I have a fair amount of information about my direct line ancestor Maurice ARRIVÉ thanks to the research carried out by my father in the 1970's and 1980's – before he passed away in 1989 – who spent many hours going over countless documents in public libraries and archives. He wrote an article about Maurice ARRIVÉ in 1979 (see reference below) and much of what follows was taken from that article. He also researched all the other branches of our family tree, including those of my mother, and today I am very grateful to have the complete 10- to 15-generation fan diagram of my family tree going back to each individual GGG...Grandparent who came to Canada in the mid-1600's and, in most cases, also the names of their parents who never left France. I consider myself fortunate to have all that information at hand, most of it from my father; my main contribution has been to digitize all that data, which allows me to display it electronically.
Where did Maurice ARRIVÉ come from?
The surname ARRIVÉ seems to have been quite common in France during the 17th century, particularly in the Poitou region because at least four individuals with that surname immigrated from France to Canada between 1650 and the early 1660s. They are Maurice, my ancestor, who arrived around 1650; Jean, who might have been related to Maurice, possibly his cousin or his nephew, was at least 20 years younger than him, arrived some 10 years later in 1660; Pierre who arrived around 1662 and settled first in the Trois-Rivières region and later moved to Boucherville near Montreal; and Jacques dit DELISLE, who was originally from Isle of Ré (hence is name dit DELISLE) and whose descendants were called ARRIVÉ, LARRIVÉ and DELISLE. All four originated from the Poitou region in west-central France, but, except possibly for Maurice and Jean, they are not known to be related to one another.
The parents of Maurice ARRIVÉ were Lucas and Marguerite MARGAUT. Based on information obtained from documents related to Maurice's first marriage, the family lived in the parish of Saligny in Poitou. However, information pertaining to his second marriage, suggests that they originated from St-Denis-de-la-Chevasse. The two parishes are situated only 5 km apart, in the present department of Vendée, about 15 km north of La Roche-sur-Yon.
The birth date of Maurice is uncertain. According to the 1666 and 1681 census, he was born in 1601, but the 1667 census states that he was only 55 years old at the time, which would put his birth year at 1612. This latter date is more likely because his last child was born about 1681 when Maurice would have been 69 years old if he was born in 1612, rather than 80 if his birth year was 1601. In either case, my ancestor Maurice is believed to have arrived in New France in 1649 or 1650 as a single man, between the ages of 35 and 50, practicing masonry as a trade.
Maurice ARRIVÉ married twice
Maurice ARRIVÉ was living in Québec city in August 1654 when he married Jacquette TOURAUDE. She was the 43-year-old daughter of François and Marthe Noël d'ANGOULÈME. It was her third marriage. In France, she had been married to Pierre JAROUSSEAU with whom she had at least one daughter, born in 1641, by the name of Suzanne. After Pierre's death, mother and daughter came to New France to join Françoise, Jacquette's older sister, who had emigrated in 1646 with her husband Jacques ARCHAMBAULT and their six children.
Shortly after her arrival in 1652, Jacquette TOURAUDE signed a marriage contract with Jacques PRÉVIRAU, a lad from her own region of Angoumois. The ceremony was celebrated at Robert Giffard's Manor in Beauport. But only a few months after the wedding, Jacques died and Jacquette became a widow for the second time. She was 43 years old, but she must have been attractive enough because Maurice ARRIVÉ, a confirmed bachelor, was unable to resist her charms. So, on the 25th of August 1654, the master mason married Jacquette TOURAUDE.
Maurice ARRIVÉ and Jacquette TOURAUDE did not sign a formal marriage contract; instead, they signed a mutual donation agreement before notary Auber on the 25th of February 1663, and again before notary Paul Vachon on the 27th of January 1666. There were no children from this union. Jacquette died at age 59 on or about the 21st of April 1670; she was buried at Ste. Famille, Ile d'Orléans. The inventory of the communal goods was carried out by notary Paul Vachon on July 26 of the same year.
In the meantime, my ancestor Maurice, who was not getting any younger, was determined to find a new bride, quickly. He met and married Françoise PÉDENELLE, a 23-year-old King's Daughter. Her father was Pierre PÉDENEAU and her mother, Marie BOESTE; they were from the town of Loix, on the Isle of Ré, situated in front of the city of La Rochelle in west-central France. The marriage contract was passed before notary Duquet, on the 26th of May 1670, and the very simple religious ceremony took place June 2nd at Ste. Famille church on Ile d'Orléans.
