Thomas Touchet was Robert de la Berge's step-brother. Thomas was
12 years
older than Robert. His mother was Marie Potevin and his father was
Jacques
Touchet. After his father died, his mother married Jacques de la
Berge on
May 8, 1638. They then had three sons, Robert, Abraham and
Guillaume.
It was Thomas Touchet, who after having arrived in Québec in February,
1650,
returned to find a wife in 1653 (because of the scarcity of females in
Nouvelle
France at the time.) When he returned to Québec for the second
time in
1658 (with his new wife and child), he convinced Robert to come with
him.
From Pierre-Lionel LaBerge's book translation, p. 158 describing Thomas'
work as a very skilled carpenter.
Thomas Touchet sojurns in New France between 1649 and 1653
The honorable Nicolas Juchereau, Sieur de Saint-Denis, had certainly
seen
the house which Rouillard-Touchet and associates had built for Noël
Morin,
and could appreciate the quality of their work. That is why he
contracted
them on December 4, 1650, for the construction of a house 40 feet long
and
20 feet wide, inside measurement, with a half-timbered wall in the
middle
to separate the two rooms. The price was 300 livres tournois, plus one
barrel
of bacon,and four pots of wine, the work was scheduled to be completed
at
the end of August, 1651.
In 1702, Nicolas Laberge contracted with Charles Juchereau de
Saint-Denis,
son of Nicolas Juchereau and older brother of Louis Juchereau de
Saint-Denis,
to go to the Mississippi to start a tannery.
He built an addition to the Guillaume Couillard house. Guillaume
Couillard
was one of the first families of Québec as mentioned above.
Thomas Touchet took advantage of his voyage to Québec to
conclude on the
same day another contract with Guillaume Couillard, bourgeois, one of
the first
residents of Québec. He agreed to build an extension at the end of his
house,
18 feet in length, and the same width as the house, with a double
chimney
mantel, for the sum of 150 livres tournois.
Shown above is a wood windmill which was
built in 1767 in Esplehin,
Belgium near Tournai and then later moved to Woluwe on the outscirts
of Brussels.
Thomas Touchet helped build a wood
windmill in Neuville south of Québec
City in 1672 as described on page 263, item 3 of Pierre-Lionel's book
translation. It would have been similar to the one shown above.
