Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 3

The French in Gaspé, 1534 to 1760

by David Lee

Part II: The Communities

Pabos, Grande-Rivière

The eastern coastline of Gaspé affords few harbours large enough to shelter seagoing fishing vessels. Fishermen preferred to anchor at Port Daniel or Paspébiac but the best beaches and harbours on this coast were in the bays of Pabos and Grande-Rivière. Into these bays flowed large rivers whose alluvia were deposited at their mouths forming typical Gaspé barachois or lagoons. These lagoons had good beaches and good fishing nearby; they were spacious but could admit only shallow-draught chaloupes. But Pabos and Grande-Rivière became more than typical Gaspé fishing stations: they grew into substantial settlements of resident fishermen. Many ships came from France every year to fish or buy fish caught by local fishermen.

Perhaps the success was due to the energies of its seigneurs. Jean-François Lefebvre de Bellefeuille and his sons François and Georges were the only Gaspé seigneurs who lived on their land for a long period. The Bellefeuille family seems to have settled people along the coastline from Pabos to Grande-Rivière (about 10 miles) even though their seigneurial grant included only the area around Baie-de-Pabos. They appear to have purchased the seigneury from the heirs of René Hubert around 1729 and held it until after the Conquest. Thirty years of permanent residence on their land must have given them particular knowledge about the character and resources of Gaspé which made their settlement succeed.

The Bellefeuilles began to gather settlers at Pabos quite early, for 30 inhabitants are reported resident there in 1730.¹ The population must have increased over the years but we have no accurate figures. The English made no estimate of their numbers because Bellefeuille and many of his settlers fled into the woods when the English troops arrived (1758), and were never taken; however, since Captain Bell noted that they burned 27 houses at Pabos and 60 at Grande-Rivière,² there must have been at least 200 people in the community.

Wolfe was angry that his men burned the houses and thus caused the inhabitants to flee, understandably expecting no quarter. He sent a chaloupe back to the area to assure the safety of the settlers but got no response. We do not know their fate except that François Bellefeuille was still alive in 1765, when he sold his seigneury to Frederick Haldimand.³

It is obvious that by 1758, Grande-Rivière was a more considerable settlement than Pabos. Captain Bell reports that the Bellefeuille manor house was at Grande-Rivière. The English destroyed 10,000 quintals of fish and 80 chaloupes at Grande-Rivière while at Pabos they destroyed only 3,500 quintals of fish and 40 chaloupes. The destruction reported indicates a large and flourishing community, for the damage also included considerable fishing equipment, food and clothing provisions, salt (for the fish), livestock and 60 casks of molasses.⁴

The twin communities of Pabos and Grande-Rivière were served in the 1750s by two or three missionaries. The parish register for the years 1751-56 still exists.⁵ It provides us with the names of nearly 100 residents of the area and, although this is obviously an incomplete list, it reveals some interesting aspects of the local society.

During these five years we know of twelve deaths, half of which were either through drownings or shipwreck. All were adult males, except one female infant. The mortality of only one infant in 19 births indicates a healthy community with good diet and accommodation. These are very incomplete figures but they indicate an infant mortality rate in Gaspé of only 52 deaths per 1,000 live births. In comparison, the infant mortality rate in New France for the same period was about 246 per 1,000.⁶ Furthermore, there were no deaths of mothers at childbirth either. The other deaths naturally left several widows but many of the men were not married anyhow. In fact, adult men outnumbered women on the parish register by 48 to 29. There was one single female of marriageable age but she was the sister of the seigneur. Perhaps a seigneurs sister did not feel the economic necessity to marry as strongly as females of lower economic levels.

In this remote part of New France there were few people of equal social standing for the Bellefeuilles to socialize with. It was, no doubt, the isolation of Gaspé which prevented most seigneurs from residing on their concessions, yet the Bellefeuille family stayed there for nearly 30 years. However, by the 1750s, at least, they had a large family. The Lefebvre de Bellefeuilles of Gaspé, it appears from Tanguay,⁷ were late-comers to New France. Tanguay says that Jean-François Lefebvre de Bellefeuille came to Canada from Rheims in France. He had at least two and probably three sons but after he died (sometime between 1745 and 1752), it was François who carried on his work. In 1749, François was commissioned agent of the Intendant of Quebec for the Gaspé coast and Bay of Chaleurs. The same year he married Marie-Joseph Herlet Cournoyer, a member of a prominent Canadian family, at Trois-Rivières; they had at least 11 children.⁸

François presided over a large seigneurial family at Pabos in the 1750s. Living in the community with him were his widowed mother, his unmarried brother and sister and his second sister and her husband whom she married in Gaspé in 1753. During this period a nephew and at least two of his four children were born in Gaspé. For her later children, those born in 1756 and 1757, Mme. Bellefeuille journeyed back home to Trois-Rivières, probably because of the imminent danger of English invasion. When she was in Gaspé she faithfully performed her seigneurial obligations, such as being witness to the baptisms and marriages of many of the settlers. Unlike some seigneurs elsewhere in New France, the Bellefeuilles did not live as poorly as their tenants; in fact, the English attackers indicated that the seigneurial manor house which they plundered was large and well furnished.⁹