Six children were born from this union: Maurice in 1671, Simon in 1673, François in 1674, Marguerite in 1677, Joseph in 1679 and Antoine around 1681. The last two died at a young age, although Antoine did reach the age of 12. At the 1681 census, three sons and one daughter were recorded. At that time, Maurice ARRIVÉ owned one ox and seven acres of land on l'Ile d'Orléans. He was a neighbor of Jean ARRIVÉ, who also originated from the Poitou region of France. The two may have been related. In his marriage contract written by notary P. Vachon, on the 5th of February 1671, Jean stated that he was a cousin of Suzanne JAROUSSEL, the daughter of Jacquette TOURAUDE.
Activities of Maurice ARRIVÉ
The archives show that
my ancestor Maurice negotiated several business deals in Quebec City
and Sillery soon after his arrival in New France sometime between 1648 and 1650. Most
involved the sale or concession of land, construction contracts, the
acknowledgment or receipt for debts, etc. In 1656 he and his wife
Jacquette TOURAUDE settled permanently in the Ste. Famille Parish on Ile d'Orléans. On the 2nd of April of that year, Charles de
LAUZON gave him a parcel of land measuring about three acres in the Lirec
seigniory, which encompasses today's Ste. Famille and St. Pierre parishes. At
the 1666 census, he was well established on Ile d'Orléans with his wife;
he had two employees: Jean ROGER, a mason like himself, and a lad by the name
of Julien. At the 1667 census, he declared himself to be the farmer of madame
d'AILLEBOUST; he owned some twelve acres of land and five heads of cattle.
Maurice ARRIVÉ seems to have owned two parcels of land on Ile d'Orléans: the first, which he obtained from Charles de LAUZON, is located about one mile east of Ste. Famille church, on lots 73 and 74, and parts of lots 75, 78, 79 and 81 of the present land cadaster. In the Archivist's Report for 1949-50-51, it is recorded as land parcel no. 23. The second is located two miles further east on present day lots 19 to 24; it is land parcel no. 6. He sold part of parcel no. 23 to David ASSELIN on the 13th of March 1666 before notary Paul Vachon and another portion of the same land parcel to Simon LEREAU, on the 24th of June 1667, before notary Duquet.
On November 30, 1668, he bought a parcel of land from Jean CHARPENTIER, probably parcel no. 6 (notary P. Vachon), and on the 22nd of October 1671, he sold part of that land to Symphorien ROUSSEAU and gave the rest to the children of Jacquette TOURAUDE (Paul Vachon). On the 18th of August 1679, before the same notary, he forgave Symphorien ROUSSEAU for his debt on the land that he had sold him in 1671.
Before his death, Maurice ARRIVÉ negotiated a few more agreements with Joseph BONNEAU dit LA BÉCASSE, Louis ROUER, sieur de Villeray, Abraham MÉTHOT, Ange GRIGNON et Jean LEROUGE. These legal documents bear the signatures of notary Gilles Rageot (October 18, 1682, and October 2, and 20, 1684) and notary Genaple (October 24, 1683).
It is quite clear that my ancestor Maurice ARRIVÉ was very active until the end of his life, which was rather long for that period: he was at least 74 years old when he died at St. François, Ile d'Orléans, on the 27th of August 1687. His wife, Françoise PÉDENELLE, survived him 19 years; she died on the 8th of July 1706, and was buried at St. François, Ile d'Orléans.
The descendants of Maurice ARRIVÉ
The eldest son of my ancestor Maurice was given the
same first name as his father. He was baptized at Ste. Famille parish, on Ile
d'Orléans, on the 14th of March 1671 and was married in 1709 at age 38, to Anne
LAISNÉ dit LALIBERTÉ, the 15-year-old daughter of Bernard and Anne DIONNE. They had six
children: two boys who died young, and four daughters, three of whom married.
He died in 1733, at age 62 and was buried in the St. François (Ile d'Orléans)
parish cemetery. Maurice's descendants are named LANDRY, TRUDEL, HOTTE and others, but none bear the surname ARRIVÉ.
