To discourage the Iroquois Indians from attacking the settlements, Louis the XIV sent the soldiers of the Carignan-Salière regiment to New France. Our ancestor arrived in Quebec city in 1665 as a sergeant of a group of soldiers called ¨La compagnie de Monsieur de Chambly¨. The first regiment’s task was to build a fort called ¨Fort Chambly ¨. In 1668, the regiment was dissolved and Pierre, like a third of his regiment, decided to become settlers instead of returning to France.

Girls to be wed were scarce in the new world (New France), and for years the King tried to recruit courageous young women to become the wives of these determined young settlers. They were called « Filles du roi ». An orphan girl named Françoise Baiselat from Paris, was one of the young girls who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1668. Her first marriage was to sergeant Laurent Cambin dit Larivière, who died on the 5th of May 1670, when their daughter Françoise was only one year old.

Pierre Marsan dit Lapierre , 44 years of age and from Rouen in Normandy married this young 24 year old widow on the 22nd of September 1670 in Notre-Dame church of Quebec city. They settled in Pointe-aux-Trembles parish on the island of Montreal, leaving as descendants ten (10) children of whom three died at a young age. When Pierre died in 1692, Joseph the youngest son was only three years old and the eldest, François was nine. A year later, Françoise Baiselat got married for the third time, to André Corbeil dit Tranchemontagne who was 29 years old. Unfortunately, their marriage did not last very long because Françoise died while giving birth to their newborn son, François.

François, Jean, and Joseph, the three sons of Pierre Marsan dit Lapierre, established themselves at Pointe-aux-Trembles. There is no record of Jean's nor Joseph’s sons getting married, but François married Elisabeth Desroches on the 14th of February 1707 in Pointe-aux-Trembles. Their three eldest sons Jacques, Pierre, and François obtained neighboring land grants along the Pointe-du-Jour brook in L’Assomption . Jean-Baptiste, the fourth son, established himself in Repentigny.

Joseph the fifth left for Terrebonne, and the last brother, Antoine, did not leave his home town of Pointe-aux-Trembles. To date, we have located across Canada and the United States many descendants of Pierre, François, Jean Baptiste, and Joseph, the sons of François and Elisabeth Desroches. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we find many orthographical variations of our family name such as Merçen, Merçan, Mersan and Mexen which can sometimes end with t or d, and followed with dit Lapierre. At the beginning of the nineteenth century some families started to use only a portion of the name, either Marsan or Lapierre, yet a few families still continue to use Marsan dit Lapierre .

By Jean-Guy Marsan j.g.marsan@globetrotter.net
Translated by : Donald E.Marsan