PIERRE COUC - Mémoires
Page 37, Mémoires No. 139. (1)
... bound himself to Sévérin Ameau, this resourceful Parisian, having arrived in 1649 as a solider and who, with his educational background, became an employee of the Court of Justice; he became, then, notary of Trois-Rivières, right up to a venerable old age; there was also Jean Péré, a young merchant from La Rochelle, who came for the trading and who surveyed New France far and wide for more than twenty years; an occasional but faithful friend since he appears regularly at the baptisms and marriages of the Couc children. Among the settlers, there are Jacques Ménard, the wheelwright who always just married and François Fafard who just had a son; there are also the Crevier, Christophe and Jeanne, who lost their son to the Iroquois in 1653, but they still have two sons and a daughter married to Pierre Boucher; it is Jeanne Crevier who, on July 14, 1657, who was the godmother at the baptism of the first Couc baby, little Jeanne who would have tragic destiny.
In order to strengthen his marriage, now that he is a father of a family, Pierre established a civil marriage act on August 24 with two new witnesses for Marie, and two years later, he has Sévérin Ameau draw up another marriage contract in which he designates Marie as co-owner of all his property. Did he worry that his marriage with an Indian would be considered invalid and that his wife and his children would have to suffer the consequences if he disappeared? For sure, the times were unsettling and the Iroquois had begun anew their hostility. The Mohawks again had attacked the Hurons, who took refuge near Québec.
Pierre Couc settled in Trois-Rivières
Despite all his problems, Pierre Couc established himself; he purchased from the brothers Trottier twenty meters of land right in Trois-Rivières, just enough to put a house and garden, and he hired himelf out to work for the ironsmith/locksmith Barthélémy Bertaux. However he was hardly settled when problems overwhelmed the young household; first of all, it was Jeanne Crevier - whose quality of godmother did not move her to any degree of pity - who reclaimed the 248 poinds which she had lent to Pierre and that he disputed by alleging that she sold him wine that was too expensive; in effect, the Crevier had a large turnover of spirits, the sale of alcohol being more lucrative than the bakery. Then, it was Sébastien Pronnevot who reclaimed the sum of thirty pounds for the porcelain that he delivered; Pierre was required to pay or to give the equivalent in beaver pelts. The poor man had a tough time setting up his household! Weighed down with bad luck, he injured himself in his work and had to be cared for by surgeon François Bellerman for two months; this person reclaimed sixty pounds; Pierre protested the enormous medical costs and we can not blame him when we think about what medecine consisted of in the seventeeth century! Having decided not to let himself be strangled, he started legal proceedings against his employer to recoup his expenses; after arbitration, his case was decided in his favor, however it is doubtful that he was able to keep his employment. ...
(1) MÉMOIRES de la Société généalogique canadienne-française, No. 139, Vol. XXX, No. 1, Jan-Fév-Mars 1979, p. 37.
Translated by Norm Léveillée, December 2000.
Reprinted with permission:
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