The François D'Urfé Church Register, 1686 - 1687

Le registre de la parroisse de St Louys du haut de L'Isle de Montreal (original spelling).

François-Saturnin Lascaris D'Urfé had his chapel at today's Pointe Caron in Baie-D'Urfé. It was known as the parish of St. Louis du Haut de l'Île de Montréal. The parish was later called St-Louis-du-Bout-de-L'Île and became then the parish of Sainte-Anne-du-Bout-de-l'Île, today Sainte-Anne de-Bellevue. However he spent only two years there because the war with the Iroquois started to escalate and he had to retreat. It was too dangerous. He had to retreat to safer ground and that was not Ste-Anne but Lachine. He took the register with him and gave it to the priest of the Lachine parish, Pierre Rémy. It became therefore part of the Lachine register.

the D’Urfé register


I would like to thank the Montréal Archives (BAnQ Vieux-Montréal) for helping me to locate this document and allowing me to see it. It's impressive to see those ancient pages bound into a book, an ancient church register with a cover made of cardboard and linen canvas. It is fragile but the paper is still flexible. It makes one wonder if the electronic documents that we produce today will still be readable 300 years later.

These are the pages of this register signed by "f D'Urfé Curé" (F. D'Urfé, Priest). You can click on an image to see it in full resolution. Further down on this page you will find each individual page with a "deciphered" text version for better readability.

F. D'Urfé register, double page 01
F. D'Urfé register, double page 01
F. D'Urfé register, double page 01
F. D'Urfé register, double page 01
F. D'Urfé register, double page 01
F. D'Urfé register, double page 01
F. D'Urfé register, double page 01


There is a total of 12 pages signed by D'Urfé in this register you can read them above or if you need them with an even higher resolution then you can click on the individual pages below and zoom in.
 
Text versions are provided for better readability (click on the "txt" besides the individual page images below). The spelling of words has been kept as close as possible to the original text. You will therefore see the old French "mesme" instead of "même" or "avec moy" instead of "avec moi".

F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01
F. D'Urfé register, page 01

It is difficult to decipher such an old text since both spelling conventions and the use of words have changed over the centuries. Please email me if you have suggestions or corrections.

Overview by page number (1 to 12)

The pages in this register are not entirely in time order. Paper was expensive and François D'Urfé used the remaining space on a page if it was still big enough for a the new entry.

The entries have the name of the subject written as a header above the entry but the handwriting, and sometimes the spelling of the names, is different which suggests that those headers where added later.

Rue D'Urfé in Lachine

François D'Urfé came via Lachine to "Baie-D'Urfé", then known as "La parroisse de St Louys du haut de L'Isle de Montreal" (spelling and accents exactly like this) and when he had to retreat because of the attacks from the Iroquois he went back to Lachine. To commemorate François D'Urfé, the Montreal Borough of Lachine has named a street "Rue D'Urfé":

2021-01-25_1620-c59-rue-durfe_sq.jpg
Rue D'Urfé in Lachine



This page is available under the creative commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0)
© Guido Socher,

->back to "A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF BAIE-D'URFE, 1977 edition"
or
-> go the index