Joseph Ménard, Voyageur

The Challenge

Joseph Ménard married Angélique Guilbault, Gabriel Guilbault's daughter, at Rigaud on 30 January 1815. A week later he stood, and signed, at Gabriel's own second marriage. He was a neighbour of the Guilbaults for most of his life, and in 1820 he went into the North-West Company's service.

Following him means keeping him apart from the other men of his name:

• Joseph Amable Ménard (1754–1824) of the Grand Brûlé, St-Benoît — a different family, married at Oka the same week in February 1798, four times married, unable to sign.
• His own son Joseph, born at Oka in April 1799 — also a voyageur, also of St-Benoît, unable to sign.
• A Soulanges Joseph Ménard and his son — the younger enlisted in the Corps des Voyageurs in 1813 at nineteen, and could not sign.

He was baptized at Notre-Dame de Montréal on 7 June 1773, son of François Amable Ménard and Marie Archange Béique Lafleur. On 5 February 1798, at the Oka mission, he married Marie Hélène Charlebois. The priest wrote him fils majeur de françois Maynard habitant des Eboullies — Les Éboulis, the shore of the Lac des Deux-Montagnes at Saint-Placide. The groom signed. That signature is the thread this study follows.

Two Montreal engagements of a Joseph Ménard "of Éboulis" survive in the notarial index: steersman in November 1802 and bowman in October 1803, each for the round trip to Lac la Pluie at 700 livres. These were summer voyages; his children were born at St-Benoît in 1801, 1802 and 1804, so he was home each winter. The acts themselves have not yet been read for his signature.

Marie Hélène died on 1 July 1813, aged thirty-two, and was buried at Rigaud two days later, leaving six minor children. In September 1817 Joseph, as their tutor, petitioned the Court of King's Bench to sell their share of a lot on the Rivière Rouge in Argenteuil — three arpents by thirty, mostly standing timber, in debt to the seigneur and too far from where he lived to work. A family council at Pointe-Claire agreed, and the lot was sold on 14 October 1817 to Gregor McGregor for 856 livres, the children's portion to be paid à chacun un sixième at their majority.

The Breakthrough

Before the notary John Gerbrand Beek at Montréal, Joseph Menard des Éboulis engaged as devant — bowman — to winter two years in the North-West, for 1,200 livres and a hundred-piastre advance, his equipment to be issued at Fort William. The printed clause for a man who cannot write is struck through. He signed.

The signature matches his own at Oka in 1798 and at Rigaud in 1815. The rate is a senior bowman's, and the advance is large: an experienced man, aged forty-six.

The North West Company kept its books in a livre worth half the Montreal livre, so the 1,200 of the contract is the 600 of the ledger. One year's wages only: the account closes on the pay list at 133 livres 15 sols. In the company's Montréal cash book, about 11 August 1821, a Joseph Menard is paid 267.10 in cash as the brigades came down — 133.15, doubled back into Montréal currency. He had engaged for two winters and served one.

He had married again at St-Benoît on 10 April 1820, two months after signing — veuf en dernière noce d'angélique Guilbeau, to Suzanne Boyer, widow of his first wife's brother Ignace Charlebois. A Gabriel Guilbeau was among the witnesses. When their daughter Marie Clotilde was baptized at Rigaud on 23 December 1820, the father was Voyageur Hivernant and absent. Suzanne died two months later; at her burial on 22 February 1821 he was again Voyageur Hivernant, and again not there.

The man who engaged before the same notary on 20 December 1819 — Joseph Menard de la Paroisse de St Benoît, Seignorie d'Argenteuil, middleman, three winters, 700 livres — made his mark. His account in the same ledger, "Joseph Menard Junr", ends: Deserted Fall 1820 from Fort William. At the Rigaud marriage of Joseph Ménard fils in October 1825 the groom could not sign; his father, present, signed beside his own name. The deserter was very probably the son.

The Result

His life runs through the Guilbault family at every turn. At his 1815 marriage the witnesses were his father, Gabriel Guilbault, and Angélique's brothers Gabriel and Joseph. At his daughter Anastasie's baptism that November the godparents were Gabriel and his new wife, Josette Closier, and le père présent a signé. Angélique died at Rigaud in April 1819, aged twenty-six, leaving a son, Gabriel, born in 1817. In 1827 a Joseph Ménard was Gabriel Guilbault's neighbour at Baie Carillon, where the Ménards had lived since at least 1799.

On 30 November 1837, at Bytown, Joseph Menard, widower of late Susanna Boyle, married Ursule Ladouceur, widow of François Létang, a Rigaud family he had known for thirty years. In 1841 a Joseph Ménard witnessed the Bytown marriage of Gabriel Ménard, labourer, and in 1842 sponsored that couple's son — very probably Angélique's son and grandson, though no act yet names Gabriel's parents. In July 1842 Joseph stood at his stepdaughter Henriette's wedding at Aylmer.

He was alive in April 1848, aged seventy-four, godfather with his wife to her granddaughter. The death date of 23 February 1846 that circulates in online trees is wrong. On the same page, a week later, his daughter Archange's son was baptized. His own burial has not yet been found.

Suzanne Boyer bore him one child, Marie Clotilde, in December 1820. In 1844 at St-Polycarpe in Soulanges a Marie Delphine Ménard, fille de Joseph Ménard et de Suzanne Boyer, married Xavier Chauret of St-André in Upper Canada. She can only be Clotilde: Suzanne was his wife for ten months, and Clotilde is the one child born in them. Delphine followed her husband west. She was at St-Polycarpe in June 1851 as the wife of François-Xavier Charest; by 1863 she was in Kent County, Ontario, as the wife of Francis Xavier Cartier; and she died at Bothwell on 24 December 1906, his widow, and was buried at Wardsville aged 86 — two days after Clotilde's eighty-sixth birthday. She is the second woman in this family recorded under two forenames: his first wife is Hélène in some acts and Marie Louise in others.