This family is unusual in having some connections to the lesser nobility of Normandy. The branch of the LeNeufs du Hérisson from which we are descended lived in Caen, and were Huguenots (a fact which would have made them somewhat outcast from their class). In 1636 a colonization fleet of four vessels under the command of Guillaume DuPlessis-Bochart de Kerbodot (Samuel de Champlain's chief lieutenant, later governor of the colony) left Le Havre with a number of families. Several of these were of high rank - there were two knights of Malta, two Jesuit missionaries from noble backgrounds, and two families which were to become major landowners and merchants: Pierre Legardeur de Repentigny, with his mother, wife and three children; his brother Charles Legardeur de Tilly; their brother-in-law, Jacques LeNeuf de La Poterie, accompanied by his mother, wife and daughter; Michel LeNeuf du Hérisson, brother of Jacques with his daughter; two sisters of LeNeuf, Marie and Madeleine, the latter arriving with her husband, Jean Pinterel du Colombier, and four sons. (details from The History of New France, vol iii, by Marc Lescarbot). The LeNeuf and LeGardeur families were both members of the Company of One Hundred Associates which financed the founding of Nouvelle-France.

Jean LeNeuf, Sieur du Hérisson, lived in Caen in the mid-sixteenth century, and was married to Marguérite LeGardeur, who must have been one of the LeGardeur family mentioned above - but we do not know who her parents were. In addition, when Jean's grandson Jacques filed proof of nobility with the Superior Council of New France in the 1630s, he provided a family tree going back to Richard Le Neuf in the fourteenth century - but did not say exactly how he fit into that tree. The proof of nobility was accepted, however.

Mathieu LeNeuf, Sieur du Hérisson, was born in Caen about 1576, and was married in the Protestant church there in May 1599 to Jeanne Le Marchand, daughter of Gervais Le Marchant, sieur de la Cellonière et de la Rocque (lieutenant of the "bailly" or magistrate de Condé sur Noireau), and his wife Venote de St-Germain. (This St-Germain family has been traced and has some interesting connections; see St-Germain du Post and Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Also, the only known cousinship between my parents is through this family.) Mathieu had several siblings, including Michel, who was living in Caen in 1599; and possibly a half-brother Jean, Sieur de Vaux (son of Jean's second wife Suzanne Blanchard), who also did not leave France.

Mathieu and Jeanne were the parents of the immigrant Michel LeNeuf du Hérisson. There is no evidence that he was ever married; his daughter Anne (born about 1632) was probably illegitimate but acknowledged. In all records concerning her, he is mentioned as her father, but she is usually "Anne du Hérisson" without the family name "Le Neuf," and she married a commoner, not another member of the aristocratic class like all her other relatives. Her husband was Antoine Desrosiers (see Desrosiers for descendants). The other children of Mathieu and Jeanne were Jacques LeNeuf de Poterie (1604, many descendants); Madeleine (1607, married Jean Poutrel de Colombier, two children but no known grandchildren); and Marie (1612, married Jean Godefroy de Lintot, many descendants).

For more information on the family background see http://habitant.org/leneuf/.