After arriving in North America around 1620 with his wife Marguerite Langlois, Abraham Martin raised a family in Québec City, and eventually died in 1664. Accustomed to seeing Abraham and his family in the heights of Quebec, the residents of the town started to call the whole plateau the “Heights of Abraham” or the Plains of Abraham.
The first mention of the Plains of Abraham can be found on a map from 1734, some 70 years after Abraham’s death. Following the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, the toponym “Plains of Abraham” was cemented once and for all and became a part of the vernacular of the locals of Québec City. Over the years, the area known as the plains has changed and shifted progressively westward and then northward.
When the National Battlefields Commission was created in 1908, the first part of the territory acquired to create the Battlefields Park still carried the name of the Plains of Abraham.
Origin and early years in Québec
Abraham Martin was born around 1589 in France. We are not sure of the exact year of his wife’s birth, but we do know she was a little younger than Abraham. Little is known about their life in France before they left for North America, but Abraham was known by a few nicknames—l’Écossais, or the Scot, and Master Abraham—even then.
In 1616, the couple’s first son, Jean Martin, was baptized in Dieppe. It was after Jean’s birth that they travelled to America, likely in 1619 or 1620. They arrived alongside another couple, Pierre Desportes and Françoise Langlois, Marguerite’s sister. In 1621, Marguerite gave birth to Eustache Martin, the first child to be born in the Québec colony. She then became a midwife and helped other women to give birth in the colony. Held in high esteem by Samuel de Champlain himself, the Martin family had a good reputation in Québec.
In 1629, the Kirke brothers captured Québec in the name of the English crown. During this conflict, the Martin family left the city and returned to France. While in Europe, Marguerite gave birth to another son, Pierre, who was also baptized in Dieppe. In 1632, Québec was returned to France by the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Thus, Abraham Martin and his family returned to settle in Québec.
Abraham settles on the heights of Quebec
Upon their return to New France, the Martin family received a lot of 12 arpents (10 acres) on the heights of Quebec. The Company of New France granted this land to Abraham Martin in 1635. It was at this time that Martin became a farmer, giving up his work as a pilot or fisher on the water.
Along with this land concession, Abraham and Marguerite also inherited 600 pounds from Samuel de Champlain. On his death on December 26, 1635, the founder of Québec also left 600 pounds to Marguerite Martin, one of the daughters of the couple, to “help her marry in this country of New France.”
In addition to this initial land concession and the sum inherited from de Champlain, they also received another, even larger concession of 20 arpents as a gift from the surgeon Adrien Du Chesne in 1645. Du Chesne was also an interpreter for the Jesuit priests in their encounters with the First Nations people. We do not know exactly why he gave his land to the Martin family, but it appears that he did not live in Québec during his time in the colony.
The property of Abraham Martin was now divided between the upper town, in the modern neighbourhood of Saint-Jean, and the lower town, all the way to the Saint-Charles River. At the heart of the property, the family relied on a spring of clean water for their drinking water.
On the southern slope of the promontory, the land was mostly occupied by the Sevestre family. Charles Sevestre, a Parisian printer, arrived in Québec in around 1636 with his wife, Marie Pichon, three of his brothers, and his mother. The Company of New France (also known as the Company of One Hundred Associates) granted land to this family in 1639. Located on the heights of Quebec, the lots granted to the Sevestre family were about 10 arpents deep, from the city westward, nestled between the Grande Allée and the river. These lots constitute a significant portion of the land that makes up the Battlefields Park today.
Their lives in Québec
Abraham Martin and Marguerite Langlois remained in Québec City for almost their entire lives. Part of the legend around the story of Abraham is based on a document signed by the notary Le Coustre in 1647. Abraham Martin identified himself as a royal pilot on this document. However, there is no other proof that Abraham Martin was ever granted such a title.
The couple had nine children, which led to numerous descendants. Many families in Québec and across Canada can count Abraham Martin and Marguerite Langlois among their ancestors.
So why do we say the Plains of Abraham?
By the 18th century, the name was already being used by the citizens of Québec to describe the heights. But what really cemented the name in history was a major historical event: the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on September 13, 1759, between the French and British armies.
Abraham’s land on the Plains of Abraham
In 1667, after the death of Abraham Martin (September 8, 1664), followed by that of Marguerite Langlois (December 17, 1665), the whole of their property was sold to the Ursulines. The congregation maintained this land until the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. In 1762, they transferred the land to a tanner named Jean-Marie Deguise, dit Flamand, who came from a family of artisans in Dunkirk. He took advantage of the spring on the land for his work.
The côte d'Abraham is thought to have originally referred to the entire promontory north of Québec City before referring a single road that roughly corresponds to the route of the Côte d'Abraham still found in Québec in the 21st century.
After the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and until the early 19th century, the Plains of Abraham may have referred to the entire promontory beyond the city proper. When the Faubourg of Saint-Jean expanded in the 1820s, the Plains of Abraham were pushed progressively westward, referring only to the portion outside of the faubourgs.
In the 1840s, as the city developed, residents started to refer to the whole area south of the Grande Allée as the Plains of Abraham. Over the years, construction continued to encroach on the area, cutting more and more land away from that part of the heights of Quebec, and the land known as the Plains of Abraham continued to shrink. By the early 20th century, the Plains of Abraham referred only to the large plain between the modern Gérard-Morisset pavilion of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec and Collège Mérici.
It was only in the mid-20th century, when the Battlefields Park was completed, that the name Plains of Abraham was used to refer to the whole park.
Where did the name Abraham come from?
Many theories propose that Abraham Martin had travelled to Scotland several times or even that he himself was Scottish, but no research has shown a close link between Abraham Martin and Scotland. Other theories suggest that it was his strong navigation skills in the early 16th century that led Abraham’s shipmates to call him Master Abraham. In fact, on civilian vessels, whether a commercial or a fishing vessel, the master often acts as the boat's commander and is usually very good at navigating.
Still others believe that “l’Écossais” is a name given to Abraham during military service. In France in the 17th and 18th centuries, many men who served in the army took on a nickname, known as a nom de guerre. Again, there is no concrete evidence to prove this claim. An even more shocking theory is that Abraham Martin may have been a member of a secret society and used this nickname to conceal his identity. Finally, it is possible that he lived on Rue d’Écosse in Dieppe, which could explain this byname. In the end, no one can be certain of how he got these names. The only thing we know for sure is that, no matter the reason, these names were given to Abraham Martin.
