where the tree stood, is still pointed out to curious visitors.

Here is what historian Faillon has to say about the event: "The various groups who had gone to settle in Quebec had not cleared, after twenty-two years, even one and a half arpents of land, according to Champlain's evidence. However, one of those inhabitants, Louis Hebert, obtained a land grant shortly after his arrival, where he undertook the clearing of the land in order to sow the following spring: Hebert, who owned six arpents, was the only one who was able to maintain himself with his family".

Louis Hebert soon demonstrated that he was of true pioneering stock. No regrets for him over the lost lease of his comfortable shop on a fashionable street in Paris. There was no sulking over the bad faith of the Company. He set to work at once and cleared a considerable amount of land. The temporary house that he set up for his small family and the domestic who had followed them was soon replaced with a permanent abode, a substantial structure of stone. All that is known of this real house to be erected on Canadian soil was that it had one story with a length of thirty-eight feet and width of nineteen feet.

WELL DESERVED HAPPINESS
Here, the Hebert family seemed to have been content. Certainly, they were industrious. The vegetables they grew on their fertile acres soon supplied all of the surrounding less fortunate families and for this, under the unfair agreement, they received no recompense. At the same time, the head of the family acted as physician and medicine dispenser to the whole colony.

Hebert was on the best terms with Champlain, not blaming the founder of the colony for repudiation of the first agreement. It is said that Champlain, who was now fifty years of age and was beginning to fill out his doublets with a degree of amplitude, wheezed as he plodded up the steep path frequently to visit the Heberts, his dog Matelot at his heels. There was another reason for the frequency of his visits. He liked to look down over the river and the country which stretched to the south and to dream of the day when all of this land would be as thickly settled as Normandy or Touraine.

RECOGNITION AND REWARD
As physician to the colony, Louis Hebert received his reward in the love, respect and often expressed gratitude of the people he served. Fortunately, he would soon receive more tangible evidence of his stewardship. In 1621, when a proper legal system was inaugurated in Quebec, he was appointed the King's prosecutor at the first judicial tribunal of the land. In 1623, he was given full title to his land on the summit and was admitted to the ranks of the bourgeois.

On February 28, 1626, he received an additional grant of land on the banks of the Saint-Charles with the title of Sieur d'Epinay. He had become reasonably prosperous. His children had grown up and married and had built their own houses around the comfotable parental home. By now, Paris had become no more than a dim memory. The new life had been infinitely more satisfying than an existence on the edge of the royal court.

THE CHILDREN OF LOUIS AND MARIE
1) Guillaume was born in France. He married Helene Desportes, the daughter of Pierre and Francoise Langlois, on October 1, 1634 at Quebec. They had three little ones, one son and two daughters. Guillaume went on to inherit the land granted to his father.
2) Anne was born in France. She took for her husband Etienne Jonquest, from Normandy and his parents unknown, in 1618 at Quebec. They had one child that did not survive, gender unknown. Anne died soon after, sometime after 1620.
3) Marie-Guillemette was born in 1608. She married Guillaume Couillard, the son of Guillaume and Elisabeth de Vesin, on August 26, 1621 at Quebec. Guillaume was a carpenter, who had arrived a year before the Heberts. They raised a family of sturdy children. From this fine stock, a line descended which has never been broken and has played a prominent part in French-Canadian history. Guillaumette and Guillaume had ten children, four boys and six girls. Guillaumette inherited the land grants of her father after the death of her brother, Guillaume, on September 23, 1639.

AN UNTIMELY END
It was a severe loss to the colony when Louis Hebert suffered a fall on the ice and died on January 23, 1627. Again, let's refer to the words of the historian, Faillon: "One could call him the Abraham of the colony, the father of the living and the faithful".

THE HEBERT FAMILY PERSEVERS
Rivalry between the French and English in North America was a long and often bitter dispute. In 1628, King Charles I of England decided to come to the aid of the Huguenots who were beseiged at La Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu's armies. War accordingly had been declared on France and King Charles sent a fleet under Buckingham, to relieve La Rochelle. Buckingham was a man of glittering personality and an almost diabolical degree of charm, but he possessed neither military capacity nor experience. The expedition was a dismal failure. However, when the war began, a second expedition was equipped by the English Company of Merchant Adventurers. This Company had an ambitious purpose, the seizure by force of arms of all Canada. Three ships set out early in 1628 under the command of Captain David Kirke.

