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Jean Baptiste Marchand

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Marchand, JEAN BAPTISTE, second principal in order of succession of the Sulpician College of Montreal and missionary of the Detroit Hurons at Sandwich, Ont.; b. at Vercheres, Que., February 25, 1760, son of Louis Marchand and Marguerite de Niverville; d. at Sandwich, April 14, 1825. Marchand was ordained March 11, 1786, affiliated to the Sulpician Seminary of Montreal, October 21, 1788, and thereupon named principal of what is now called Montreal College. This institution was cradled in the presbytery of M. Jean Baptiste Curateau de la Blaiserie, S.S., parish priest at Longue Pointe, an outlying village; the first students having been received there about the year 1767. It was removed to the city October 1, 1773, and installed in the old Chateau Vaudreuil, Jacques Cartier Square, where it was known as St. Raphael‘s College until 1803 when the Chateau was destroyed by fire. M. Marchand’s administration of St. Raphael‘s lasted till 1796, when the death occurred of M. Francois Xavier Dufaux, S.S., missionary to the Hurons at Assumption Parish opposite Detroit, at what is now Sandwich, and M. Marchand was chosen to succeed him. It was during M. Marchand’s administration in 1801, that Msgr. Denaut, Bishop of Quebec, made the first episcopal visitation recorded in the parish, and confirmed some five hundred persons. He at the same time gave M. Marchand an assistant in the person of Rev. Felix Gratien, who was recalled in 1806 to fill the chair of philosophy in the Quebec Seminary. M. Marchand toiled on, unaided for the most part, for all but thirty years, and died at his post among his beloved Indians.

ARTHUR EDWARD JONES


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