LEVASSEUR, dit L’Espérance, PIERRE, joiner; b. 1629, son of Noël Levasseur and Geneviève Grange; d. some time after 1681, Brother of Jean Levasseur and grandfather of the woodcarver Pierre-Noël Levasseur*.

On 23 Oct. 1655, at Quebec, he married Joanne de Chaverlange, daughter of Antoine de Chaverlange and Marthe Guérin, from Saint-Oursin (near Bourges). The couple had eight children.

Levasseur was one of the founders of the Confrérie de Sainte-Anne, at the parish church of Quebec.

On 4 March 1657 he purchased a piece of land situated in the censive of the Messieurs de la Nouvelle-France.

Around 1661, even before securing title to the property, he built a house and outbuildings on a piece of land belonging to the Argentenay seigneury, on the Île d’Orléans; but as “he has not had an opportunity to accustom himself to the said place, by reason of inconveniences which exist there both for himself and his family,” he waived his rights in favour of Vincent Chrétien, for the sum of 140 livres.

In 1674, Pierre Levasseur worked in the joiner’s shop attached to the church at Beauport, We know this from an account of a quarrel between the joiner and Robert Mossion, a Quebec tailor. Because of a debt of 35 livres 5 sols for goods supplied, Levasseur had to submit to the seizure of payments owed him by the parochial council at Beauport.

Gérard Morisset