M. 10 Nov 1667 in Quebec City, New France
Wife: Marie Blanchard
D. 17 Dec 1708 in Montreal, New France
Mathieu Brunet dit LeTang was someone who must have had a great thirst for adventure. Living in a time and place when fur trading meant canoe voyages into the unknown, Mathieu fearlessly signed on.
Mathieu didn’t start out in life anywhere near the frontier of America. He was born in France, but a lack of a baptismal record leaves his birth year up to interpretation. Every time his age was recorded on later documents, it came out to be a different year from the earliest, 1637, to the latest, 1646. As to where he was from, his marriage contract stated he was born in the village of Rai in Normandy. His parents were Jacques Brunet and Jacqueline Racheine; little else is known of Mathieu’s early years except that at some point he moved with his family to Tourouvre in Perche.
As a young man, Mathieu seems to have migrated to the west coast of France near the port city of La Rochelle. This where he met a man recruiting people to populate Canada, and on March 19, 1657, he agreed to an indentured servant contract (the date of this document eliminates 1646 as a possible birth year). He sailed with about 40 other men on the ship Les Armes d’Amsterdam, and worked for the next three years at an unknown place along the St. Lawrence. For a long period of time, Mathieu was missing from all records, including the 1666 and 1667 censuses of New France. Speculation is that he may have been on expeditions to the west — a precursor to his later activities.
Mathieu got married on November 10, 1667 to Marie Blanchard, one of the Fille du Roi who had arrived that fall. For some reason, they didn’t make a marriage contract until a dozen years later. Their wedding was held in Quebec City, but Mathieu didn’t stay there long. On February 8, 1668, he acquired a piece of land in the upriver settlement of Champlain with 6 arpents of river frontage and a depth of 40 arpents. For a time during the 1670s, the family moved to Cap-de-la-Madeleine, but they returned to Champlain by 1681. During this time, Mathieu and Marie had ten children, with the youngest born in 1688.
Mathieu and Marie's marriage record.
While living in Cap-de-la-Madeleine in 1673, Mathieu had some sort of dispute with a neighbor named Martin Foisy, where either he or his wife struck the man’s wife, causing an injury. Mathieu settled the dispute by agreeing to pay for the woman’s medical fees. Oddly enough, the two families later became friendly enough that Foisy served as godfather for Mathieu’s daughter Marie.
Although Mathieu cleared his property to plant crops, he was never much of a farmer. The world in which he lived was inhabited by men who dealt in the fur trade, and by the time he was in his late thirties, this seems to have become his occupation. For a time, the explorer La Salle had exclusive rights to the fur trade in the Illinois country, but during the early 1680s, this was opened to others. So in 1683, Mathieu joined a group of 13 other men to organize an expedition.
It took a lot of planning and preparation to gather canoes, provisions and merchandise for such a journey; it was said that the group paid 15,000 livres for the things they needed. They would be traveling hundreds of miles by water, and it was too far to make the round trip all in one season, so the men knew they would be away from home for over a year. Mathieu made a special arrangement for his wife and family; the company who was funding the trip were to provide 600 livres for their support while he was away. While preparing for the expedition, Mathieu stayed in Montreal, which was the launching point for their departure. He ran up a bill for 61 livres at an inn where he slept and took meals.
Fur trading at Green Bay in the 17th century.
Mathieu was gone on the expedition for more than a year. In that time, he and his mates faced several life-threatening situations. At a remote place in what is now Illinois they became trapped by ice in December, forcing them to make camp and spend the winter in the middle of nowhere. This left them vulnerable to Indigenous tribes of the region, and one group of Iroquois stole more than 15,000 livres worth of goods. In another encounter, Mathieu along with three others were out on a hunting trip, and were surrounded by 16 Iroquois; however no harm came to him in this incident.
