ROUSSEL, TIMOTHÉE, surgeon; b. c. 1639, son of Étienne Roussel and Jeanne Bouette, from Notre-Dame de Montpellier (France); d. 1700 at Quebec.

In 1669 he entered the Hôtel-Dieu at Quebec, but he apparently became its salaried surgeon only in 1687, after the death of Jean Demosny. He received 200 livres a year. He is not known to have had an apprentice, but he did have a journeyman surgeon, René Gaschet*. In 1688 he had a stone house built in Buade street, later called “Maison du Chien d’Or” (“House of the Golden Dog”) because of an inscription that he caused to be placed on it. In 1877 William Kirby was to immortalize this house and its owner in his novel The Golden Dog. About 1688–89, Roussel was the surgeon of the Ursulines.

He was a sharp-tempered and grasping man. From 1672 on, he appeared almost yearly before the Conseil Souverain in the roles of petitioner, defendant, respondent, or appellant. He was churchwarden of the parish of Notre-Dame in Quebec in 1685 and 1686. He died during the epidemic of 1700.

On 22 Nov. 1667 he had married Madeleine Du Mortier, by whom he had one boy and six girls: in 1694 his daughter Geneviève became the second wife of Louis Chambalon*, and another daughter, Louise, joined the Hospitallers of the Hôtel-Dieu at Quebec in 1693. After becoming a widower, Roussel had married again on 16 Aug. 1688; by his second wife, Catherine Fournier, he had eight children. Catherine, one of the daughters of this second marriage, also joined the Hospitallers, in 1713.

Gabriel Nadeau