De groseillier biography definition

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The following year the Nonsuch returned to England, proving that it was possible, as Groseilliers had predicted, to exploit the fur trade from Hudson Bay. The successful conclusion of this voyage led to the founding of the HBC on 2 May 1670. Talon attempted retaliation by sending Cavelier de La Salle, Jean Peré, and Simon-François Daumont de Saint-Lusson to the west in 1670 and 1671, and Father Charles Albanel and Paul Denys* de Saint-Simon to Hudson Bay in 1671.

Seemingly they crossed over the lower Michigan peninsula into Lake Michigan and followed its west shore up to the Straits of Michilimackinac. He was soon recalled to France and Le Febvre de La Barre served in his place.

La Chesnaye’s plan actually was to get into the coat beaver country at the spot at the mouths of the Nelson and Hayes rivers where Radisson had attempted to found a colony in 1670.

Spring having now begun, the two white men returned with some Chippewas to their cache near La Pointe, and then crossed Lake Superior to its north shore.

Here today is Gooseberry River, which began to appear on French maps soon after Des Groseilliers’ visit as Rivière des Groseilliers and may well have been named for him, although it was moved up and down that shore at the whim of the cartographer.

Some persons at the time believed that the defection of these two men decided the issue. Further frustrations with French officials took the pair to Boston in 1662 to solicit English help in a venture directly to Hudson Bay.

 After an abortive New England expedition Des Groseilliers was persuaded to take his plans to England (1665). Many French residents of hamlets along the St. Lawrence – including Jean Véron – were massacred, others were captured and often tortured to death.

The parish records of Notre-Dame de Québec state, under the date of 3 Sept. 1647, that he married Hélène, daughter of Abraham Martin (for whom the Plains of Abraham appear to have been named), and widow of Claude Étienne. Groseilliers was at the Bay in 1689, after which he returned to London.

More information:

CaesarsoftheWilderness by Grace Nute (1943, 1975)

Médard Chouart des Groseilliers, Dictionary of Canadian Biography I, 223-28.

Little is known of Chouart’s family or early life, except that in 1647 his parents were living at Saint-Cyr and that he reached Canada at a youthful age, perhaps in 1641, having lived at some earlier time in the home of “one of our mothers of Tours,” according to Marie de l’Incarnation [seeGuyart], the first mother superior of the Ursuline nuns in Quebec.

By 1646 the young man had become a part of the Jesuit mission of Huronia in modern Simcoe County, Ontario, perhaps as a donné, or lay helper, or, more likely, as a soldier.

As late as 1775 the Pigeon River, now the boundary line between Canada and the United States just west of Lake Superior, was called the River “des Groseilliers” by Alexander Henry* in the entries for 8 and 9 July in his Travels & adventures in Canada . . . In 1653 Des Groseilliers visited La Tour in Acadia and later sought financial aid in Boston for a projected trip to Hudson Bay.

It is conjectured, therefore, that La Tour may have been the source of Des Groseilliers’ interest in and knowledge of Hudson Bay, which resulted in his trips to that region and the formation of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

A son, Médard, was born in 1651(?) and lived to maturity.

After pleading his case in Paris (1684) he returned to New France and seems to have retired. Nationales du Québec, Centre d’arch. Colbert was interested and sub rosa granted a charter in 1682 under the name of “La Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson” (Compagnie du Nord). Those who went into the Ottawa country in 1660 to trade have been identified by Louise Phelps Kellogg as Jean-François Pouteret de Bellecourt, dit Colombier; Adrien Jolliet (elder brother of Louis Jolliet); Claude David; the Quebec joiner Pierre Levasseur, dit L’Espérance; and a man named Laflèche, probably related to the Nipissing interpreter Jean Richer.

There is good evidence that the western trip of the two brothers-in-law saved the colony from economic ruin – probably preserved its very existence – but Governor d’Argenson seized the explorers’ furs, fined them, and, according to Radisson, threw Des Groseilliers into jail, presumably for departing without his sanction.

1657), Marguerite (bap. 15 April 1659), and Marie-Antoinette (bap. 8 June 1661).

These and the several preceding years were a harrowing period in New France. Radisson by this time was back from two sojourns in the Iroquois country – one while a captive and the other as a member of a Jesuit missionary venture at Onondaga – and he was now old enough to accompany his brother-in-law.

We know when his children were born and by whom they were baptized, that his home was in Trois-Rivières, and that he and his wife were becoming well-to-do. Where and when he ended his adventurous career is uncertain.