Joseph Aubery

Joseph Aubery (born at Gisors in Normandy, 10 May1673; died at Saint-François, Quebec, Canada, 2 July1755 was a French Jesuit missionary in Canada. Chateaubriand reproduces the life-story of Father Aubery in the character of the missionary in his "Atala".

Life

At the age of seventeen he entered the Society of Jesus, and for four years studied in Paris. He arrived in Canada in 1694 and completed his studies at Quebec where he was also instructor for five years, and where he was ordained in 1700.

Assigned to the Abenaki mission, he re-established in 1701 the mission at Medoctec. It was on the St. John River, at Hay's Creek [ [http://www.cchs-nb.ca/html/Peter_PaulL.html Peter Paul case ] ] , and appears to have been abandoned by the Franciscans about a year earlier. In 1708 he was given charge of the Abenaki reduction at St. François. He remained in that mission for nearly half a century.

Works

Numerous manuscripts, with the mission registers, were destroyed by fire in 1759. He wrote several memorials in opposition to the claims of the English in Acadia, and sent them to the French Government, urging that the boundary between the French and English possessions should be determined by mutual agreement. To these memorials he added a map, giving the boundaries as defined by the treaty of Utrecht. His plan, however, was not accepted. These documents were preserved in the Paris archives.

An unpublished French-Abenaki dictionary came to light in the twentieth century ["Father Aubery's French Abenaki Dictionary", an English translation, Chisholm Bros. Publishing (1995), ISBN-10: 156798004X, ISBN-13: 978-1567980042.] .

Notes

External links

* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=1193 Biography at the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"]