My father, Duane R. Chicoine, was the son of Edgar H. Chicoine and Laura Montagne. Duane was born in Sioux City, Iowa on 22 July 1926. His parents were born and raised just north of Sioux City in Jefferson, South Dakota, where they spoke Québécois (Canadian French) in the home, the school and the church.
Jefferson was settled just at the time of the Homestead Act of 1862. It was frontier. Edgar’s lineage consists of the Chicoine, Loiselle, Bernard/Brouillet and LaJeunesse branches. Laura’s lineage consists of the LaMontagne, DeRocher, Allard and Boisvert branches.
The Chicoines left Quebec for New England. My great-grandfather Joseph P. Chicoine (father of Edgar) worked as child labor in a mill before the family headed west.
The Montagnes settled first in the U.S. in the Tri-State lead mining district around southwestern Wisconsin, Dubuque, Iowa and Galena, Illinois. The Montagne brothers worked as teamsters for the mines. The Montagnes were close to Father Samuel Mazzuchelli, whom the Catholic Church is considering for sainthood. The entire clan moved en masse to Jefferson shortly after Mazzuchelli’s unexpected passing.
My great-grandfather Ed Montagne was born in Shullsburg in southwesternmost Wisconsin. He had young Winnebago as friends, learned their ways and their language. Just as Ed’s parents left Wisconsin to take the family by wagon across Iowa, the U.S. Congress on February 21, 1863 passed the Winnebago Removal Act. The Winnebago were re-located to a reservation just south of Sioux City (in present-day northwestern Iowa). The Montagne homestead was just north of Sioux City. For many years, Ed Montagne met with his lifelong friends to hunt and fish along the Missouri River (in the days when the game and fish were plentiful and the river was pristine). He was well known for his Native inclinations.
The Huguenot (Protestant Calvinists) experience in Catholic France is a tragic history. A number of direct ancestors endured the infamous St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre of 1572 and the subsequent siege by the Royal Army of the Huguenot center of La Rochelle on the coast of southwestern France. Among those ancestors were Josue De Brie, Anne Cartier, Pierre Cartier and Madeleine Tallebot (all of the Montagne lineage from the Boisvert branch).
Cardinal Richelieu’s siege of La Rochelle in 1627-1628 was far worse than the 1572 siege. The population of La Rochelle was reduced from 27,000 to 5,000 over fourteen months. The defenders were reduced to eating rats. Ancestors Paul Chalifou (Chicoine lineage through the Lajeunesse branch) and Jean Navarre (Montagne lineage through the Boisvert branch) certainly fought in the defense of their home and families. Ancestors Francois Perron, Pierre Duteau and wife Jeanne Perrin, Mathurin Roy and wife Marguerite Brie and Jean Navarre’s wife Louise De Brie all endured and somehow survived the horrific experience . . . and left Richelieu’s France for the New World. Any semblance of toleration ended in 1685 with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes from 1598. Huguenots, who arrived in New France, were required to formally renounce their Protestant faith. The offspring of some Huguenot ancestors, who did so, married the offspring of other “former” Huguenot families.
Ancestor Louis Hébert (Chicoine lineage) was in North America in 1606. He was among the original settlers of Quebec City, was a good friend of Samuel Champlain and is recognized as the first farmer of Canada [St. Augustine was founded in 1565, Jamestown in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620]. Numerous other ancestors at early Quebec included Guillaume Couillard and Zacharie Cloutier (Chicoine lineage).
Ancestor Gilbert Barbier (Chicoine lineage through the Loiselle branch) arrived at Ville-Marie on Montreal Island in August 1642, part of the second arrival, thirteen men to augment the initial party of fifty that went ashore in May 1642. As a master carpenter, Barbier was responsible for the construction of the first structures that allowed the colonists to survive the first winter.
Ancestor Sebastian Dodier (through the Loiselle branch) arrived in New France in 1632, perhaps the first of many recruited by Robert Giffard from the region of Perche in France. The major Perche emigration, including ancestors Marin Boucher, Zacharie Cloutier and Jean Guyon (Montagne lineage), in 1634. Dodier returned to Perche after three years. In 1644, Dodier returned to New France with his wife and family. His daughter, ancestor Catherine Dodier, was eleven years old at the time of the voyage. Catherine married in 1648 at the age of fourteen to Guillaume Isabel. By 1652, the couple had three small children. On 19 August, 1652, the newly appointed and naïve Governor of Trois-Rivières led a force of fifteen to twenty French into the brush in response to the presence of Iroquois. Among those was Guillaume Isabel. Wiser, more experienced men counseled the governor to stay within the palisades. A large war party ambushed the French and killed all of them. Catherine Dodier was left a widow. Her parents and her brother returned to France. Catherine remained and re-married. Her husband was ancestor Pierre Lepelle and to them was born ancestor Madeleine Lepelle.
