ie, on the north bank of the same river, where they
grew in numbers until Lauriers, with Rochons and Matthieus, made up
nearly all the parish.

Charles Laurier, grandfather of Wilfrid Laurier, was a man of strong
character and marked ability. In face of many difficulties he mastered
mathematics and became a self-taught land surveyor, so that he was able
to make the surveys of the great Pangman seigneury at Lachenaie. Early
in the nineteenth century he settled his son Carolus on a farm just
hewn out of the forest, near the little village of St Lin, a frontier
settlement nestling at the foot of the Laurentian hills north of
Montreal. He himself continued to reside at Lachenaie until far on in
years, when he went to live with his son at St Lin.

Carolus Laurier followed in his father's footsteps, surveying and
farming by turns as opportunity offered. He had not his father's
rugged individuality, but his handsome figure, his alert wit, and his
amiable and generous nature made him a welcome guest through all the
French and Scottish settlements in the north country. That he had
something of his father's progressiveness {3} is shown by the fact that
he was the first farmer in the neighbourhood to set up a threshing
machine in his barn, to take the place of the old-time flail. It was
his liberal views that gave the first bent to his son's sympathies; and
he was, as we shall see, progressive enough to give the brilliant lad
the education needed for professional success, and far-seeing and
broad-minded enough to realize how great an asset a thorough knowledge
of English speech and English ways would be.

Yet it was rather to his mother that Wilfrid Laurier, like so many
other notable men, owed his abilities and his temperament. Marcelle
Martineau, kin to the mother of the poet Frechette, was a woman of much
strength of character, of fine mind and artistic talents. She lived
only five years after her son was born, but in those few years she had
so knit herself into his being that the warm and tender memory of her
never faded from his impressionable mind. The only other child of this
marriage, a daughter, Malvina, died in infancy. Carolus Laurier
married again, his second wife being Adeline Ethier. She was much
attached to his children and they to her. Of this second marriage
three sons were born: {4} Ubalde, who became a physician and died at
Arthabaska in 1898; Charlemagne, a merchant in St Lin and later member
for