A Québec navigator, a king's letters, and a man from Genoa
Charles Amiot was baptised at Québec on 20 October 1651, the son of Mathieu Amyot dit Villeneuve and Marie Miville. On 22 November 1677 he married Rosalie Duquet at Notre-Dame de Québec. The register names her as the daughter of the late Denys Duquet and of Catherine Gauthier, living on the Lauzon shore across the river, and her brother witnessed the marriage. Charles worked as a navigateur, a river pilot or sailor, and lived in the lower town of Québec in 1697.
His father Mathieu had a brush with nobility. According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Louis XIV granted him letters of nobility in 1667. They were never registered, and in 1669 the Crown revoked unregistered titles, so they lapsed. We know of no coat of arms for this family.
Charles and Rosalie's son Charles was baptised at Québec on 1 June 1697, and in 1719 he married Marie Angélique Métivier. Their daughter Marie-Josèphe, baptised on 27 June 1732, married Jacques Bonaventure Stella dit L'Étoile at Notre-Dame de Québec on 22 April 1748. Jacques came from the diocese of Albenga, on the coast of the Republic of Genoa, and settled at La Pocatière, where he was buried about 1 February 1777, aged about 45.
Their son Louis François was baptised in 1758, and the family became known as Létoile dit Litalien, 'the Italian'.
How we know
- Marriage register of Notre-Dame de Québec, 22 November 1677
- Baptism registers of Notre-Dame de Québec, 1651, 1697 and 1732
- Marriage register of Notre-Dame de Québec, 22 April 1748
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography, for the letters of nobility
Confidence: proven for the generations from Charles Amiot onward; the 1667 letters of nobility come from a published biography rather than from the original grant
Timeline
- 1651Baptized in Quebec City, Québec, Canada