Louis Hébert

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For the American Civil War officer, see Louis Hébert (colonel).

Louis Hébert (c.1575 – January 1627) is widely considered to be the first legal farmer and Canadian apothecary as well as the first European to farm in Canada. He was born in 1575 in Paris to Nicolas Hebert and Jacqueline Pajot. In 1603, he accompanied Pierre Du Gua Des Monts to Acadia. He settled in Quebec in 1608 and was put in charge of the colony in 1613 when the English pirate Samuel Argall destroyed it. Louis Hebert was known to have planted the very first apple trees in North America. He died in 1627 from a fall on the ice and left his wife, Marie, and their three children, Guillaume, Guillaumette, and Anne.

[edit] Descendants

After the death of his childless son the Hébert name died, though by 1800, Louis Hébert and Marie Rollet had 4592 descendents married in Quebec, according to the Historical Demography Research Program of the Université de Montréal, making the couple the tenth most important one in French-Canadian ancestry. Given the migratory routes of French-Canadians, their descendents thus live mainly in Canada (especially Quebec), but also in communities in New England, upstate New York, and the midwest (especially Michigan, Missouri, Illinois).

(Some descendants also share the name Hébert, but this is through marriage of a female descendent with other men named Hébert, with since there has been over a dozen Hébert immigrants to New France).