In 1649, ancestor Catherine St.-Pere (Chicoine lineage through the Loiselle branch) married Mathurin Guillet at Trois-Rivières. He died at the hands of the Iroquois on 18 March 1652. Catherine re-married at Trois-Rivières on 21 June 1653 to ancestor Nicolas Rivard. Ancestor Francois Rivard was born to this union.
Ancestor Michel Messier (Chicoine lineage through the Tetreau branch) arrived at Ville-Marie on Montreal Island in 1653 as part of Le Grand Recrue, 120 men from France. He was involved in numerous engagements with the Iroquois. The Iroquois took Michel Messier captive in the fall of 1654. He was exchanged and released in June 1655. He married ancestor Anne LeMoyne in 1658. Messier was involved in a serious fight on 24 March 1661. The Iroquois killed several colonists and took several captives, including Messier. Among those killed was ancestor Pierre Martin (also of the Tetreau branch), who arrived with Messier in Le Grande Recrue. Pierre had married four months earlier and his wife, eighteen-year-old Marie Pontonnier, was carrying their child, ancestor Marie Martin.
In time, Anne believed that Michel Messier also was dead. He was not. Messier managed to escape and, after an arduous journey of traveling only at night for nine days, made his way to the Dutch force at Fort Orange (present-day Albany, New York). From there he was able to reach Nieuw-Netherlands (present-day New York City). He caught a ship to Acadia and then another to Quebec and then upriver to Ville-Marie. He returned home by the end of 1663. In 1682, the Iroquois attacked La Salle and Tonti’s Fort Saint-Louis on the Illinois River (present-day Starved Rock State Park between Chicago and Peoria). Governor-General Le Febvre De La Barre responded by leading a major French expedition against the Iroquois in the summer of 1684. Among the many who took part was Michel Messier. In the spring of 1692, an overwhelming force of Onandagas Iroquois overcame Messier and his companions. In July 1693, he appeared at Ville-Marie after twenty-five days of walking through the wilderness.
Ancestor Nicolas Pinel (Chicoine lineage) worked the land at Sillery near Quebec. He died in 1655 from an arquebus fired by an Iroquois warrior in the field.
The Jesuit Relations, published annually, did not hide the fact that New France was a dangerous place to live. Numerous stories contained accounts of violent deaths at the hands of the Iroquois. Their raiding parties in large numbers were seemingly everywhere. And yet, France had been a battleground for centuries. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was only the most recent near-apocalyptic experience for the people of France. Life was a nearly continuous threat to existence, if not by violence, then by disease.
Ancestor Pierre I Chicoine arrived at Ville-Marie on Montreal Island in 1660 and became part of the militia of Sainte-Famille, a flying squad to aggressively defend the small settlement from the sudden attacks by the Iroquois. He married Paris-born Madeleine Chrétien in 1670. Pierre with his good friend Charles LeMoyne were the first to settle with their families across the St. Lawrence River on the “South Shore” (with far greater exposure to Iroquois attack) at what is today the thriving suburb of Longueuil. They constructed a fort there with four towers between 1685 and 1690. Pierre and his family later moved downriver to the northeast to what became his seigneury of Bellevue in the vicinity of present-day town of Verchères.
Ancestor Michel Theodore dit Gilles (Chicoine lineage through the Tetreau branch), a twenty-two-year-old mason, arrived in New France as part of Le Grande Recrue of 1653. He married ancestor Jacqueline Lagrange in 1658. The couple had two daughters. One was ancestor Jeanne Theodore. Michel was a member of the militia of Sainte-Famille at Ville-Marie. On 4 May 1664, an Iroquois war party killed Michel while he was out hunting on the island, several miles from the settlement.
