NORMANDIN, DANIEL, soldier, court officer, clerk of court, royal notary; b. c. 1660 at Rochefort, France, son of Jacob Normandin and Marie Briant; buried 18 Sept. 1729 at Batiscan.

He arrived in Canada in October 1684 as a soldier in the Marquis de Rompré’s company, but lost no time in replacing the musket by the pen. By 1687, equipped with a portable writing-desk, he was travelling through the countryside on both banks of the St Lawrence River, from Montreal to Batiscan. He was at one and the same time a tabellion, public recorder, reader of letters, and adviser on legal matters. He determined his fees in a somewhat erratic manner, which called down upon him the wrath of his confrères. In his acts he designated himself as “royal notary and tabellion of the King our Sire,” and was active throughout a wide area. In 1715 he tried to establish himself at Montreal, but the local notaries opposed this move, on the grounds that there were enough of them already. Normandin then settled permanently in the region of Trois-Rivières, more particularly at Batiscan, and held simultaneously all the posts necessitating a minimum of legal knowledge.

Normandin had married Louise Hayot in 1687 at Sorel; she bore him five children. By a holograph will dated 6 May 1728, he bequeathed to his daughter Madeleine’s husband, Guillaume Billy, the greater part of his possessions, including “all the minutes and originals of all kinds of contracts and acts owned by me in my capacity of royal notary from my reception of office until the day of my death.”

Raymond Douville