Britain’s victory over the French in 1760 brought the challenge of integrating the French population into the British Empire, keeping the American colonists within the Empire and trying to maintain and further build trading partnerships with the Indians, many of whom had fought on the side of the French and were wary of continued incursions and expansion into their territories by the American colonists. Given this challenge, the British Conquest of 1760 was only an ambitious opportunity with no guarantee that it would be a net win for the Empire.
The British faced the same challenge as the French in maintaining control over a sparsely populated area especially in what became known as Upper Canada and later Ontario. The French had begun settling the area around Detroit in earnest in the late 1740s including along the shore across the strait. In 1749 a Proclamation was read at every parish along the St. Lawrence to attract settlers. It must not have been deemed a success because the Proclamation was reiterated on 2 January 1750.[i] The Seven Years War, which began in 1753, stunted the settlement effort. The British takeover after the Conquest stopped settlement. When the British defeated the French, they paid little attention to settlement in the area beyond the fort at Detroit. Life for the French settlers on Petite Côte across the strait from the fort continued much as it did before, marked by some farming to support the fort and subsistence hunting and fishing.
The religious presence began in the 1720s on the Detroit side to minister to the Indians, not the local French. It moved across the strait in 1728 for the same reason though the local French population was not excluded. It was not until 1767 that an official parish was established with the purpose of administering to the French and the Huron Indian population.[ii]
The 1770s saw a renewed effort to increase settlement. Father Bocquet of Ste. Anne’s in Detroit wrote on October 2, 1770, to the Bishop at Quebec that there was so much growth in the area that he estimated “that soon Detroit will be larger than Montreal. Every day families are arriving from that direction, and they say that some are still on the way." E. J. Lajeunesse in his book The Windsor Border Region suggested that some of these families probably “located on the south shore.”[iii]
Jean Charles’ arrival to the region sometime before his marriage to Marie Magdeleine Bertrand on 12 July 1773, places him as part of this wave of migration to the “only locality in the Province of Ontario that can claim a continuous settlement antedating the British Conquest.”[iv] Nevertheless there was no guarantee that Jean Charles’ fortunes would be any better than if he had stayed in Quebec. There was certainly more land but the list of inhabitants of Petite Côte from 1778 which includes “Renaud”, does not include Jean Charles among those that had “lots.” [v] I have heard that one of the motivations for Jean Charles’ migration was an incentive from the British Crown promising land to those that relocated to this area to increase settlement. However, if that were the case then why does Jean Charles not have a plot of land 5 years after his arrival?
The British did provide land to settlers in the area, but from what I have seen, those land grants went to British soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War and to loyalists who relocated to the area after the War. If the British did extend this offer to all inhabitants of Quebec, this would be documented in a formal decree and should exist though I have not yet encountered it. There is a possibility that the effort by the French in 1749 and 1750 to draw settlers is getting confused with the later migration. However, it begs the question of the causes of the migration on which Father Bocquet commented though the demand for land is likely to be a driving factor.[vi]
The local population probably was not very wealthy though they likely were doing better than they were when the British took over as one British officer wrote “the habitants seemed pleased with the change of regime but that they were in great destitution of all things." The poverty continued for some time as recorded by Captain John Campbell in a letter dated May 31, 1766, noting “that the people were so wretchedly poor that they had not been able to pay half of their taxes.” [vii]
In 1768, Father Bocquet explained the poverty of the parishioners across the Strait from Detroit quite differently when he remarked that "More than half of them have already wasted all their wheat in drink, and I believe that the priest and people will not have sufficient to last them till the harvest."[viii] So alcohol production and consumption was already at the heart of a region that would become the center of illegal alcohol transportation during Prohibition in the U.S. in the early 20th Century.
