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As his given
name indicates, he was the first-born son of Pierre Micheau and Marie Ancelin.
Born on Ile aux Grues on February 11, 1672, he was baptized on March 8
by Abbé Thomas Morel, a missionary from Quebec. A neighbour
of the family, Mathurin Ducheron Deslauriers, was his godfather and Anne
Macart, the wife of sieur de Grandville, seigneur of Ile aux Oies, his
godmother. From a notary's contract prepared by Gilles Rageot, we
learn that, when Pierre was ten years old, he went to work for Jean-Baptiste
Couillard de l'Espinay, seigneur of La Rivière-du-Sud, doing with
fidelity "all he was ordered to do for a year".
Around 1692,
then twenty years old, he applied for a concession of his own and received,
on June 1695, four acres of land at the "sorouest" (south west) land of
Pierre Fournier on the east point of Pelourde mountain at Kamouraska.
He seems to have done very well. In February 1697, he owns land and
a home and travels to Quebec with his brother Jean to get married.
The marriage contract is received by notary Louis Chambalon on February
4 and the following day, Pierre and Madeleine Thibodeau, daughter
of Mathurin Thibodeau and Marie Roy, are married in Notre-Dame de Québec
church. Pierre and Madeleine were 25 years old.
Their first
son, Pierre, was born on December 4, 1697 and baptized three days later
in nearby Rivière-Ouelle. Unfortunately, the baby dies on
December 10. On December 27, Marie-Anne, a daughter, is born
and another son, Pierre-Ambroise, on March 10, 1701. Four
other daughters follow : Madeleine in 1703, Cécile
in 1706, Angélique in 1709 and Hélène
(no register of her at Kamouraska). On May 17, 1722, sad news reach
Pierre and Madeleine : Pierre-Ambroise, then 21, has died at Hôtel-Dieu
hospital in Quebec. There are no male descendants to Pierre and Madeine
but their daughters have had large families. The oldest, Marie-Anne,
was married to Joseph Mignault in 1715, Madeleine to Joseph Ouellet in
1725. Cécile was married twice, to Jean Boucher in 1731 and to Louis
Saucier in 1738, and Hélène, to Guillaume Mignau in 1735.
They all lived in Kamouraska while Angélique, married to Gilles
Pariset in 1734, lived in Quebec.
According to
the land surveying of 1726, Pierre still lived on the same land and owned
a house, a barn, a cattle-shed and twenty acres of land. Madeleine
Thibodeau, Pierre's wife of forty years, died on January 28, 1737 and was
buried in what is now called Le Berceau, in Kamouraska. Pierre died
at the age of 88 less a month and was also buried in Le Berceau on January
15, 1761.
