de La Rochelle, France

Sergent Royal, Maître-maçon

parents unknown

(…), de v. et ar. La Rochelle, Aunis (Charente-Maritime); s 25-07-1690 Montréal (63 ans); engagé La Rochelle avec sa femme et son beau-père Jean FONTENEAU 08-06-1659 pour l'abbé de QUEYLUS; embarqué dans le Saint-André; arrivée 29-09-1659 Montréal; 39 ans au rec. 66; 40 ans au rec. 67; 55 ans au rec. 81 Montréal; maître maçon et entrepreneur en bâtiments en 1659, huissier au bailliage seigneurie de Montréal 1667 ensuite huIssier (sergent royal), geôlier et concierge de la prison de Montréal 02-07-1676 à son décès, substitut du procureur fiscal de Montréal de 1678 à 1687; m vers 1659 La Rochelle avec Marie FONTENEAU; famille établie à Montréal; 3 enfants. (AG-59 : 14, 15; DGFQ : 41, 42)

From: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bailly_francois_1E.html

BAILLY, dit Lafleur, FRANÇOIS, master-mason; b. in France c. 1627 (1630 according to the census of 1681); d. 1690.

Bailly was hired by the Abbé Queylus [see Thubières] at La Rochelle 8 June 1659. With his wife, Marie, and his father-in-law, Jérémie Fonteneau, he arrived in Montreal the same year. Jeanne Mance soon engaged him to build a barn for the Hôtel-Dieu, inside Fort Ville-Marie, and on 4 April 1660, he entered into partnership with mason Urbain Brossard*. Later he worked in partnership with the other leading Montreal mason of the period, Michel Bouvier; the contract they jointly signed to build a bakery in 1683 calls them “architect-masons.” Bailly was in the militia of Sainte-Famille in 1663 and he was also a civic official, serving as sergeant-royal (huissier) from 1667 and prison warden (geôlier et concierge des prisons) from 2 July 1676 until his death. Bailly’s chief work, however, was on the parish church of Notre-Dame begun under the leadership of Dollier de Casson* in 1672, and completed in 1683. Constructed entirely of stone, 129 ft. long and 38 ft. wide, it was considerably larger and more impressive than Laval’s* cathedral in Québec. Bailly was buried 25 July 1690 and his wife on 29 Oct. 1692.

Alan Gowans

AJM, Greffe de Bénigne Basset, 15, 26 févr. 1660; 23 déc. 1662; 24 juin 1663; 22 févr. 1666; 19 août 1667; 7 oct. 1668; 31 juillet 1670; 8 févr. 1672; 6 oct. 1676; 10 févr. 1686; 23 sept. 1689. Recensement de 1681. Faillon, Histoire de la colonie française, III, 17. Alan Gowans, Church architecture in New France (Toronto, 1955), 64, 112, 115. É.-Z. Massicotte, “Maçons, entrepreneurs, architectes,” BRH, XXXV (1929), 137–38; “Une recrue de colons pour Montréal en 1659,” Can. Antiquarian and Numismatic J., 3d ser., X (1913), 63–96.

1666 Census of New France page 133:
françois Bailly dit lafleur .................39 maçon habitant
Marie fronturon (fonteneau) .................30 sa femme
Marie Bailly .................................4 fille
& Louise françoise bailly ...............2 mois fille
Et Martin doca .............................21 tourneur domestique engagé