Negabamat And Nenasesenat Were The
First To Establish Their Families There.
On the last day of June, 1665, we
will find the eloquent Negabamat, then a resident of Quebec, sent by his
tribe to harangue and compliment the great Marquis of Tracy on his arrival
at Quebec.
(Relations, 1665, p. 4.) Father LeJeune, a learned Jesuit,
had charge and control over the workmen who were sent out from France at
the expense of the Commandeur de Sillery; and on the 22nd February, 1639,
a permanent bequest was authentically recorded in favor of the mission by
the Commandeur placing at interest, secured on the Hotel-de-Ville at
Paris, a sum of 20,000 livres tournois. Palisades had been used originally
to protect the settlement; in 1651, the Governor of Quebec, Jean de
Lauzon, strengthened the palisades and added redoubts. [172] In 1647 the
church of the mission had been placed under the invocation of St. Michael
the Archangel; hence Sillery Cove, once called St. Joseph's, was, in 1647,
named St Michael's Cove.
The Commandeur de Sillery extended his munificence to several other
missionary establishments in Canada and other places. What with the
building of churches, monasteries and hospitals in Champagne, France; at
Annecy, Savoy; at Paris, and elsewhere, he must, indeed, have been for
those days a veritable Rothschild in worldly wealth.
This worthy ecclesiastic died in Paris on the 26th September, 1640, at the
age of sixty-three years, bequeathing his immense wealth to the Hotel-Dieu
of that city. Such was, in a few words, the noble career of one of the
large-minded pioneers of civilization in primitive Canada, le Commandeur
Noel Brulart de Sillery - such the origin of the name of "Our Parish," our
sweet Canadian Windermere.
One of the first incidents, two years after the opening of the mission,
was the visit paid to it by Madame de la Peltrie, the benevolent founder
of the Ursuline Convent at Quebec. This took place on the 2nd August,
1639, the day after her arrival from Dieppe and stately reception by the
Governor, M. deMontmagny, who had asked her to dinner the day previous.
This same year the nuns called Hospitalieres (Hotel-Dieu) opened a
temporary hospital at Sillery, as the inmates and resident Indians
suffered fearfully from the ravages of small-pox. In attempting a sketch
of the Sillery of ancient days, we cannot follow a truer nor pleasanter
guide than the old historian of Canada in the interesting notes he
published on this locality in 1855, after having minutely examined every
inch of ground. "A year after their arrival at Quebec," says Abbe Ferland,
"in August, 1640, the Hospitalieres nuns, desirous of being closer
to the Sillery mission, where they were having their convent built
according to the wishes of the Duchess D'Aiguillon, left Quebec and
located themselves in the house of M. de Puiseaux. They removed from this
house at the beginning of the year 1641 to take possession of their
convent, a mile distant.
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