In 1737, Georges Lefebvre de Bellefeuille was commissioned with the duties of sub-délégué de l'intendant, agent of the Intendant, in Gaspé. His function was to settle disputes which arose among both the resident fishermen and the visiting summer fishermen.¹⁰ Sometimes residents took their cases to the Intendant at Quebec who then simply turned around and ordered Bellefeuille to settle the matter.¹¹ As well, occasionally Bellefeuille was asked to enforce decisions which the Intendant had made¹² but, as we saw earlier, Bellefeuille did not always obey and there was little the Intendant could do about it. By the 1750s, when war was imminent, his brother François was the sub-délégué; François was given the additional and unspecified military duty of "Commandant for the King for the whole coast of Gaspé and Baie des Chaleurs.¹³

There were only a few residents of the area who could approach the Bellefeuilles in social standing. In this second group must certainly be included Jean Barré of Granville in Normandy. He was noted as a prominent resident as early as 1747, when he was entrusted with organizing a guard and lookout in response to the threat of English attack.¹⁴ He is noted variously as an habitant, fisherman and ship's captain. In the Gaspé context, "ship's captain" most likely indicates he owned his own fishing vessel, something larger than a mere chaloupe. Although he (and his wife) appears to have been illiterate (i.e., he could not sign his own name), he continued to be recognized as a prominent resident throughout the 1750s and in 1759, after Gaspé had been ravaged, the government entrusted him with the captaincy of a relief ship sent to Canada from Bordeaux.¹⁵

If there were others in this second social group, they would be those men who had property or responsible positions. First, there would be the missionaries. These men were responsible for an enormous parish extending from Shediac in what is now New Brunswick to Kamouraska which is well up-river from Rimouski; still they chose to reside at Grande-Rivière (rather than at other central locations like Pabos, Gaspé Bay or Mont-Louis), presumably to be near the centre of society and authority. As well, there would be the maîtres de chaloupe who, in the Gaspé context, probably owned their own chaloupes or were entrusted with one by another owner. An ordinance of October, 1746, indicates that at least some of the inhabitants must have owned their own chaloupes.¹⁶ Then there were the maítres de grave who were responsible for allocating beach lots and directing the drying operations there. Also mentioned in the parish records is an écuier (with no elaboration on the source of his income) and a bourgeois (perhaps a merchant or importer?). These men were all literate (enough, at least, to write their names) and probably constituted the only residents with whom the Bellefeuilles would mix socially.

The parish records show, however, that there were many residents not in the first two social groups who also could write. This is a surprising number but, of course, they all seem to have come from France where educational standards were presumably higher than those one would expect to see among people raised in the New World. We know the origin of nearly 20 of these ordinary fishermen and almost all of them come from Normandy or Brittany. This third (and largest) social group included a few specialized occupations, such as carpenter, but it consisted principally of ordinary fishermen who did not own their own chaloupes but worked for the seigneur or the other chaloupe owners.

We do not know if Bellefeuille was the principal chaloupe owner or it he actually owned any, but we do know that he was the wealthiest resident in all of Gaspé. We know nothing of his seigneurial land arrangements with the settlers of his grant. Normally a seigneurs wealth lay in his land but here there was little agriculture practised (Captain Belt says that the settlers had only small gardens of turnips and cabbages and some livestock). Bellefeuille presumably exacted one-eleventh of the fish caught by his settlers as his seigneurial right. Leasing beach lots to visiting French fishermen would also have been an attractive supplement to his income. His titles as the Intendant's agent and Commandant do not seem to have brought in any money but they must have added to his social standing.

Pabos, Grande-Rivière flourished because its seigneur lived permanently on his concession where he could direct its affairs personally. Personal direction was necesary, for only a resident could recognize the tine of development which the distinctive or particular resources of Gaspé required. To flourish, a seigneury also required the direction of someone with the capital needed for initial investment in buildings and boats. The direction could not come from a wealthy seigneur living in Quebec or Trois-Rivières, nor from the government. And there is no evidence that Bellefeuille received any government assistance; he must have used his own money. Even though his money may initially have come from Quebec and even though he may have retained his family bonds in Canada, his seigneury, once established, naturally became economically bound to France and its market for cod. Again the result was that Gaspé residents lived a life almost independent of their titular superiors at Quebec.

Bellefeuille and most of his settlers lived at Grande-Rivière which was outside his seigneury of Pabos but the government did nothing about this squatting; it did not care, or perhaps, even know about it. It went further and relinquished to Bellefeuille judicial and military authority extending far beyond his seigneury. Pabos and Grande-Rivière were remote outposts and the government was only interested in them when Quebec was threatened by English attack. They received no assistance from the government but still grew into a much more substantial community than historians have heretofore thought.