LE CONTE DUPRÉ, LOUIS (the name was sometimes written Leconte, Lecompte, Dupré, dit Le Conte), farmer, landowner, fur-trader, merchant and bourgeois at Bécancour, Champlain, and Montreal; b. in the parish of Pouzauges, in the province of Poitou, in 1654; d. in Montreal, in 1715.

Le Conte Dupré was the son of Charles Le Conte and Anne Defosse, both of the parish of Pouzauges. The date of his arrival in New France is unknown, but by 1672 he was established at Bécancour and probably engaged in farming. In the 1681 census he is described as a resident of Champlain, aged 27, the owner of one musket and three head of cattle, and having 18 acres under cultivation. He took up permanent residence in Montreal in 1683 and purchased land near Place du Marché and Rue Saint-Louis in 1694.

His marriage contract was drawn up on 29 Oct. 1683, but was not registered until 4 Nov. 1704. His wife was Marie-Catherine de Saint-Georges, the daughter of Adrien de Saint-Georges, esquire and member of the king’s body-guard, and of Jeanne Guernon. They had a total of 16 children, some of whom, however, died young.

Little direct evidence of Le Conte Dupré’s commercial activities exists. He was granted a fur-trading licence for the pays d’en haut in 1686, but sold it. He had business connections with Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye, through whom he purchased on 26 Oct. 1681 the seigneury of Terrebonne belonging to André Daulier, Sieur Des Landes, an absentee landowner. Le Conte Dupré did not develop his lands, and in 1707 the intendant, Jacques Raudot, permitted his tenants to build a mill. After Le Conte Dupré’s death, his widow sold the lands to François-Marie Bouat.

Property sales and seizures after his death and the commercial-marital links forged during his lifetime indicate that he was a man of some substance. He died in Montreal on 13 July 1715 at the age of 61.

Cameron Nish