Jean Baptiste Marchand

Second principal in order of succession of the Sulpician College of Montreal and missionary of the Detroit Hurons at Sandwich, Ont.; b. at Verchères, Que., 25 Feb. 1760, son of Louis Marchand and Marguerite de Niverville; d. at Sandwich, 14 Apr., 1825. Marchand was ordained 11 March, 1786, affiliated to the Sulpician Seminary of Montreal, 21 Oct., 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 1 Oct., 1773, and installed in the old Château Vaudreuil, Jacques Cartier Square, where it was known as St. Raphael's College until 1803 when the Château was destroyed by fire. M. Marchand was chosen to succeed him. It was during M Marchand's administration of St. Raphael's lasted till 1796, when the death occurred of M. François 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 Mgr. 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.

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