LAMBERT, EUSTACHE, donné, interpreter, settler, fur-trader; b. c. 1618, probably near Boulogne in France; d. 6 July 1673 at Quebec.

The donné Eustache Lambert, who came to New France probably in the early 1640s, appears for the first time in Canadian history in August 1646, on the occasion of a return journey to Sainte-Marie-des-Hurons. This was his second or third trip to the mission, and he seems to have remained in the service of the Jesuits at least until 1651, when we find him accompanying Father Chaumonot to the Île d’Orléans and to Tadoussac.

In 1653 Eustache Lambert acquired a tract of land at Pointe-Lévy, in the seigneury of the Lauson family. It was there that he built the house which he named Sainte-Marie in honour of his youth spent in the Huron country, and which became a favourite meeting-place for the Huron and Algonkin fur-traders passing through Quebec. Lambert hunted and fished there fairly successfully, it seems, for in 1671 he managed to free himself from his seigneurial dues by paying a sum of 300 livres, half in money, half in beaver. He was also said to be the owner of a merchants’ bank, a house in the Lower Town of Quebec, in Sault-au-Matelot street, and a dwelling at Saint-Joseph de Beauport. In 1653, at Quebec, he was the commander of a flying column of 50 men, and on 8 Aug. 1669 he became a churchwarden of the parish of Notre-Dame. Eustache Lambert married Marie Laurence in 1656. They had a large number of descendants.

Lambert was buried on 7 July 1673 at Quebec.

J. Monet

ASQ, Paroisse de Québec, 124; Polygraphie, XVI, 26. JR (Thwaites), passim. JJ (Laverdière et Casgrain), passim. Claude de Bonnault, “Le Canada militaire, état provisoire des officiers de milice, de 1641 à 1760,” APQ Rapport, 1949–51, 294. A. De Léry Macdonald, “La famille Lambert Du Mont,” RC, XIX (1883), 633. J.-E. Roy, “Eustache Lambert, frère donné et interprète,” La Kermesse, X (25 nov. 1892), 136–40; Histoire de la seigneurie de Lauzon, I, 254.

Revisions based on:
Bibliothèque et Arch. Nationales du Québec, Centre d’arch. de Québec, CE301-S1, 7 juill. 1673.