Mathieu arrived back in Montreal around August of 1684, and he was soon planning another journey out west. The group that was formed left the following spring and arrived at Green Bay by summer. Then they paddled their canoes up the Fox River and down the Wisconsin River, ending up at the Mississippi. From here they followed a course to the mouth of the Black River. This is where they made camp for the winter.
The route that Mathieu traveled on his 1685-1686 fur trade expedition.
When the river thawed, Mathieu and the group of fur traders continued traveling further up the Mississippi, and 1686 found them eventually headed back to Green Bay. Forced to stay another winter, they received orders from Montreal that they were to recruit some local Indigenous warriors and go to Lake Ontario to fight some Iroquois who were making trouble there. Because of this, the pelts they had accumulated were left behind, and the traders took a loss. We know that Mathieu’s partner lost about 40,000 livres, so we can imagine that Mathieu lost a similar amount. This ended up being his last venture into the West.
In 1688, Mathieu bought property on the Saint-Pierre River in the settlement of Hautmesnil (present-day Verdun). He signed a lease for some more land at Pointe-St-Charles, and he was granted a third concession at Cote-St-Paul. The final document where Mathieu’s name appeared was dated June 26, 1703, and it was an acknowledgment that he owed a merchant 150 livres. By then, he was nearly 60-years-old. Mathieu lived his final years in the Montreal area, and died at the hospital there on December 17, 1708. His wife Marie survived him and remarried in about 1713; she died in 1722 in Lachine. Mathieu was the ancestor of Dan Aykroyd, Liza Minelli and Rudy Vallée.
About Mathieu’s dit name “LeTang”
It was common for early settlers in New France to have acquired some sort of nickname, which often ending up becoming the family’s surname. Many of those who used nicknames had been soldiers, but this was not the case for Mathieu. Because only the name “Brunet” was on his indentured service contract, the “LeTang” was apparently added after he got to Canada. “LeTang” (also spelled “Lestang”) translates as “the pond,” so perhaps it was a geographic feature of a place Mathieu had lived.
Children:
1. Michel Brunet dit LeTang — B. about 1668, (probably) Champlain, New France; D. after 1681
2. Jeanne Brunet — B. about 1670, (probably) Champlain, New France; D. 1704; M. François Huart, 12 Apr 1684, Champlain, New France
3. Marie-Anne Brunet — B. about 1672, (probably) Champlain, New France; D. 6 Nov 1747, Pointe Claire, New France; M. (1) Antoine Pilon (~1664-1715), 10 Jan 1689, Montreal, New France; (2) Laurent Godin, 26 Jun 1719, Pointe Claire, New France
4. Jean Brunet — B. 3 Jan 1674, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, New France; D. Mar 1723, Pointe Claire, New France, M. Marie Perrier, 19 Oct 1694, Lachine, New France
5. Pierre Brunet — B. 13 Feb 1676, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, New France; D. after 1681
6. Marie Brunet — B. 25 Oct 1677, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, New France; D. Jan 1756, Ste-Genevieve, Pierrefonds, New France; M. François Bigras dit Fauvel (1665-1731), 31 Aug 1693, Montreal, New France
7. Jacques Brunet — 30 Jul 1680, Champlain, New France; D. about Nov 1708, Montreal, New France; M. Jeanne Verray, 14 Nov 1701, Lachine, New France
8. Catherine Brunet — B. 5 Nov 1681, Champlain, New France; M. Honoré Danis (1669-1722), 15 Nov 1694, Lachine, New France
9. Marguerite Brunet — B. 19 Aug 1683, Champlain, New France; D. 3 Aug 1699, Lachine, New France
10. Mathieu Brunet — B. Sep 1688, Montreal, New France; D. Nov 1706, Montreal, New France
Sources:
Généalogie du Quebec et d’Amérique française (website)
King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers—1663-1673, Peter Gagne, 2000
Phantoms of the French Fur Trade: Twenty Men Who Worked in the Trade Between 1618 and 1758, Vol. 2, Timothy J. Kent, 2015