Kirke and his two brothers, Lewis and Thomas, surprised a French armada in Gaspe Bay, where they had laid to in order to seek shelter from heavy weather. The French Company of One Hundred Associates had lived up to a promise to send to Quebec everything that the small colony needed. The holds of the four convoy escorts and the twenty transports had been loaded with items that offered a lavish contrast to the meager supplies that had been provided by the previous trading companies. But, this wealth of supplies, which meant life to the struggling colony, fell into the hands of the buccaneering Kirkes.

A despairing Champlain paced the ramparts of the citadel on the heights at Quebec after receiving this bitter news. Expecting an attack, Champlain moved the people of Quebec into the fort. The food supplies were inadequate for a large seige. He found it necessary to reduce the daily ration to a small supply of peas and maize. But the English did not come. With the freezing weather and the falling snow, the sufferings of the little garrison became pitiful indeed. The cellars of the now fatherless but always thrifty Heberts yielded considerable in the way of grain and vegetables. The total supply could not fill so many hungry mouths.

Champlain had expected relief in the spring. However, the Kirkes held control of the waters around New Foundland and the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence River. On the other hand, the settlers do not seem to have shared the optimism of their leader. The men of the colony had eased matters for their starving families by scattering into the woods and taking boats down the river, in the direction of the fishing banks. When the English finally came, Champlain had no more than sixteen men with him in addition to a few priests. On August 9, 1629, Champlain surrendered Quebec to the English invaders. Before doing so, he successfully held out for terms. The commander of the English agreed to take the French people back to their own country and, above all, to give them fair and courteous treatment.

When word came back from Canada of the success of the Kirkes, the French Government made an immediate demand that Quebec be restored and that restitution be made for all of the losses that the French had sustained. King Charles agreed to this. In spite of the considerable investment by the Kirkes and the Company of Merchant Adventurers, the King had decided to employ the restitution of Quebec as a weapon to compel the French Government to pay him the balance of the dowry of his Queen, who had been Princess Henrietta Maria of France. This amounted to eight hundred thousand crowns. The deal with the French Government was carried out, and King Charles received the balance of the dowry. Canada and Quebec were handed back to the French by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It was signed in March of 1632. Champlain was sent back to resume his command. The willing veteran, who had now reached the age of sixty-six, was received with delight by the few settlers left, among them the widow Hebert, her children and grandchildren. The English had been so taken by the courage of Madame Hebert that, they gave her a small Negro boy as a gift when Quebec was evacuated.

A SECOND MARRIAGE
Marie Rolet, the widow Hebert, married Guillaume Hubou, the son of Jean and Jeanne Goupil, on May 16, 1629 at Quebec. No children resulted from this second marriage. Marie died on May 27, 1649 at Quebec, after spending thirty-two years as the industrious and thrifty matriarch of Canada. Guillaume died May 13, 1653, at Quebec.

AN ILLUSTRIOUS FAMILY
Although bearers of this old and distinguished Canadian name comprise a small fraction of today's population (except Louisiana), there are a number who have established for it a significant place in history. They had produced many military officers, skilled merchants, respected ecclesiastics and a large number of former colonists, many who suffered and were killed by the savages, in the service of the country.

FAMILY NAME VARIATIONS
The family name of Hebert has been subject to many variations, especially when it crossed the border into the states, where the letter "H" is sounded and not simply aspired as in French Canada. The following names have been recorded: Abaire, Abare, Abear, Abbot, Couillard, Deslauriers, Ebart, Eber, Fournier, Hebard, Hebbard, Hebbert and Herbert.

This biography was taken from "Our French-Canadian Ancestors" by Thomas J. Laforest; Volume 2- Chapter 14- Page 127 [3-3-98 by James Gagne, http://www.jamesgagne.net]

Louis married Marie Rolet about 1602 in Paris, France.¹ (Marie Rolet was born about 1575 in St-Germain-des-Près, Paris, Île-de-France, France ² and was buried on 27 May 1649 in Québec City, Québec, Québec, Canada ².)