Settling the New World.

Jeanne Soldé.

The ancient region of Anjou where the Soldé family lived was home to one of the great Greniers á sel (salt granary or store house) within the Pays de grandes gabelles. The gabelle was an unpopular tax imposed on salt by the King and was particularly high in the Anjou province.

Martin Sauldé was a journalier, or laborer, when he married Julienne Le Potier on 23 January 1624 in Saint-Germaine church in Villaines-sous-Malicorne. Their first four children, including our ancestor Jeanne, were baptized in the same church. Jeanne, named Anne in her record, was baptized on 24 August 1630. Some years later, in a move that would change the course of Jeanne's life, the family relocated south about 6 miles to La Flêche.

la Grande Recrue.

Jérôme Le Royer was a Flèchois with a passion for the French colony in the Americas. He dreamed of establishing a mission on Île de Montréal to educate the native peoples in the ways of Europeans. Partnering with Governor Paul de Chomeday, Sieur de Maisonneuve he recruited men to found Ville-Marie (later called Montréal) in 1642. Jeanne Mance, a nurse, built Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal a few years later. But the community was subject to constant attack from the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois. Discussion centered around abandoning Ville-Marie and moving the survivors downstream to the better fortified city of Québec. In a last ditch effort to save the settlement Mlle. Mance lent money to M. de Maisonneuve to go to France to recruit more men to defend the village.

Jeanne, 23, was one of a very few women who joined the hundred or so men in what became known as la grande recrue of 1653. The men possessed a variety of crucial skills for the colony like carpenters or tailors, the women were Filles à marier – young women of marriageable age. They arrived in Montréal on 16 November. Within a few weeks, on 11 Dec 1653, Jeanne entered into a contract to wed Jacques Beauvais. He was granted land with three arpents of frontage by ten arpents deep to farm at Côte Saint-Joseph by Sieur Maisonneuve.

Milice de la Saint-Famille.

Jacques was 31 when he married Jeanne Soldé in Ville-Marie (Montréal) on 7 January 1654. He was a chaufournier and militiaman of the 12th squad of the Militia of the Holy Family or Soldats de la Sainte-Famille de Jésus, Marie et Joseph.

Maisonneuve formed the militia in 1663 to help protect the settlement from Iroquois who traveled up the nearby Richelieu River to raid the town. Twenty squads, each with seven men, patrolled the area, watched as farmers worked their fields, and were posted sentries for the town at night.

Our ancestor Hugues Picard dit La Fortune was in the same squad. Other family members who served were François Leber of the 4th, Honore Danis dit Tourangeau who was a caporal or corporal, in the 16th and Nicolas Hubert dit la Croix, a caporal in the 17th.

Upon the arrival of the Carignan-Salières Régiment in 1665 the militia was deactivated, having lost only three members in their three years of service.

Ville-Marie (Montréal).

The Jesuits, who kept a record of many events in the colony, reported this earthquake in 1663:

Word comes from Montreal that, during the Earthquake, fence stakes were plainly seen to jump up and down as if in a dance; of two doors in the same room, one closed itself and the other opened, of its own accord; chimneys and housetops bent like tree branches shaken by the wind; on raising the foot in walking, one felt the ground coming up after him and rising in proportion to the height to which he lifted his foot, sometimes giving the sole a quite smart rap; and other similar occurrences, of a highly surprising nature, are reported from that place.

The couple would have nine children, including our ancestor Marguerite who was born 30 August 1658. She appears with her family in the 1666 census: Jacques, habitant, age 43, Jeanne Sauleday, 34, his wife and their children Raphael 12, Barbe 10, Marguerite 8, Jean 5, Jean-Baptiste 3, Jacques 13 months and Andre Rapine, their domestique engage. Our ancestor Pierre Perras' family is listed just above.

The census taken the following year, in 1667, records the family had 5 animals and 30 arpents of cultivated land. Marguerite married in 1675. The 82 year old widow Louise Mauger lives with the Beauvais family according to the 1681 census. Jacques 57, Jeanne 47, and sons Raphael 27, Jean 20 and their daughters Charlotte 14, Marie (Etiennette) 12, and Jeanne 9 filled out the household. Twenty eight arpens were farmed and they owned two fusils, or guns. A portion of these lands were sold to his son Raphaël in 1683.

Jacques was 67 at his death on 20 March 1691. Jeanne was also 67 when she passed sometime in November 1697.