DAUVERSIÈRE, JÉRÔME LE ROYER de la. – Founder of the Congregation of the Hospitaller Daughters of S. Joseph and promoter of the foundation of Montréal, born at La Flèche (Anjou, France), into a family belonging to the lesser nobility, on 18 March 1597, died there on 6 Nov. 1659. A tax collector at La Flèche, he married Giovanna Baugé in 1618, by whom he had 5 children. This modest tax collector, commonly called «le saint homme de La Flèche», a faithful executor of a precise mission entrusted to him by divine Providence, developed between 1630 and 1640, with the counsel of Fr. Stefano, a Recollect, of the Jesuits Francesco Chauveau and Carlo Lalemant, and of the Sulpician Gian Giacomo Olier, the project of the two bold foundations mentioned above, soon translated into reality. Indeed, he began by establishing at La Flèche, on 23 Dec. 1639, with the assistance of the young Maria de la Ferre, the Hospitaller Congregation of the Daughters of S. Joseph, with simple vows and without enclosure, canonically erected by the bishop of Angers on 19 Oct. 1643. Subsequently, in order to contribute actively to the evangelization of the natives, he promoted the foundation of the city of Ville-Marie, today Montréal, on the island of the same name, of which, since 1640, he had been co-owner with Baron Pietro Chevrier de Fancamp.
The city’s existence began on 17 May 1642, the day on which the 40 colonists landed on the island, led by the valiant Paolo de Chomedey, seigneur de Maisonneuve, and by the intrepid young Giovanna Mance, founder and first director of the Hôtel-Dieu of the nascent city. D., while remaining in France, provided for all the colonists’ needs, from their journey to their tools, using his own resources, loans, and the generous offerings made, out of a purely missionary ideal, by the members of the «Compagnia di Montréal», established for this purpose and of which he was procurator. These two foundations brought him infinite moral and financial worries; yet at his death the Congregation directed 5 Hôtels-Dieu (at La Flèche, Moulins, Laval, Baugé, and Ville-Marie), and the town of Ville-Marie already numbered several hundred inhabitants. He died cruelly tormented by moral anguish and physical suffering, leaving a precarious estate, immediately placed under seizure by the tax authorities and by the numerous creditors who, in his capacity as procurator of the «Compagnia di Montréal», had granted him considerable sums