It is challenging to try to understand the perspective of a population that was largely illiterate and so we are left with the perspectives and judgments of those critiquing the French population from the outside such as the observations of the Lieutenant Governor Hamilton in August 1776 where he noted the poverty and illiteracy of the Canadians as well as their seeming lack of industry which he chalked up to the relative bounty of the land and nearby water where it was relatively easy to procure food for a subsistence living. He noted that the
“straight (which at the Town of Detroit is 1000 yards over) is so plentifully stocked with variety of fine fish that a few hours amusement may furnish several families, yet not one French family has got a seine—Hunting and fowling afford food to numbers who are nearly as lazy as the Savages, who are rarely prompted to the chase till hunger pinches them. The soil is so good that great crops are raised by careless & very ignorant farmers, Wheat, Indian Corn, Barley, Oats, Pease, Buck Wheat yield a great increase.”[ix]
The American Revolution seems to have had very little immediate effect on the area. Jean-Charles’ relocation to the Fort Detroit area saved him from any effects of the American assault on Montreal and the Battle of Quebec on December 31, 1775, just 6 days before his twin sons were born. The British victory at Quebec ended the American presence in Canada. Though there were subsequent threats, Jean-Charles and his family were spared the threat of invasion from the Thirteen Colonies. [x]
While the American Revolution continued to the South, Charles, his twin brother Etienne, and their 1 ½ year old sister Marie-Magdeleine were cared for by their 16-year-old mother. While they may have had a home, they did not apparently have a lot, at least not officially.[xi] However, they would not have been left to their own devices. There was a culture of “mutual dependence and sociability among the inhabitants.” Jean-Charles was likely very involved in community activities through the “coup-de-main or bee” which “was a popular way of doing big jobs such as hauling logs, threshing grain, or raising a building. Frequently these were occasions for copious libations of wine and brandy followed by much joviality.[xii]
By 1780, the community was growing as evidenced by the formal petition submitted requesting permission for Simon Drouillard to build a Water Mill for the grinding of grain on Turkey Creek. Among the twenty-eight signatories was one “Charles Renot” who signed with his mark in lieu of a signature. Permission was granted by the Commandant of Fort Detroit on July 11. 1780.[xiii]
The Catholic faith of the French population was a central part of the life of the community of Petite Côte. As the Bishop of London G Emmett Carter wrote in his foreword to Lajeunesse’s Assumption Parish 1767-1984, “As soon as they had a toe-hold on the riverbank, they established a Church.” By 1781, the old church needed replacement and on June 9 it was decided to set aside 4,000 livres to build a new church. Among the accounting records is a line item for the purchase of a pew by (Jean) Charles Renaud for 240 livres.[xiv] So, Jean Charles must have been doing well enough to afford a pew which begs the question of how he was generating income. The answer appears in a survey of the settlement in July of 1782 which shows Jean Charles resided with “1 married woman” presumably his soon to be 23-year-old wife; “1 young & hired man”; 4 boys (the 6-year-old twins Charles and Etienne, 2-year-old Jean-Baptiste, and the youngest François); and “1 girl” (the nearly 8-year-old daughter Marie-Madeleine). Jean-Charles also owned “2 horses; 2 oxen; 2 cows; 2 hogs; 18 bushels of wheat sown bushels; 4 arpents of Indian Corn sown; and 50 arpents of cleared land.”[xv]
The following year was a year of sorrow and heartbreak as the family lost the 2- or 3-year-old Jean-Baptiste while on May 22, 1783, welcoming his necronymic sibling Jean-Baptiste. This year also saw the migration of British into the area. According to Lajeunesse:
“For more than twenty years after the conquest nothing was done to bring British colonists to the Detroit area. Only merchants, traders, and sutlers followed in the wake of the occupation troops. A few of them later became gentlemen farmers. Substantially Detroit remained a French settlement but it was overlaid with a thin veneer of British officials, military and mercantile.”[xvi]
Life for the inhabitants of Petite Côte during the 1780s continued much as it had before. In 1785 the Renaud family added another male child, Louis, but the following year brought a series of lean years from 1786 to 1791. Father Dufaux described this period in 1790:
“Since I have been at Detroit I have seen only one good crop. The last three look more like famine than plenty, and the present one augurs nothing but want. The drought has been so great that there will hardly be any corn, vegetables, potatoes or small grain. Disease among the animals is not only continuing but is increasing day by day. I dare say that there is not one farmer who has not lost horses or cattle, and some have lost everything. Times are hard, everything is dear and there is no money. The farmer is in debt, he is pressed for payment, the merchant compounds his interest. It is necessary to pay the costs of the opulence, pomp and amusements contracted during the currency of the pounds. Today people would get down on their knees before a dollar. What is one to do or undertake? With reason would I fear becoming that man ‘qui coepit edificare, et non potuit perficere.’[xvii]
However, things must not have been too bad early on since Jean Charles bought a piece of land four by forty arpents from the Parish at auction for 7,600 lbs. of flour in 1787. Or things were getting to be so bad, the church had to auction land which had recently been gifted to it by the Huron Indians to procure sufficient food supplies. Jean Charles may have been able to take advantage of the situation.[xviii] He did not reside on this plot of land as a Census of Petite Côte in 1792 by Guillaume Monforton lists him as the owner of the 4 x 40 plot but shows no entries for children living on the plot of land which must have been secondary to their main residence.
By 1792 the family had grown to ten children. The eldest sons Charles and Etienne, 16 years old, were likely working on the farm. There was no education to speak of except for an attempt to establish a girls day school which had 5 or 6 students at any one time.[xix] This was also the year of Upper Canada’s (Ontario) first election to identify representatives for its first Parliament.
