GANNES DE FALAISE (Falaize), LOUIS DE, officer in the colonial regular troops in Canada and Acadia, knight of the order of Saint-Louis; b. October 1658 at Buxeuil, province of Poitou; d. 25 Feb. 1714 at La Rochelle; eldest son of Louis de Gannes, seigneur de Falaise, “gendarme d’une compagnie du Roi,” and Françoise Le Bloy, brother of François de Gannes de Falaise, and a relative of the Argensons.
De Gannes became a midshipman at Rochefort in 1683, a lieutenant in Canada in 1687, and a captain in Acadia in 1696. In 1704 he was appointed major in Acadia. Though he was severely reprimanded in 1705 for his lack of diligence, his superiors had frequent occasion in the years following to write favourably of his contribution to the service. After the surrender of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.) in 1710, he went back to France, then returned to Quebec where he received the cross of the order of Saint-Louis in 1713. That same year he was appointed major of the new colony of Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) but died at La Rochelle in February 1714 before leaving for his new post.
He was married three times: in 169 1, in Quebec, to Barbe, a daughter of Simon Denys* de La Trinité and Françoise Du Tartre; in 1695, in Montreal, to Louise, daughter of Charles Legardeur* de Tilly and Geneviève Juchereau de Maur; and in 1700, in Acadia, to Marguerite, daughter of Michel Leneuf de La Vallière, the elder, and Marie Denys. He had one child from his first marriage and 12 from his third. His widow lived first at Île Royale, then at Trois-Rivières, where she died in April 1760.
AN, Col., B, 13–36; C11D, 4, f.99; 5, f.122v; E, 197 (dossier de Gannes), pièce 1. Lettres de noblesse (P.-G. Roy), II, 71–90. Webster, Acadia. Aegidius Fauteux, Les chevaliers de Saint-Louis; “La famille de Gannes,” BRH, XXXI (1925), 271–85. É.-Z. Massicotte et Régis Roy, Armorial du Canada français (2e série, Montréal, 1918), 108. J.-B.-A. Allaire, “Biographie canadienne,” BRH, XIX (1913), 343–44.