The other is Adam Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, a young man of twenty-five years of age. There is little known of his antecedents. The actual date of his arrival is not certain but, according to the latest researches made by Mr. E. Z. Massicotte, city archivist of Montreal (April, 1912), the first document, in which his name appears as witnessing a land transfer, is dated September 10, 1658.
As he figures frequently in acts after this, it is not likely that he came much before that date, for he was not present on December 29, 1657, at the marriage of Jeanne Le Moyne with Jacques Leber, a young man of his own age, nor at that of Michel Messier and of Anne Le Moyne, February 18, 1658; while after the above date, on September 15, 1658, he was present at that of Jacques Mousseaux and of Marguerite Soviot, and on October 3, 1658, he was godfather to Elizabeth Moyen, daughter of Lambert Closse and Elizabeth Moyen, married the year previously, and thenceforward he appeared frequently at public ceremonies.
In this act, Dollard is styled "_volontaire_," a volunteer, which may signify that he was only as yet attached to the garrison or that he had taken service freely and not on wages. The Notary Basset gives him, sometimes, the title of "commandant"; at others that of "officer of the garrison."
Mr. Massicotte proves, from the inventory of Dollard's effects after his death, that he had intended to settle, having formed a building society, explained before as then customary, with Picoté de Bélestre, to break land and to cultivate it in view of a future homestead. We have the record of de Bélestre's concession and of a debt to be paid to the succession of "the late Adam Dollard" the sum of 79 _livres_, 10 _sols_, for fifty-three days' work, by men employed by the deceased to work on the same concession.
It is therefore probable that Dullard was contemplating his own homestead and that, in his turn, de Bélestre would assist, according to the contracts before noticed.
Dollard was by no means wealthy; indeed the number of his personal effects at his death was less than those shown in the inventories of the greater part of the settlers dying before him, even of the bachelors. The sum total of these possessions has been estimated at eighty-five _livres_, or 1,700 _sous_! But we must remember that a _sou_ would at that time buy five to ten times more than now.