De la Perelle Property

Another military man lived next to Robert Duhaget, and he found it convenient to live close to the citadel, for Jean-François Eurry de la Perelle (c. 1691-1747) was town major in the 1740s. De la Perelle married Françoise-Charlotte Aubert de la Chesnaye, the daughter of a Québec financier, and the two had eight children. Commanding the military administration of the fortress kept him busy. In 1745 his military duties included the painful one of negotiating the surrender of his town to the besiegers from New England and the Royal Navy.

A local carpenter built the original of de la Perelle’s tight little frame house in 1725, and the storehouse at right angles to it was added in 1734. The framing timber may well have been local, but the glass was imported from France and the board siding might easily have come from a sawmill in New England. Boston schoonermen sailed to Louisbourg to buy French West Indian rum and molasses, and the "planches de Baston" they sold in exchange cover the town. Some New Englanders got to know de la Perelle’s storehouse well in 1744 – it housed prisoners of war that summer.

Today de la Perelle's home contains an exhibit “The Sisters of Louisbourg,” about the lives of and work of the sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame who ran the only formal school in Louisbourg.