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HOMESTEAD OF JEAN CÔTÉ
AND
ANNE MARTIN
​JEAN ​CÔTÉ
(1603-1661)
OCCUPATION: Farmer
​Jean,(Jehan) a peasant from Mortagne, Perche, France, was born around 1603 (1). However, his parentage remains unknown. He arrived in the new world in 1634 with the fleet “Le St-Jean” of Duplessis-Bouchart and Capt. Pierre de Nesle. Among the seventy-five passengers was Dr. Robert Giffard, also from the same region. His voyage to New France would have taken two months, at which point he worked as a farmer, labourer and gardener. Employed by Dr. Robert Giffard, (the first lord of Beauport), he would have been instrumental in the land's clearing on the seigneury established at Beauport. There are a few nagging points about who this man was, and there are hints that suggest Jean was not just a peasant but someone of more significance. Some suggest that perhaps he had some connection to ship maintenance and building, giving him skills that could have paid for his voyage and making him of more value than a simple serf to Robert Giffard. It is apparent by several notarized documents he could not read or write, yet he was business savvy.
​If he were such a person, this would explain why Giffard had his wedding at his home and was one of their witnesses. It would also explain why Jean did not have to pay the usual five years of labour to free him from his debt to the Seigneur, before being rewarded with a cow and a piece of land for his labour. His debt appears to be less than one year.
​Jean Côté married Anne Martin by missionary Jesuit Charles Lalemant on November 17, 1635,(2) at the home of seigneur Robert Giffard, Giffard and Sieur Guillaume Couillard as their witnesses. This would have been several weeks after the birth of their first child, Louis. According to research by J.C. Herbert, there is an error in the inscription in the parish register. The marriage of Jean Côté would have taken place on November 17, 1634, not 1635.
​Also to be noted if Jean’s marriage to Anne, if indeed she was the sister of Abraham, could also explain his endearment to Robert Giffard and his accumulation of not only his farm but also other property in Québec’s “haute-ville”.​
​The year as the death of Champlain (1635), many of the settlers would have contemplated their futures. Champlain had served as their sponsor and guide. As their protector, he negotiated peace with the indigenous people of the new world.
​ ​On August 26, 1636, Governor Montmagny granted him a land of one acre in front of the present Grande-Allée in Quebec. Our ancestor Jean apparently never lived at this site, stretching as far as the river. However, Jean became the first individual, outside the Hébert-Couillard family, to receive land in roture (a non-noble property). By 1641, with his neighbor, Noël Langlois, he undertook to provide the Compagnie de la Nouvelle France with five hundred bundles of hay for 80 livres (the currency of the time).
​This was a time France’s interest in colonization subsided. Peasant labourers such as Jean realized entitlement to larger plots of land themselves was now possible. There was also movement toward the fur trade, as it was much more lucrative than land ownership.
​The eight children to follow were most likely born at their home in Beauport. Hence the first generation of Côté’s in Canada. These children were Louis, Simone, Martin, Mathieu, Jean-Baptiste, Jean-Noël, Marie, and Louise.
​ ​ As early as 1635, the ancestor Côté settled on a land belonging to the sieur Robert Giffard de Beauport. The latter first conceded by his word to Jean the said location. He was one of the first eight clearers in the history of Beauport. The land of the ancestor Côté, between that of Zacharie Cloutier and that of Noël Langlois, lies between the Beauport and Montmorency rivers, close to the Montmorency Falls. He received official papers for this land from Giffard on February 5, 1645. Notary Tronquet of Quebec City noted the concession. The land in question is three arpents in front of the river by a depth of 126, an area (over 375 acres).​In 1645 Lord Giffard ceded the land Jean occupied since the preceding ten years.
​A little later, about 1642, the ancestor Jean received a concession of land 150 feet by 60 feet in the “Haute Ville” of Quebec, land and house valued at 450 pounds. This site, (numbered 11), overlooks the current Rue du Trésor and Rue Buade. It is today the land next to Le Café Buade. This might further prove his value and suggest his breeding to be more than a serf. This house was one of thirty houses in 1645, present in Quebec City. One of his immediate neighbours was Noël Martin​​.
​Jean Côté passed away in Beauport on 27 March 1661(3). The burial act, entered in the records of the parish of Quebec, states: “Lan 1661, March 28, was buried in the Church. Jean Coste, former inhabitant of this country, died the previous day in his house”. In the year 1661, 28th March. They interred under the church (Pierre-Georges Roy, Les cimetières de Québec, 1941). He is among one of the 900 buried in these cellars of the current Notre-Dame de Québec church.
​As for Anne Martin, she survived him by over twenty years. The census of 1681 does not mention her, but it is likely that she was living with one of her sons. They also buried Anne in Québec, on 4 December 1684, at about the age of 70 years. A week earlier, her son Jean-Baptiste lost his wife, Anne Couture, the mother of his first eight children.
​
Monument Jean Coste
​​ ​A monument erected in memory of the first settlers of Quebec (1617-1636) honours his name and that of his wife Anne Martin. On one plaque, the names of Jean Côté and Anne Martin are among the names of the 47 men and 47 women who laid the first stones of Quebec. Jean Côté and Anne Martin are identified as founders of the city of Quebec on another monument in the Parc Montmorency on the corner of Côte de la Montagne and the Rue des Ramparts behind the current Petit Séminaire, this monument recalls the memory of the Europeans who gave life to Quebec City at in the 17th century.​​
​According to “L’Association des Côté d’Amerique“ the first families of Nouvelle France were Hébert (1617), Martin (1619), Desportes (1619), de Champlain (1620), Couillard (1621), Langlois (1634), Giffard (1634), Hébert (1634) et Bourdon (1635).
Jean Côté is mentioned in “L’Histoire de Reconter” as one of the first families in the parish of Beauport.
NOTE
​Initial attempts at settlement between 1627 and 1634 were largely unsuccessful, as several expeditions were wiped out during wars and skirmishes with England. A large group of settlers arrived in 1634 (Côté among them) and colonies farther west along the river to Trois Rivières and Montréal began. However, despite these attempts, the population of New France was in the low hundreds by 1641, well short of the promised 4000.
Citations
​(1) B. circa 1603 France
(2) M. 1635 Cotté/Martin, Basilique Notre Dame Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records Drouin Collection 1621-1968 (3) D. Coste 1661, Basilique Notre Dame Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records Drouin Coll. 1621-1968
Background: 1666 Census for widow Anne Martin and family