Although the newly christened Western District of Upper Canada had been spared from much war time activity during the American Revolution, there were subsequent periods of tension. Britain still held Fort Detroit even though the U.S. claimed the territory. The British remained concerned that the Americans would attack and in 1794 the militias throughout Upper Canada were activated. Now aged eighteen, Charles and Etienne were old enough to serve in the militia. The militia act of 1793 placed the upper age at 50 years old, but an amendment in 1794 extended it to age 60 which would have included the 58-year-old Jean Charles, so it is possible father and sons served together though this action did not lead to military combat.[xx]
By 1797, 12 of the thirteen children were alive ranging in ages from the 1-year-old Dominique to the 22-year-old Marie-Madeleine who had married Jean Baptiste Robidoux on February 3, 1794. The now 61-year-old Jean Charles was serving as the Chief Church Warden for Assumption Parish. He is identified as such in a letter dated 7 January 1797 from Edmund Burke the Vicar-General of the Diocese of Quebec that stipulated that Assumption needed to reserve a pew in the “front on the epistle side along the wall to be assigned to the Lieutenant or in his absence to the Deputy Lieutenant of this County of Essex.”[xxi]
When in the following year Jean Charles’ son Charles married Angelique Dufrour on January 8, 1798, what had started as a missionary outpost to serve the Huron Indians was becoming an area of growing importance. The British had established a new fort at Amherstberg and the government town of Sandwich the prior July and there was an influx of British settlers to the area. They held elections to send representatives to the new provincial parliament. The French-Canadian community was the seed from which this increasingly important portion of the British Empire grew. Like his Great Grandfather Guillaume, Jean Charles had left everything behind to start a new life. Like Guillaume, he managed to become an integral part and served a leading role in the building and maintenance of the Catholic parish community. This community was strong enough to maintain its identity and cohesion despite the growing British presence in the area. Whether this would continue to be the case in the 19th Century would be up to Jean Charles’ descendants led by his eldest sons Charles and Etienne.
[i] Ernest J. Lajeunesse, ed., The Windsor Border Region: Canada's Southernmost Frontier; A Collection of Documents (Toronto: The Champlain Society for the Government of Ontario, University of Toronto Press, 1960), pp lii; lvi. This book is available for free via the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/windsorborderreg00laje/page/n7/mode/2up
[ii] Ernest J. Lajeunesse, Outline History of Assumption Parish, pp. 13-17.
[iii] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. lxiii.
[iv] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. vii.
[v] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. 119. It is possible that this list is inaccurate because it shows only a few families have lots with most families and residents not being included as having lots. So, it’s unclear how accurate Lajeunesse’s recording of the parish account book is or how accurate the account book is. We can only go by what was written down. See also https://www.readtheplaque.com/plaque/french-settlement-on-the-south-shore#gsc.tab=0 for reference to the French effort to attract settlers to the area.
[vi] I have also been told that Jean-Charles did not come alone and that a cousin “Pierre” was with him, but Pierre settled on the Fort Detroit side of the river. I have wondered what travel path Jean Charles would have taken, either the western route via the Ottawa River into Lake Huron and down to Detroit or the moving along the St. Lawrence River. If the story is true, it would suggest the western river route was the path taken by Jean Charles which was a well-known and travelled path at that time. With respect to the demand for land, Mary Ann Lafleur noted that by the end of the second generation in Quebec, “desirable land in the communities near Quebec appears to have been at a premium.” Seventeenth-Century New England and New France in Comparative Perspective: Notre Dame Des Anges – A Case Study, p. 279.
[vii] Quoted in Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. lxix.
[viii] Lajeunessse, The Windsor Border Region, p. lxix.
[ix] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. 85. A seine is a type of fishing net.
[x] “The failures at Quebec ended the American campaign in Canada. Not only had the Patriots failed to persuade French-Canadians to join their cause, but they also lost many men in the attempt to do so. Some of the best American leaders and militiamen were injured, killed, and captured in these attempts to invade Canada, combining the defeat with devastating losses for the American army.” https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/quebec
[xi] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. 119. One of the families identified in the Parish account Book as having a lot was identified as “Bertrans (Beaugrand)” which could be a reference to the “Bertrand” family. The list does not show an entry for “Bertrand” though they obviously lived there so either the list is deficient or this is a reference to the Bertrands. So, it is possible that Jean Charles and Marie Magdeleine lived with her parents for some time.
[xii] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. lxxii.
[xiii] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, pp. 85-86. Drouillard must have been highly thought of by the community who wrote in the petition that “knowing the capability of Simon Drouillard to build and operate the said mill, we beseech you, Sir Commandant, to grant him permission to build the said mill and to possess it for himself and his heirs.”
[xiv] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p.128.
[xv] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. 69.
[xvi] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. cii.
[xvii] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. 142. Letter is dated August 22, 1790.
[xviii] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. 331.
[xix] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. 145.
[xx] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, p. 114-115. The letter is from Askin to Alexander McKee dated August 17, 1794. The Jay Treaty signed 19 November 1794 helped to tamp down some of the tensions between the U.S. and the British and lead to the ultimate transfer of Fort Detroit from Britain to the U.S. in 1796. This transfer led to some migrations across the river for those who wanted to remain British. It also led to the establishment of a new Fort at Amherstberg and the town of Sandwich. See R. Alan Douglas, Uppermost Canada: The Western District and the Detroit Frontier, 1800–1850 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), pp 8-9.
[xxi] Lajeunesse, The Windsor Border Region, pp. 150-151.