O’BRENNAN, TADHG AND THE IRISH OF NEW FRANCE
Publication
28 February 2023Born Castlecomer, County Kilkenny, 1632. Died Pointe-aux-Trembles, Quebec, 1687.
Author: Eamonn McKee & Mark McGowan
Tadhg Cornelius Ó’Braonáin, Tadhg O’Brennan, known as Tec Cornelius Aubrenan, may have been the first documented Irish-born immigrant to Canada. There had been other Irish who had set foot in Canada before him, such as the fishermen who had settled in Newfoundland, and perhaps Irish women among the Norse explorers to what was known in their sagas as Vineland, now disputed as either Newfoundland or Cape Breton. The honour of being known and named in official records, however, lies with Tadhg O’Brennan.
Born around 1632, it appears that Tadgh was from a parish near Castlecomer, County Kilkenny. In a thoroughly researched paper published in 2002, Louis Aubry, one of his descendants, suggested that his father was Connor O’Brennan who held lands in Kilkenny. He further speculates that ‘Diasonnay’, the phonetic record of Tadhg’s birthplace recorded on his marriage certificate, is probably a parish called Dysert near the river Dinin, a tributary of the Nore River just north of Kilkenny city. There he finds Dysert Bridge where the two rivers called Dinan converge.
The O’Brennans held their strategic lands and became known as a military force in the region. By the time of the Cromwellian invasions, in 1650, however, the O’Brennans were unable to hold their estates and it is likely that Tadhg was one of the many Irish soldiers allowed to leave for France after the Cromwellian invasion. In France, and though likely illiterate, Tadgh would have learned French, essential to his decision to move to New France.
Tadhg arrived in what was then New France in 1661 at the age of 29. He married Jeanne Chartier on 9 October 1670 in Notre Dame Cathedral in Quebec City, although they moved to the Montreal area where they had their family. Tadhg and Jeanne had seven children, Madeleine Therese (1671), Catherine (1673), Jean-Cornelius (1675), Jean-Baptiste (1676), Francois (1677), Geneviève (1679), Etienne Aubrenon, who died in infancy at Repentigny, in 1681. Tadhg died at age fifty-five in 1687 and is buried at Pointe-aux-Trembles, near Montreal.
Tadhg would have not felt isolated as an Irishmen in the St. Lawrence Valley. In 1700, “Tanguay’s Parish Registers” report that of the 2,500 families living in the colony, about 100 were natives of Ireland, and there were 30 other cases where either the husband or the wife was Irish-born. In parish registers, the local priest just listed the individuals as “Irlandais,” without reference to county of origin. Among those discovered in the records of 17th century include Jean Houssye, dit Bellerose, who was actually John Hussey, married in New France in 1671. He was a native of Dublin and son of Matthew Hussey and Elizabeth Hogan of St. Lawrence O’Toole Parish. In 1688, Pierre and Jean Lehait were living in Quebec City, and were brothers formerly known as Peter and John Leahy from County Wicklow. Peter was a servant in the entourage of Governor Louis de Baude, Count de Frontenac. Similarly, two other Irishmen, Jean Lehaise (John Leahy) and Jean LeMer St.Germain, dit Irelande, of Thurles, were both granted land by the Sulpician Fathers, the seigneurs of the island of Montreal. Finally, in 1704, Jean Baptiste Riel was married at Isle du Pads. Antiquarian, John O’Farrell, suggests that he may actually be John Rielly of Limerick, and a distant ancestor of the famous Canadian patriot, Louis Riel.
The naturalization records from 17th century New France also list a number of women whose sometimes Gallicized names suggest Irish origin: Marie Washton (married to an Irish colonist); Anne Lord (Tierney); Catherine Dunkin (O’Dongen); Martha Finn; Madeline Alleyne (O’Halloyne); and Marie-Charlotte Brojon (O’Brogan). They may have come directly from Ireland, been refugees from the English colonies, or taken captive by French and Indigenous raiding parties on the frontiers of New England.
While Catholic refugees fleeing from the English and Protestant Colonies as far south as Virginia provided one of the sources of Irish migration to New France, the French and Spanish militaries were another important agency of emigration. Irish expatriates, like Tadhg who had joined the French army of Louis XIV often appeared in the regiments stationed in New France. Timothy Sullivan, for example, was a native of Kerry who had served with the Spanish Dragoons, and after having escaped capture by the English, fled to Montreal via the New England colonies. In 1718, he appears as a physician in Montreal, with a Gallicized surname Sylvain, and married the widowed mother of Marguerite D’Youville, the founder the Sisters of Charity, or Grey Nuns. Similarly, Charles de Latouche McCarthy, was born in Brest in 1706, France, son of Irish refugees. He was a decorated captain in the French navy and served in New France from 1737 to 1763. He married Angelique-Jeanne Guillimin, the daughter of a member of the Sovereign Council. He served New France with distinction through the wars of the Austrian Succession (1740-47) and the Seven Years War (1756-63). During the latter war, Governor Pierre Riguad de Vaudreuil assembled an Irish Company of troops consisting of deserters from the English army, Irish colonists, and refugees in New France. His Irish company was transferred to the European theatre of the war before the fall of New France in 1760.
We do not know much about Tadhg O’Brennan’s life in Quebec. Nevertheless, he represents several generations of Irish men and women who recognized that there was no future for themselves or their faith after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. They found temporary homes in France, either through the military or the merchant trades, and many ended up in France’s colonial possessions in North America. Other Irish had found themselves in the New England colonies, but fled to New France for the liberty of practicing their Catholic Faith. Tadhg’s family lineage, and that of Sullivan and McCarthy, were in themselves a plumb line that reached deep into Ireland’s history. As a microcosm of early Irish migration to Canada, Tadhg is a fitting character to have the honour of being the first officially recorded Irishman in Canada.
Further Reading:
Thomas Guerin, The Gael in New France (Montreal: Private, 1946)
John O’Farrell, “Irish Families in Ancient Quebec,” in Robert O’Driscoll and Lorna Reynolds, eds., The Untold Story: The Irish in Canada. Toronto: Celtic Arts of Canada, 1988. Pp 281-94. Originally published on 15 January 1872 as a speech to the Hibernian Benevolent Society of Quebec.
Tanguay Collection, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes Québec, 1608 à 1890. Online: https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/2177/