RAGEOT DE SAINT-LUC, NICOLAS, clerk of the provost court of Quebec and royal notary; baptized 20 Aug. 1676 at Quebec, son of Gilles Rageot*, royal notary and clerk of court, and of Marie-Madeleine Morin; buried 31 March 1703 at Quebec.

Nicolas Rageot was probably born in Lower Town, Quebec, on Rue Saint-Pierre, where his father owned a house that was destroyed in the terrible fire of 4 Aug. 1682. It is also fairly certain that he attended with his brothers the Jesuit college in Quebec, where he received a classical education before entering government service as they had done. In the autumn of 1695 he was one of the guardians in the office responsible for the “safeguarding of the king’s dues” in Canada. He had the task of supervising the loading and unloading of merchandise at the port, and of making certain that the levies due to the crown were paid before the ships set sail.

In 1693 his elder brother Charles had replaced his father as clerk of court, and in 1695 as notary, but he fell a victim to the smallpox epidemic which scourged the colony in 1702–3, and died 18 Dec. 1702. Nicolas Rageot was called upon to succeed him and to carry on a family tradition which went back to 1666. On 15 March 1703 he was appointed royal notary and clerk of the provost court of Quebec at the king’s discretion, and was admitted to his office two days later. But, stricken almost immediately by the same illness, he died a bachelor on 31 March 1703, apparently without having had time to draw up a single notarial act.

Bishop Laval strongly recommended that François, another son of Gilles Rageot, should succeed Nicolas, to which the king gave his consent the following year.

André Vachon

AQ, NF, Registres de la Prévôté de Québec, 17 mars 1703. Jug. et délib., III, 1073. “Correspondance de Vaudreuil,” APQ Rapport, 1938–39, 22. Gareau, “La prévôté de Québec,” 113. “Les notaires au Canada,” 32. Tanguay, Dictionnaire, I, 507. J.-E. Roy, Histoire du notariat, I, 106, 108, 133. P.-G. Roy, Fils de Québec, I, 99f.