Earliest History

The land where the Laplantes lived has changed names several times over the course of history. The earliest related Laplantes that have been found lived on the Seigneurie du Sault St.Louis which was located on the south shore of the Saint Laurent (Lawrence) river to the southwest of Montreal.  From 1800 to present day this area has been divided up and redistricted over and over again as the population grew and history has played out..

According to the University of Montreal, the region known as New France before the English conquest of 1760 did not receive a great number of emigrants from across the Atlantic. Only 15,000 Frenchmen and Frenchwomen sailed for Canada in the seventeenth century, and two-thirds of them stayed in the colony for a short period and either returned to France or died in Canada without getting married. This was a very low number: the British Isles, with a population just over one-third of France’s, sent almost 380,000 immigrants to the New World over the same period.

France was at the time showing various symptoms of social discontent that should have justified a larger number of refugees fleeing to Canada, whose abundance of resources contrasted with the famine and unemployment among the poorest classes. Although France wasn’t really overpopulated, conditions there were favorable to emigration; these conditions, had they coincided with a real attraction of Canada, would have encouraged the departure of large contingents of settlers for the New World. But few French people migrated, as Canada, a distant, wild, and dangerous country, had a poor reputation.

On top of this, the authorities believed that the French population was not as growing quickly as it should be – and, in fact, that it was shrinking due to wars, plagues, and general misery. In response to Intendant Talon, who had asked him to find the means to form a "grand and powerful state" in Canada, which would involve a massive wave of immigrants, Colbert said, in a sentence that was to mark the future of the country, "It would not be prudent [of the king] to depopulate his kingdom as he would have to do to populate Canada." And yet, even had departures been multiplied tenfold, the effects of emigration on the most populous country in Europe would have been imperceptible – and the fate of North America would probably have been quite different. Reacting to the slow growth of the population, the King had women recruited between 1663-1673 to come to Canada. These women became known as «Les Filles du Roi» (the King's daughters) and they can be found in virtually every family tree of French Canadians today.

The result of this small founding population was that the French-Canadian stock grew from a relatively small number of people, about 10,000 immigrants. If we consider the male immigrants, from whom family names were transmitted through the generations, the number is reduced to about 4,500 – the total of immigrants who had at least one son who married.

Researching family history back to France is made more complicated by the "nom-dit" tradition. This was a family nickname (literally a "said name").  The origins of the noms-dits were various. Some noms-dits were the war-name of the first settler, while he was a soldier: Hébert dit Jolicoeur (Pretty Heart, cf. Braveheart), Thomas dit Tranchemontagne (mountain chopper). Some denoted the place of origin of the first settler: Langevin (Anjou), Barbeau dit Poitevin (Poitou). Others probably denoted a characteristic of the person or of his dwelling: Lacourse, Lépine, Larivière.

While Laplante is a famous "nom dit", there were colonists that arrived from France with this name:

1644 LOUIS BADAYAC LAPLANTE
1652 JACQUES SAUVE LAPLANTE PIERRE
1661 BONNIER LAPLANTE
1661 JEAN BAPTISTE LAPLANTE VEILLETTE
1662 CLEMENT LERIGER LAPLANTE
1665 MATHIEU RINGUET TESSIER LAPLANTE
1696 BONAVENTURE THOMAS LAPLANTE CHAMPAGNE
1731 JOSEPH LAPLANTE

Additional research is required to learn if our Laplante ancestors descended from these men.