Jacques de Noyon (1668–1745)

Jacques de Noyon
Born	1668-02-12 Trois-Rivières, New France
Died	1745-05-12 Boucherville, New France
Occupation	Voyageur; coureur de bois; sergeant in the colonial regular troops
Father	Jean de Noyon
Mother	Marie Chauvin

Jacques de Noyon (12 February 1668 – 12 May 1745) was a Canadian voyageur and coureur de bois. In 1688 he led a trading party from Fort Nipigon up the Kaministiquia River and across Dog Lake to Rainy Lake, the farthest west a Frenchman was then recorded to have gone.

For the student at Lakehead Technical Institute in 1954, see Jacques de Noyon.

The 1688–89 journey

Noyon was born at Trois-Rivières on 12 February 1668, the second son of Jean de Noyon, a master edge-tool maker, and Marie Chauvin. In 1688, at the age of 20, he led a trading party from Fort Nipigon — built on Lake Nipigon four years earlier under Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut — up the Kaministiquia and across Dog Lake to Rainy Lake, where he wintered among the Assiniboine. On the return in 1689, a man named Lacroix and two other men were accidentally drowned in a lake later called Lac Sainte-Croix.

Later life

Noyon later travelled west again as a hired voyageur, ran into debt, and in 1704 married Abigail Stebbins at Deerfield, Massachusetts. Two weeks later the couple were among those taken to Canada in the raid on Deerfield. He became a sergeant in the colonial regular troops in the company of Alphonse Tonty. He and his wife, called Marguerite Stebens in Montreal deeds, had at least 13 children. He died at Boucherville on 12 May 1745.

Several later documents mention a narrative of the 1688 journey, which Noyon may have written after he learned to write in New England. Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye and others later used the knowledge that Rainy Lake had already been reached by that route.