DESCHAMPS DE LA BOUTEILLERIE, JEAN-BAPTISTE-FRANÇOIS, seigneur of Rivière-Ouelle; baptized 1646 at Cliponville, son of Jean Deschamps, seigneur of Costecoste, Montaubert, and Landres (France), and of Élisabeth Debin; buried 16 Dec. 1703 at Rivière-Ouelle. His title La Bouteillerie came from his paternal grandmother, Suzanne La Bouteiller, Dame de La Bouteillerie.

It was long believed that Jean-Baptiste-François Deschamps de La Bouteillerie had come to America in 1665 with the Carignan regiment, but this is not the case. He sailed in June 1671 on the Saint-Jean-Baptiste “with two carpenters, two masons, and four labourers to clear land not exceeding 1,000 acres which the king had given him.” Michel-Claude Guibert, who reports this fact, adds that the ship also carried “100 men, 120 king’s daughters [filles du roi], 50 sheep and ewes, 10 asses and she-asses, cloth, blankets, and many other things for man’s everyday life and use.” The arrival of this nobleman greatly pleased Talon*, who stressed that “if persons of this quality readily take this route, Canada will soon be filled with people capable of maintaining it well.”

On 29 Oct 1672 Deschamps de La Bouteillerie was granted the seigneury of Rivière-Ouelle by Talon. He went there shortly afterwards with some settlers, who in 1681 constituted 11 families with a total of 62 persons, and who had already brought under cultivation 132 acres of land. Apart from a few journeys to Quebec, Deschamps de La Bouteillerie spent his life at Rivière-Ouelle among his copyholders, who slowly increased in number and reached a total of 105 persons in 1698 and 302 in 1739. He was one of the few men of his rank to devote himself solely to his seigneury and to developing it rapidly. He was buried on 16 Dec. 1703 under his seigneurial pew.

On 24 Oct. 1672 Deschamps de La Bouteillerie married Catherine-Gertrude Macard, daughter of Nicolas and Marguerite Couillard. Six children were born of this marriage; one of them, Charles-Joseph (1674–1726), became a priest and canon of the cathedral of Quebec, and another, Henri-Louis, Sieur de Boishébert, inherited the fief. After his first wife’s death in 1681, Deschamps de La Bouteillerie married again in April 1701; his second wife was Jeanne-Marguerite Le Chevalier, widow of Robert Lévesque, one of his first copyholders.

Nive Voisine

P.-G. Roy, Inv. concessions, II, 249; Inv. contrats de mariage, II, 165. Adolphe Michaud, Généalogie des familles de la Rivière Ouelle depuis l’origine de la paroisse jusqu’à nos jours (Québec, 1908). Sulte, Hist. des Can. fr., IV, 47. “Jean-Baptiste-François Des Champs de La Bouteillerie,” BRH, XII (1906), 75–77. “Le sieur Des Champs de La Bouteillerie, BRH, XXXVII (1931), 54.