GADOYS, PIERRE, first farmer at Montreal, churchwarden at Ville-Marie (Montreal); b. c. 1594 at Saint-Martin d’Igé (near Mortagne in Perche); buried on 20 Oct. 1667 at Montreal.

Pierre Gadoys may have been brought to the colony by Robert Giffard with his Beauport settlers, most of whom came from Perche. We find him at Quebec as early as 1636, at which time a son, of whose fate we know nothing, was born to him. From 1643 to 1645 he was apparently in the employ of the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal at Sainte-Foy. In October 1645, Hurons and Algonkins broke into Gadoys’s house on several occasions to steal food from him and beat him.

He must have moved to Montreal about 1646 or 1647. He had the honour, in January 1648, of being the first person to whom the governor, Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, made a grant of land; 40 acres in area, it extended from Saint-Paul Street in a northwesterly direction to the west of Saint-Pierre and Bleury streets. Hence Dollier* de Casson gave him the title of first farmer of Ville-Marie. In 1666 he received another grant of 60 acres to extend the first one. In 1660 Pierre Gadoys became the fourth churchwarden of Notre-Dame church. In March 1661, when he was well on in his sixties, he fought bravely in defence of Charles Le Moyne and some colonists who had been attacked by the Iroquois. In 1672, when the street map was drawn, Saint-Pierre Street, which bounded his property, was so named in his honour.

In France, about 1620, he had married Louise Mauger (1598–1690). Three of their children are known to us: Roberte (1621–1716), who in 1650 married the pioneer Louis Prud’homme; Pierre* (1632–1714), born in France, died at Montreal; and Jean-Baptiste (1641–1728), born at Quebec, died at Montreal; both the sons were gunsmiths. Their descendants have survived to the present day. An older sister of Pierre Gadoys, Françoise, the wife of Nicolas Godé, had come to Montreal in May 1642.

Jean-Jacques Lefebvre

Dollier de Casson, Histoire du Montréal. JR (Thwaites), XXVII, 91. É.-Z. Massicotte, “Les colons de Montréal de 1642 à 1667,” BRH, XXXIII (1922), 170–92; RSCT, 3d ser., VII (1913), sect.i, 3–65; “Pierre Gadois, premier concessionnaire de terre à Montréal,” BRH, XXIX (1923), 36–37. Tanguay, Dictionnaire.

Revisions based on:
Bibliothèque et Arch. Nationales du Québec, Centre d’arch. de Montréal, CE601-S51, 20 oct. 1667.