Joseph Aubery (born at

Gisors Gisors () is a commune of Normandy, France. It is located northwest from the centre of Paris. Gisors, together with the neighbouring communes of Trie-Château and Trie-la-Ville, form an urban area of 13,915 inhabitants (2018). This urban are ...

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

, 10 May 1673; died at Saint-François, Quebec, Canada, 2 July 1755 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

Joseph Aubery was born 10 May 1673 at Gisors in Normandy. 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 Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

where he was also instructor for five years, and where he was ordained in September 1699.Johnson, Micheline D., "Aubery, Joseph". ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography'', vol. 3, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1974
/ref> He studied the Abenaki language at the Sault de la Chaudière mission. An unpublished French-Abenaki dictionary came to light in the twentieth century. Assigned to the

Abenaki The Abenaki ( Abenaki: ''Wαpánahki'') are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was pre ...

mission, he re-established in 1701 the mission at Medoctec. It was on the Saint John River, at Hay's Creek,"The Peter Paul Case", Carleton County Historical Society, Inc.
/ref> and appears to have been abandoned by the Franciscans about a year earlier.
Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 2 November 2015 The mission was named for St.

Francis de Sales Francis de Sales (french: François de Sales; it, Francesco di Sales; 21 August 156728 December 1622) was a Bishop of Geneva and is revered as a saint in the Catholic Church. He became noted for his deep faith and his gentle approach to ...

. In 1709 he was given charge of the Abenaki reduction at St. François. Aubery helped negotiate between the English and the Indians the Treaty of Casco in June 1727, obtaining better terms than those offered the year before. He remained at the St. Francis mission for nearly half a century.

Works

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 The Peace of Utrecht was a series of peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715. The war involved three contenders for the vacant throne ...

. His plan, however, was little regarded. These documents were preserved in the Paris archives. Other manuscripts, with the mission registers, were destroyed by fire in 1759.

References

Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Aubery, Joseph People in Father Rale's War 1673 births 1755 deaths 18th-century French Jesuits French Roman Catholic missionaries Jesuit missionaries in New France Roman Catholic missionaries in Canada