JACQUES CÔTÉ
(1686-1734)

   ​Jacques, born in Saint-Pierre, Isle d’Orleans, April 16th, 1686, would be the last of our Côté line to remain on the island. He ventured to Saint-Nicolas, in the County of Lotbinière, to seek his future, fifty kilometres southwest of Ile d’Orleans — at least part of the trip made by boat. One wonders if they may have taken the Saint Lawrence from the Island all the way to Saint Nicholas or if they did part of the voyage overland.

           ​Before he left, he met and married Marie-Magdeleine Rondeau, daughter of Thomas and Andrée (Remondiere), a girl from his boyhood village. Together, they sought a life quite a distance from Isle d’Orleans. After settling in Saint-Nicolas, Jacques and Madeleine had four children; Fabien, Jacques, Louise and Jean-Baptiste. Madeleine died one year after the birth of Jean-Baptiste. Would Jacques have remained here had he not lost his wife? No one knows, but after her death, he moved further west to Saint-Antoine de Tilly in the same county and settled.

           ​Pierre-Noël LeGardeur. forty-eight years of age, and married to Madeleine Boucher, a daughter of the governor of Trois-Rivières, was the Lord of Saint-Antoine. A man of great enthusiasm, he had set about to colonize his beautiful estate. Prior to his position as lord, the community had been dwindling and had only four families living there.

           ​LeGardeur's first task in 1702 was to build a chapel. The site’s location is not definitive, but oral tradition says they built it at the foot of the cliff, near the present church. They named it the Église Saint-Antoine de Pade, after one of Saint Francis’ greatest saints.

           ​The Parish then flourished and the small church soon became too small for the congregation. In 1712, he and his wife Madeleine hired the factory at Saint-Antoine de Tilly to rebuild a church on an acre of land on the seigniory. It would be several years before the church manifested itself.

                     ​Jacques’ marriage to Marie-Magdeleine Rondeau, in Saint-Pierre was in February 1706, before leaving for their new home further west. I have a birth record for his first child, Fabien, born in Saint-Nicolas, Lotbinière, in November of the same year. Once established, the couple had three more children, Jacques, Louise and Jean-Baptiste, all born in Saint-Nicolas.

           ​Jacques relocated to Saint-Antoine following the death of Madeleine in 1712. He took a new wife, Marie-Thérese Elizabeth Lambert Briere Vincenne, in 1713 and together they produced six children, Joseph, Genevieve-Louise, Michel-Augustin, Marie-Charlotte, Louis, and Marie-Josephte.

           ​​When Marie-Thérese died, Jacques took a third wife, Genevieve Cauchon, in 1732. Alas, he died two years later, February 27, 1734, at only forty-eight years of age. They buried him in the cemetery of Saint-Antoine de Tilly.