Ancestor Jacques Joyal (Montagne lineage through the Allard branch) arrived in New France in 1656 at the age of sixteen. He was a gunsmith, a profession which he learned from his father in France. He then apprenticed in Quebec to a master gunsmith. Jacques also learned several native dialects while engaged by the Jesuit missionary priest Father Simon LeMoyne. Jacques’ skills were very much in demand and served him well. He became successful and wealthy. He married ancestor Marie Gertrude Moral, daughter of a royal official/judge in Trois Rivières.
The early 1660s were dark and dangerous times for the besieged French colonists. In 1665, French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert ordered the Carignan-Salières Regiment to New France. Seven ships sailed from June through September. As their first task, the soldiers built forts at strategic locations along the Richelieu River, which ran from south to north into the St. Lawrence River, not far downriver from Montreal Island. The Richelieu was a natural route for Iroquois advancing northward to attack Ville-Marie and the outlying settlements.
The first campaign took place in the winter of 1666. Governor de Rémy de Courcelles overrode the objections of the military officers and led an excursion without indigenous guides. It was not only ill-timed, but poorly planned and, as a result, a failure. Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy led the second expedition with the full force of over a thousand fighting men in the summer of 1666. They were armed with flintlock muskets, bayonets, swords and pistols. The fast-moving columns destroyed four Mohawk villages, their crops and their food supplies. The Mohawks sued for peace. The regiment returned to France in 1688. However, a number of soldiers accepted an offer from the Crown to receive land – this idea of veteran soldiers-turned-farmers would serve as a strong militia base. Approximately 285 soldiers chose to remain in New France.
Among the ancestors, who came to North America with the Carignan-Salières Regiment were:
Adrien Betourne (Chicoine lineage)
Pierre Handgrave (Chicoine lineage through Loiselle branch)
André Jarret dit Beauregard, lieutenant (Chicoine lineage through Loiselle branch)
Iroquois killed two of his son-in-laws in 1689 and in 1691 and killed Andre at Verchères on 13 April 1692
Michel Brouillet did LaViolette (Chicoine lineage through Bernard branch)
Jean Tellier dit LaFortune (Chicoine lineage through Bernard branch)
Isaac-Etienne Paquet dit Lavallée (Montagne lineage)
François Chevrefils dit Lalime (Montagne lineage through the Allard branch)
Two other ancestors came with companies from other regiments:
François Bacquet dit LaMontange, Poitou Regiment (Montagne lineage)
Honoré Martel dit LaMontagne, L’Allier Regiment (Montagne lineage)
Tradition holds that the Carignan-Salières Regiment fought in the Battle of Saint Gotthard in present-day Hungary in 1664 against the Ottoman Turks. That likely derives from the fact that four companies from four separate regiments were added to the Carignan-Salières Regiment. The Carignan-Salières Regiment was raised just prior to being sent to New France. Any veteran of the Battle of Saint Gotthard likely was from the Berthier Company of the Poitou Regiment, the Monteil Company of the L’Aller Regiment, the La Brisandière Company of the Orléans Regiment or the La Durantaye Company of the Chambelle Regiment. Ancestor François Bacquet was thirty-two years old in 1664 and very well may have been a veteran soldier. He might have seen action at Saint Gotthard. Ancestor Honoré Martel was of similar age and, like François Bacquet, might have seen action at Saint Gotthard. It is not definitively known.
The French Crown subsequently established a program, Filles du roi, whom the government recruited through churches to go to New France to provide wives and raise families. An estimated 800 young women did so between 1663 and 1673.
Among the ancestors who came to New Franc as Filles du roi were:
Madeleine Chretien (Chicoine lineage)
Catherine Clerice (Chicoine lineage)
Marguerite Deshaies (Chicoine lineage)
Catherine Pillat (Chicoine lineage)
Marie Bardou (Chicoine lineage)
Jeanne Servignan (Chicoine lineage)
Anne Lagou (Chicoine lineage)
Marie DuBois (Chicoine lineage)
Françoise Michel (Chicoine lineage)
Nicole Philippeau (Chicoine lineage)
Marguerite Viard (Chicoine lineage)
François Boivin (Chicoine lineage)
Marie Fauçon (Chicoine lineage)
Denise Marier (Chicoine lineage)
Jeanne Petite (Chicoine lineage)
Catherine Pillat (Chicoine lineage)
Jeanne Anguille (Montagne lineage)
Catherine Durand (Montagne lineage)
Madeleine Boutet (Montagne lineage)
Marie Meunier (Montagne lineage)
In 1667, ancestor Toussaint Beaudry (Chicoine lineage through the Loiselle branch) accompanied the explorer Nicolas Perrot into the western Great Lakes to break the monopoly of the Ottawa people as middlemen in the fur trade. Beaudry and Perrot made their way to Chequamegon Bay (present-day Ashland and Bayfield, Wisconsin), not far east of present-day Duluth, Minnesota. As a result of the Iroquois invasion of Lake Huron in 1648-1650, many Ottawa (Odawa), including Kiskakon, mad their way west to Green Bay and, later, further west to Chequamegon Bay. Potawatomi at Chequamegon Bay invited Perrot and Beaudry to their village in Green Bay, which the two Frenchmen accepted. This was long before Vince Lombardi and the Packers.