The second son of Maurice ARRIVÉ, Simon, was born
on the 23rd of December 1672. He was baptized at St. François, Ile d'Orléans,
on the 3rd of February 1673. He was married in 1709, the same year as his older
brother. His wife, Catherine GARANT, was a young widow aged 25. Notary
Chamballon wrote their marriage contract on the 17th of July, or 12 days before
the religious ceremony. We know of two children from that marriage: Geneviève,
who was the first ARRIVÉ/LARRIVÉ to marry outside the Québec region, at La
Visitation de Champlain, in 1730, and Jean-Louis, born on the 20th of June
1715, three months after the death of his father. Jean-Louis married Marguerite
DENIS/DANY in 1751, far from home, at Fort St. Frederic, south of Lake
Champlain. He has no known descendants.
The task of ensuring the continuity of the
ARRIVÉ/LARRIVÉ lineage became the responsibility of François, Maurice ARRIVÉ's
third son, born on Christmas day 1674 and baptized on the 29th of December at
Ste. Famille, Ile d'Orléans. With Marie-Madeleine LAISNÉ dit LALIBERTÉ (Anne's
sister), whom he married on Christmas eve 1703, he had eight children, among
them, Louis-François, who remained single all his life and died at age 82, and
three other sons, François, Jean-Baptiste and Joseph, all of whom had children
bearing the LARRIVÉ surname. However, only François, son of François and
grandson of Maurice, had boys, Jean and Joseph-Louis, to carry the
LARRIVÉ dit MAURICE surname. (This is the way that the descendants of Maurice ARRIVÉ
came to be called, probably to distinguish them from the descendants of Jean
ARRIVÉ when the two families began to disperse along the south shore of the St.
Lawrence River, first in front of Ile d'Orléans and, eventually, much further.)
Many of Maurice ARRIVÉ's descendants have settled
in county Bellechasse, mostly at St. Gervais and St. Magloire. One of his
granddaughters, Marie Hélène, daughter of François, married Pierre BENETEAU in
Berthier (Québec) in 1722. Their descendants
have populated the area around Detroit and Windsor, and many have become
prominent citizens of that region. Near the end of the 18th century, Maurice ARRIVÉ's great-great-grandson Joseph LARRIVÉ dit MAURICE, a young lad in his mid-twenties, went to Ste-Geneviève-de-Batiscan where, in 1800, he married a
woman from that area by the name of Marguerite MASSICOT. Our family descends from that line.
One of the two sons of Joseph who reached
adulthood, Siffroy, after marrying Marie SAUVAGEAU, at La Visitation de
Champlain, in 1837, went to work at Ste. Flore in the Three-Rivers region, as a
lumberman. Later, he and his family settled permanently at Les Piles (St.
Jacques), along the shores of the St. Maurice River, where Joseph, Abraham,
Alfred Siffroy, Basile and Napoléon were born. Most of the LARIVÉ/LARRIVÉE
families that inhabited the Mauricie region during the first half of the 20th
century descend from them.
Joseph's other son, Abraham, my great-great-grandfather, participated with
other citizens of Batiscan in the great migration of the 1840's and 1850's
to the shores of Georgian Bay (Huronia). This wave resulted from years of bad
harvests in the Quebec and Three-Rivers region. We believe that Abraham,
himself a farmer, would have moved his family in 1854. Transportation was by
train from York (Toronto) to Barrie, and from there, by stagecoach for about 50
kilometers to Penetanguishene where land could be bought at a good price.
Abraham's wife, Flavie MARCHILDON, died in Penetanguishene
in 1855. She and Abraham had six children, among them my great-grandfather
Joseph. In 1856, Abraham remarried with Marie-Apolline TROTTIER with whom he
had two sons and one daughter. It was at Lafontaine (near Penetanguishene) that Abraham and his
descendants permanently adopted the surname MAURICE.
The descendants of Abraham MAURICE have propagated
in Huronia and elsewhere in northern Ontario and Abitibi. Two of the daughters
of Abraham and Flavie, Marie and Olive, married two LAFRENIÈRE brothers Ovide Benjamin and Olivier, and went to settle in
Manitoba, at St. Léon. After a few years, Olive and Olivier left Manitoba and went to Minnesota.
The MAURICE surname in Canada is not limited to the
descendants of Maurice ARRIVÉ. There was also a Claude MAURICE dit LAFANTAISIE,
a soldier in the LaGrois Company, who married Madeleine DUMOUCHEL in 1699 in
Montréal. They left many descendants that have spread throughout the Montreal
region and along the Ottawa Valley.
References:
Ovide D. Maurice (1979): Mon ancêtre Maurice Arrivé et sa descandance; L'Ancêtre, Bulletin de la Société de généalogie de Québec, Vol 6, No 4, décembre 1979
