AMIOT (Amyot), JEAN-BAPTISTE (baptized Jean), merchant; b. 25 Nov. 1717 in Quebec, son of Pierre Amiot and Marie-Anne Cadet; d. 5 June 1769 in Quebec.

When he was 30 Jean-Baptiste Amiot was calling himself a merchant, which suggests that he was already in the import trade. In 1747, with the syndic and the other merchants of Quebec, he signed a report addressed to the minister of Marine, Maurepas, complaining of the excessively long terms for payment of bills of exchange drawn at Quebec on the royal treasury. In November of that year he sailed for France on the frigate Martre. After his return to the colony he was a supplier to the state, from which he received more than 90,000 livres in bills of exchange in 1751. He also did business with merchants in La Rochelle, France: on 1 Oct. 1751 he acted before the Conseil Supérieur “in the name and as the authorized agent of Jean-Baptiste Sombrun,” who was probably a merchant in that city.

In 1759 Amiot was elected a church warden in the parish council of Notre-Dame de Québec. After the conquest he was occupied, with fellow bourgeois of the town, in re-establishing the religious institutions of the colony, which earned him the right to be buried in the chapel of the seminary of Quebec.

Jean-Baptiste Amiot married twice. On 26 Nov. 1749 he married at Quebec Louise Bazin, by whom he had eight children. Then, after her death, he married Catherine Mouet de Mora at Trois-Rivières on 19 March 1763. Amiot died six years later, leaving a considerable estate to his wife and children. It included two houses in the town of Quebec, a piece of land at Lorette, and negotiable instruments of considerable value. His daughter Marie-Anne married Jacques-Nicolas Perrault*, the son of another Quebec merchant, Jacques Perrault*. It is difficult to determine exactly Amiot’s place among the merchants of Quebec, for this group is not yet well known.

José Igartua