
Second
generation (first generation born in Canada)
The 9 children
of Samuel Papineau and Catherine Quevillon (see
tree at the end of this page)
(3
girls, then 6 boys, all married, who at the 3rd generation had 93
children
of which 50 were married)
At
this second generation, most of the nine children and their spouses
lived
close to their original Côte-St-Michel,
on
the island of Montréal.The two who moved to the south shore of
Montréal
were still only half a day away.
1.-
Marie-Marguerite, Montréal
2.-
Marie-Catherine, Montréal and Île-Jésus
3.-
Marie-Louise, Montréal and
Île-Jésus
4.-
François,
Chambly
(south of Montréal)
5.-
Pierre,
Côte-St-Michel of Montréal (he kept the original homestead)
6.-
Jean-Baptiste, Côte-St-Michel
of Montréal (neighbour to Pierre)
7.-
Joseph I,
Old Montréal
8.-
Michel,
St-Charles-sur-Richelieu
(south of Montréal)
9.-
Jean-Louis,
Île-Jésus
Joseph
Papineau I
dit Montigny
(1719-1785), 7th child of Samuel Papineau dit Montigny
He,
like his brothers, carried into his generation his father's surname of
Montigny.
Like
his brother Jean-Baptiste, he could read and write, probably educated
by
their older sisters or by the nearby priests of
Sault-au-Récollet
parish or the Sisters of Congregation Notre-Dame residing there. Both
brothers
signed notarial contracts with Montréal merchants in 1743 as
"voyageurs"
to organize parties of canoes to take supplies to the French forts of
the
Great Lakes and do the fur trade. In a way they followed the tradition
set by their father Samuel who in 1701 described himself as a
"volunteer"
which was the name given to the "coureur des bois" who did the fur
trade
for their own account
Thus
Joseph travelled up the Ottawa River, portaged to Lake Nipissing, then
down French River to Georgian Bay, across Lake Huron and Lake Michigan,
all the way to Baie-des-Puants, today's Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA. This
route encountered 18 falls and portages where they had to unload the
canoes
and carry them as well as the merchandises overland. He probably had as
a companion the Indian Chief who gave him a gunpowder horn sculpted
with
a map of Canada and inscribed "À Joseph Montigny". This
family
heirloom was lost by his grandson André during the battle of the
patriots at St-Eustache. His venture in the fur trade must have been
tremendously
successful. Before his marriage in 1749 he had accumulated considerable
land in old Montréal and in the suburbs. We then find him in
notarial
deeds as an entrepreneur on Bonsecours street, in barrelmaking and
wheelmaking
crafts, businesses that he probably inherited fron his stepfather,
Jacques
Daniel, third husband of his mother Catherine Quevillon.
In
latter years he identifies himself as "bourgeois of Montréal".
He is very close to his neighbours, the Sulpician Priests, seignors of
Montréal. They will help educate his children, one of them
becoming
a nun in the Sisters of the Congregation.
Joseph
I will begin a lineage of remarkable political men.
"voyageur"
at the fur trade. drawing by painter
Suzor-Coté
*A
merchant first had to obtain a permit from the Governor of
Montréal
and hire a "voyageur" who recruited companions,
about
6 for each canoe. They loaded the great canoes, measuring from 30 to 40
feet and called Montréal canoes or rabaskas,
with
bundles and barrels of goods and ammunitions to supply the forts and
outposts
of the Great Lakes.
They
generally brought back the valuable furs for the merchants and,
contrary
to the "coureur des bois" were strictly forbidden to trade for their
own
account.
Joseph
Papineau II ( 1752-1841), The Montigny surname is abandonned here.
Second
child and first son of Joseph I, he enjoyed a classical education at
the
Québec Seminary. He became famous by running dispatches in 1776
from Montréal to Québec city which was under siege by the
American general Benedict Arnold. After the Canadian victory, he was
back
in Montréal where he became public surveyor and notary. He was
quite
active in drawing up the petitions to London to obtain an elected
democratic
government. After obtaining the 1791 Constitution, he was elected four
times member for Montréal between 1792 and 1810. He championed
official
recognition of the French language and the French laws and customs. He
has been immortalized in the famous painting
by Charles Huot that graces the walls of the Québec
Parliament.
