Olivier Charbonneau was a frontiersman who lived in Old Montreal in New France. Charbonneau started his working life as a sewer cleaner. in Marans, Charente-Maritime. Widowed twice, by Ozanne Lussaud, and Roy in Marans, he then married Marie-Marguerite Garnier 1656. It is recorded that at that time his wife Marie-Marguerite was niece to Marguerite Bourgeoys. He was one of the first settlers of the Île Jésus. He is the ancestor of 35,000 living North Americans, and ancestor of the entire population of families with the surname Labelle, through his daughter Anne. There are only two surviving records for the family name of Charbonneau: one for Olivier and his wife, landing in 1659, and another for an unrelated man, Jean and his wife, around 1675. Nothing in the record suggests that the two were closely related. It has been estimated that 97% of the Charbonneau families in North America are descended from Olivier Charbonneau and his wife. Descendants of Jean are fewer in number and in New France have tended to cluster in the Vaudreuil and Soulanges area of Quebec near the Ottawa river.
Migration
In search of a better future, with his wife and their two-year-old daughter Anne, he sailed for New France on the ship "Saint-André" from La Rochelle on 2 July 1659. In La Rochelle, less than a month earlier, he was hired as "manual labourer", that is to say, to do spade work on farms, not having his own plough, for Ville-Marie, Montreal by the Society of Our Lady of Montreal; he was recruited by Jeanne Mance. This two-year contract earned Charbonneau enough money for his passage to Quebec plus accommodation costs at La Rochelle and buying a travel trunk "at home in this city of the Grace of God for their expenses and for acquiring a chest to put their clothes". Ten years later, on 10 October 1669 in Ville-Marie, the notary Bénigne Basset signed an amnesty of debtors in the hope of encouraging people to live in Ville-Marie. Their debts were enormous, each family's larger than an annual wage. The debt was wiped out by Jeanne Mance and her generous donors. Charbonneau's family thus is one of the eight founding families of Aunis, and under that amnesty they were bound by contract to migrate to New France.
Chabonneau and his wife raised a family at Ville-Marie: Anne, Joseph, Jean, Élisabeth, and Michel. After some years they moved from Ville-Marie to Pointe-aux-Trembles, and there he built a windmill, with his son and, their partner Pierre Dagenets.
His daughter Anne married Guillaume Labelle in 1671. Olivier Charbonneau settled in the region which today constitutes the parish of St. Francis de Sales in Laval, where he became the first permanent resident with his son-in-law. He is considered as the first citizen of the city of Laval, on the island north of Montreal. On 29 October 1675 Olivier Charbonneau received the first land grant in this area. Pierre Boucher, formerly governor of Trois-Rivières became Procurator of the Prelate of Quebec François de Laval, who signed the deed of sale. Olivier has left his mark there, because, like most others of his time, he was illiterate.
The Olivier-Charbonneau berge in Laval, in remembrance of the first population of île Jésus.
Both in France and in Quebec there are two "Charbonneau associations", the descendants of whom meet regularly. The last meeting of record was in 2007 at St-Joseph-du-Lac, Quebec for the group in Canada.
