CHARTIER, LOUIS, surgeon; b. c. 1633 in France; drowned 1660 in the Ottawa River.

Louis Chartier crossed over to Canada with the great contingent of 1653 which was intended to strengthen the settlement of Ville-Marie (Montreal). Like his travelling companion Étienne Bouchard, he was one of the surgeons whom the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal had committed itself to placing at the settlers’ service free of charge. The general list of the contingent allocates to Chartier a guaranteed salary of 100 livres and a salary in advance of 120 livres. He acted as a witness for a will, several notarial acts, marriage contracts, and bills of sale drawn up during the years 1658, 1659, and 1660, and the title of “surgeon” or “master-surgeon of the island” is linked to his name. In one of these acts his name appears along with that of Adam Dollard Des Ormeaux. On 18 April 1660 he acted as a witness to the will of Jean Valets, who was getting ready to take part in Dollard’s expedition. As a friend of the latter, Louis Chartier had lent him the sum of 30 livres. After Dollard’s death he did not demand payment of this debt, being no doubt convinced that it could not be discharged.

Louis Chartier was 27 when he met his death by drowning in the waters of the Ottawa on 20 July 1660, while taking part in the defence of Montreal Island against the Iroquois. His body was not recovered. The inventory of his belongings was made on 19 Sept. 1660 by the notary Bénigne Basset. He died a bachelor. According to É.-Z. Massicotte, Chartier may have been the young surgeon mentioned in a relation of the period as being captured by the Iroquois at Ville-Marie in the spring of 1654 and brought back in the autumn.

In addition, mention is made of the presence of a certain Louis Chartier de La Broquerie at the marriage of Charles Phélippeaux at Quebec on 8 March 1654. It does not seem to be the same person, for in the acts drawn up at Montreal in which his name appears, he is always called merely Louis Chartier.

Antonio Drolet

AJQ, Greffe de Guillaume Audouart, 8 mars 1654. Maude E. Abbott, “Historic Montreal,” Annals of Internal Medicine, VI (1933), 815–38; History of medicine in the province of Quebec (Toronto, 1931; McGill University pub., VIII, no.63, 1932), 19. Ahern, Notes pour l’histoire de la médecine, 99. R.-J. Auger, La grande recrue de 1653 (Montréal, 1955), 11, 15, 54–55, 120, 127, 135, 137, 141, 149, 150, 151. BRH, XV (1909), 30. J. J. Heagerty, Four centuries of medical history in Canada, and a sketch of the medical history of Newfoundland (2v., Toronto, 1928), I, 224, 232, 234, 241. É.-Z. Massicotte, “Les chirurgiens de Montréal au XVII^e siècle,” BRH, XX (1914), 253; “Les chirurgiens, médecins, etc., de Montréal sous le régime français,” APQ Rapport, 1922–23, 132; “Dollard des Ormeaux,” Can. Antiquarian and Numismatic J., 3d ser., IX (1912), 55. Tanguay, Dictionnaire, I, 120.

Revisions based on:
Bibliothèque et Arch. Nationales du Québec, Centre d’arch. de Montréal, CE601-S51, 20 juill. 1660.