Soldier, politician, diplomatist and colonizer, de Puisaye was born at Mortagne-en-Perche, France, about 1755, and enlisted in the French Army at 18. Elected to the States General in 1789, he supported reform but, alarmed by the course of the Revolution, later organized resistance on behalf of the Royalists. Outlawed, he sought refuge in England and in 1795, as Lieutenant-General, led an ill-fated expedition to Quiberon, Brittany. Three years later, with some forty other émigrés, he arrived in Upper Canada and established a short-lived settlement in the Markham-Vaughan region. In 1799 he purchased a farm here on which he lived until he moved to England in 1802. There he died in 1827.

Location

On the east side of the Niagara River Parkway near the site of his former farm, about 3 km south of Niagara-on-the-Lake

Themes

• Communities
• Franco-Ontarian heritage
• Politics and law