Pierre Neau a.k.a. Labrie, from Brie-sous-Matha, emigrates to Quebec circa 1684 - Chronicle and genealogy

 Pierre NEAU a.k.a. LABRIE, from Brie-sous-Matha, diocese of Saintes (Charente-Maritime), FRANCE

Pierre was born and baptized on August 4, 1655, in the church of Saint-Pierre, in Brie-sous-Matha. He was the son of Jean NAU, merchant, and of Perrine Martin (married on April 27, 1643). The couple had at least five other children:
 Jean (born 2 and baptized on February 4, 1644)
 Marie (born 2 and baptized on March 4, 1646)
 Michel (born 19 and baptized on January 23, 1648)
 Jeanne (baptized on January 28, 1653)
 Matheline (baptized on January 7, 1657)

Pierre may have arrived in CANADA in 1684.

He founded a family by marrying Marie-Thérèse Garand (daughter of Pierre Garand and Renée Chanfrain) on October 6, 1692, at Saint-Laurent, Island of Orleans, near Québec City.

The engaged couple had contracted marriage earlier that year, on July 26, 1692, in Québec City, in the presence of Maitre Louis Chambalon, notary.

The couple had twelve children. Widowed in May 1715, Pierre remarried on April 20, 1716, in La Durantaye (near Lévis), to Marie Gaboury, widow of Antoine Goupil and daughter of Louis Gaboury and Nicole Souillard. Another child was born from this union, on March 15, 1717. Marie Gaboury also gave birth, thereafter, with a natural child (of unknown father) on July 7, 1720.

We thus locate the date of death of Pierre between these two events (1717 and 1720).

“It is as a soldier that Pierre NAU crosses the Atlantic. The historians believe that he took part in the expedition of the governor Lefebvre de La Barre against the Iroquois in the Great Lakes area. When Lefebvre passed his strength in review, at Fort Frontenac, reports Pierre-George Roy, on the boat La Générale were soldiers named Boisjoli, Lamontagne, Arnault and Labrie.

Whatever happened, the ancestor became a navigator, which probably explains the fact that the acts of the marital status relating to him can be found not only in Saint-Laurent, Island of Orleans, but also in the registers of a half-dozen parishes on the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River. It is only circa 1712 that he acquired a piece of land very close to another one belonging to Michel Mailloux, also from Brie-sous-Matha, and whose Mailloux Creek points out the memory“ [translation of Robert Prévost, La Presse, April 13, 1996]

This introduction to the Neau-Labrie history comes from the site of the Association of Nau

 The patronym NEAU in the parish registers of Brie-sous-Matha

- 1- Baptisms

- 2- Marriages

- 3- Deaths