In
1801 he acquired on the Outaouais River the large "Seigneurie de la
Petite
Nation" and thus became its first "seigneur" to actively undertake its
development. In 1817 he was to cede the best part of it, (roughly today
Montebello), to his first born son Louis-Joseph and a large tract,
(roughly
today Papineauville and Plaisance), to second born son Denis-Benjamin
who
had managed the seigneurie many years for him and for Louis-Joseph. He
died in 1841 while Louis-Joseph was in exile in France. Today he rests
in the Papineau family chapel on the Manor grounds in Montebello.
1.-
Louis-Joseph PAPINEAU (1786-1871),
Like
his father and all his brothers, he graduated from the Québec
Seminary
and then obtained his licence as a lawyer. He was five times elected
between
1808 and 1837, president (speaker) of the Lower Canada Parlliament,
president
of the Canadian party later named "Patriote" party. Stalwart of a
"representative
and responsible government" he fought against colonial nepotism and
corrruption.
He used only democratic and peaceful measures to that end. That is
until
the provocations sponsored by the London banking establishment who
wanted
to secure their loans to heavily indebted Upper Canada by forcing its
"Union"
with Lower Canada, more populous and almost debt free. The duly elected
representatives of the people were dismissed. The due process of the
"habeas
corpus" was abolished. The commissions of the French speaking officers
of the militia and the French speaking justices of the peace and
judges were revoked in favor of military tribunals. Far away troops
drawn
from the mercenaries of the European Napoleonic wars were hastened to
Montréal.
Ruffians were recruited as "Irregulars" and were given arms while the
hate
monging journalists of the Montréal Gazette called for
the
eradication of the French race. Thus the uprising of a good part of the
people in the surrounding areas of Montréal in 1837. A bounty
was
offered by governor Gosford for the arrest of Louis-Joseph and his
closest
friends. Without means of defence, and despite an heroic victory on the
redcoats at Saint-Denis, they had to flee to the United-States and
Louis-Joseph
then on to France to muster support for the French-Canadians.
Upon
his return from Paris in 1845, only after all patriots had been graced,
he took over the management and development of his "Seignory of
Petite-Nation"
until then done by his young brother Denis-Benjamin. The latter had
obtained
for Louis-Joseph that the government refunded the due salaries he had
refused
to take before 1837 because the funds had not been voted on by the
elected
parliament. With these monies he started construction of his Manor
House
in Monte Bello.
However
he could not resist the political battlefield and was elected twice
between
1847 and 1855 under the Union regime he had so much fought
against.Today
he rests in the family chapel on the grounds of the Manor house in
Montebello.
(The only known drawind of him was done from memory after his death)
See Dictionary of Canadian Biography© Vol VIII, pages 678-680, by the University of Toronto.
Like
his father and his brothers he studied at the Québec Seminary.
He
went immediately to look after his father's seignory until his
marriage.
He the opened with a Parisian partner one of the first French library
in
Montréal: Bossanges et Papineau, which unfortunately later
burned
down. When in 1817 his father gave him the western part of the Petit
Naion
seigmory, he undertook to settle and develop what became known as the
"fief
de Plaisance" and Papineauville. At the same time he managed the
seignory
for his brother Louis-Joseph during his political activities as well as
during his seven years of exile.
He
will be twice elected in the Ottawa constituency where the
Petite-Nation
seignory is situated. Between 1842 and 1847, he will be Land
Commissionner
and twice joint First Minister of Canada, representing Lower
Canada
under the Union which was the Canadian constitution between 1840 and
the
1867 Confederation Act.
We
are indepted to him in particular for the successful "Papineau Bill", a
unanimous request by a divided parliament to Queen Victoria seeking the
abolishment of article 41 of the Union Act forbidding the official use
of the French language in parliament. This was achieved in 1849, when
Governor
Elgin also gave part of his inaugural speech in French, much to the ire
of the local English extremist mobs who, excited by the Montréal
Gazette editorials, burned down the Parliament buildings.
His
brother Louis-Joseph barely escaped the inferno and saw years of
accumulated
archives go up in smoke.
In
1846 Denis-Benjamin negotiated with the United States the very
contentious
Oregon border, a treaty which was most likely signed in Washington in
his
presence by the new governor Lord Elgin on his way to take his post
from
London to Canada.
Denis-Benjamin,
as manager and developer of the Petite Nation area for over thirty
years,
had suffered from the lack of local legal authority. So despite the
vicious
opposition of the clerical forces, in what was called the war of the
extinguishers,
he managed to have enacted the first effective legislation on municipal
organization and publicly financed education.
Today
he rests with most of his family in the Papineauville cemetary.
NEXT
>>>