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Zacharie Cloutier

French colonist (1590-1677)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ3574519 ↗
Source-derived summary

Zacharie Cloutier (c. 1590 – September 17, 1677) was a French carpenter who immigrated to New France in 1634 in the first wave of the Percheron immigration from the former province of Perche, to an area that is today part of Quebec, Canada. He settled in Beauport and founded one of the foremost families of Quebec.

Early life

Many sources state that Zacharie Cloutier was born around 1590 in the parish of Saint-Jean, Mortagne-au-Perche, France. Cloutier was one of several children of Denis Cloutier and his first wife Renée Brière.

The notary Mathurin Roussel of Mortagne called Cloutier the "family peacemaker," describing how Cloutier helped his father and brother solve a dispute involving inheritance. In the parish of his birth, Cloutier wedded Xainte (aka Sainte) Dupont, on July 18, 1616. Xainte had been born around 1595 in Mortagne to Paul-Michel and Perrine Dupont, and was the widow of Michel Lermusier. He and his family were among a group of settlers who travelled from Perche, an area next to the old province of Normandy in France.

In 1619 Henri II de Montmorency purchased the New France colony from his brother-in-law Henry II of Bourbon.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Zacharie Cloutier” as french colonist (1590-1677). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1590, 1677, 1634, 1616—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1590-12. The account is most persuasive where Zacharie, Cloutier and French can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as french colonist (1590-1677). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3574519. VIAF identifies the subject as 317273411. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1590, 1677, 1634 and 1616.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Zacharie Cloutier”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Zacharie Cloutier primary sources, Zacharie Cloutier archive and Zacharie research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Zacharie Cloutier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.