Many French soldiers, who came to North America, settled in Quebec after discharging from the military service. Among those was ancestor Antoine Fournier dit Préfontaine (Chicoine lineage). He came to North America in 1685 as a soldier in Compagnie de Troyes, Troupes de la marine. Chevalier de Troyes led the daring 1686 expedition into the far north to Hudson’s Bay. Among his fellow officers were the three LeMoyne brothers, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, Jacques Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène and Paul Le Moyne de Maricourt – all of whom later established well deserved reputations for their military prowess. They traveled for over eighty days across nearly a thousand miles through wilderness. They captured three bases of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Ancestor Jean-Baptiste Courchesne (Allard lineage) was born into the Kishkakon of the Ottawa (or Odawa) around 1670. The Anishinaabe word ota’wa’ means “to trade.” The French initially referred to many Anishinaabe with whom they traded as Odawa and they wrote it as Ouatouais. The Odawa were middlemen in the fur trade with each family controlling certain routes and trading relationships. They controlled the Great Lakes. The Ottawa presence, including the Kiskakon clan, was centered on their most important village Waganawkezee at the Straits of Michilimackinac. It was there that the Odawa controlled all trade between Lake Huron on the east to Lake Michigan on the west (and beyond to the western edge of Lake Superior). This was the heart of the upper Midwest of the North American continent. The Odawa oversaw peace in the region and, when necessary, orchestrated war. And they were adept at playing off the French, the British and, later, the Americans against one another. Of all the Odawa, the Kiskakon were the most Christianized, due to the efforts of the Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette. Many Kiskakon women were intimate with French men. For a French woman to marry a Kiskakon man was rather unusual. Both benefitted trade relations between the Kiskakon and French. At some point, he met and fell in love with ancestor Marguerite Lafond at Batiscan. They married in 1710.
Among the many voyageurs in the fur trade among the ancestors, none was as prolific as Gabriel Allard (Montagne lineage through the Allard branch). He made nine long journeys into the West and back over a sixteen-year period from 1736 to 1752. His first engagement was to Detroit. He was a frequent visitor to Michilimackinac.
In 1701, the Treaty of Montreal re-established peace among the French, their native allies and the Iroquois along the St. Lawrence. In that same year, ancestor Pierre Benoit dit LaForest was among those who went ashore with Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac and established Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit (on the present-day site of the city of Detroit).
The grandson of Pierre I and Madeleine, ancestor Pierre III Chicoine, accompanied the explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de La Vérendrye into the west beyond Lake Superior from 1738 to 1740. They wintered on the Missouri River with the Mandan people in what became the state of North Dakota. The expedition played an important and historic role.
During the American Revolution, the Continentals invaded British-occupied Canada. Ancestor Pierre Lajeunesse (Chicoine lineage through the Lajeunesse branch) and his brother welcomed the Americans and their idea of democracy. His brother traveled to Philadelphia, met with Ben Franklin and explained to the Continental Congress that many of the French habitants (peasants) could not read their fliers. The parish priests, in favor of the British after the passage of the Quebec Act, were distorting the Continental’s message of democracy. The British Crown tried ancestor Pierre Lajeunesse for treason for his daring rescue of American prisoners of war from Quebec City after the failed American attack. Lajeunesse served time in prison.
The French Canadians of Jefferson endured epic snow blizzards, historic floods and devastating epidemics, but endured. They thrived and prolifically multiplied. They were known throughout the region for their expertise in raising crops. Jefferson, South Dakota remains a Chicoine/Montagne center to the present day.