JUCHEREAU DE LA FERTÉ, JEAN, merchant, member of the Conseil Souverain; b. c. 1620 perhaps at La Lande-sur-Eure (France), son of Jean Juchereau de Maur and of Marie Langlois; d. 16 Nov. 1685 at Quebec and was buried there the next day.

Juchereau de La Ferté was the eldest son of the family; he arrived in Canada with his parents in 1634 and married Marie Giffard on 21 Nov. 1645 at Quebec. He played a distinguished part in the trade, magistrature, and society of the new-born colony. On 7 Sept. 1661 he received a grant of land on the Île d’Orléans from Charles de Lauson. On 18 Sept. 1663 he was appointed a member of the newly instituted Conseil Souverain. The following year, with the majority of the members of the council, he opposed the appointment of a syndic for the settlers. Consequently on 19 Sept. 1664 Governor Saffray de Mézy relieved him of his duties, together with three other members of that body. Prouville de Tracy, on 31 May 1666, annulled this action as ultra vires, and Juchereau was once again to be found witnessing, as “former” councillor, the registration of the letters patent of Rémy de Courcelle, Talon, and Le Barroys. Tracy, having taken the time to inquire into the 1664 quarrel, did not deem it expedient to reinstate La Ferté, who was replaced in the council by de Gorribon.

In 1672 Jean Juchereau inherited the de Maur seigneury, at Saint-Augustin near Quebec. He died at the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec and was buried in the paupers’ cemetery. His wife, Marie Giffard, born about 1628 in France, had died on 11 Aug. 1665, also at Quebec, and had been buried the next day. The Juchereaus belonged to the bourgeoisie, and at that time had not yet been ennobled.

Jean Juchereau and Marie Giffard had seven children: three sons and four daughters. None of the sons was to leave any descendants. The eldest, Noël, born 3 July 1647 at Quebec, was the first Jesuit and the first religious born in Canada. He entered the noviciate at Nancy as a lay brother on 30 Jan. 1665, and was sent to Lyon to study pharmacy for two years, from 1667 to 1669. In this latter year he returned to Quebec, where he was drowned on 3 Nov. 1672 while on his way to minister to the sick. The second son, Paul-Augustin Juchereau* de Maur, was born on 3 June 1658; he inherited his father’s seigneury and devoted himself to trade. He went as a delegate to France in 1700, with the sieur Pascaud*, to ask for freedom of trade on behalf of the Canadians; there he negotiated the formation of the Compagnie de la Colonie, for which he acted as receiver of moneys until his sudden death in 1714 in a shipwreck near the Île de Sable. The youngest, Denis-Joseph Juchereau de La Ferté, born 20 June 1661, chose the army as his career. He was with Greysolon* Dulhut at the Sainte-Marie falls (Sault Ste. Marie) in 1684, with Le Moyne* d’Iberville at Hudson Bay in 1689, and with Jolliet in Labrador in 1694, and it was he whom the king sent to warn Frontenac [see Buade] of an imminent English attack in 1697. He died on 9 Aug. 1709 at Quebec.

Of the four daughters only one, Marie-Louise, born 9 Sept. 1652, got married; she became the wife of Charles Aubert* de La Chesnaye at Beauport, on 10 Jan. 1668. She had six children, the only posterity of Jean Juchereau de La Ferté, and died on 7 March 1678 at La Rochelle. The other three girls became nuns. Jeanne-Françoise joined the Hospitallers of Quebec and became the celebrated Mother Juchereau* de Saint-Ignace. Charlotte became an Hospitaller at La Rochelle, where she was superior. Marie became, as it were, the eldest Hospitaller at Quebec, where she took her vows on 25 Jan. 1678. She was called Marie Juchereau de Saint-Thérèse, was of ailing health, and died in piety on 25 March 1697.

Lucien Campeau

Alphonse Gauthier, “Noël Juchereau de La Ferté: premier jésuite et religieux canadien,” Lettres du Bas-Canada, XIII (1959), 211–19. P.-G. Roy, La famille Juchereau Duchesnay (Lévis, 1903), 18–56.

Revisions based on:
Bibliothèque et Arch. Nationales du Québec, Centre d’arch. de Québec, CE301-S1, 21 nov. 1645, 17 nov. 1685.