Duke of Kent House, Quebec

Duke of Kent House or Kent House is situated on the corner of Rue Saint-Louis and Haldimand, behind the Château Frontenac in Quebec City, named after its most famous resident Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. Though altered and transformed since its original construction, the most part of its foundations and of the first floor walls date back to the vicinity of 1650, making it one of the oldest houses, if not the oldest house in Quebec City. In 1759, the Articles of Capitulation of Quebec were signed within the house. The present edifice has remained largely unchanged since 1819. It presently serves as the French Consulate.

The first owners of the land on which Kent House stands were Louis d'Ailleboust de Coulonge, 4th Governor of New France from 1648 to 1651, and his wife, Marie-Barbe de Boulogne. Shortly after 1650, they had a house built on this site. Following the death of the late governor's wife in 1665, her property and house on Saint-Louis Street was gifted to the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec.

On May 27, 1671, the Ladies of the Hôtel-Dieu sold the property to Louis-Théandre Chartier de Lotbinière, Lieutenant-General of the Civil and Criminal Courts at Quebec, who at once took up residence there. In 1679, he left for his mother country, never to return to New France, but his widow continued to live there, dying there in 1690. Their son, René-Louis Chartier de Lotbinière, Chief Councillor of the Sovereign Council of New France, lived there from 1679 until his death on June 4, 1709. All of his children were born there (the first cousins of the last Governor General of New France, Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil), and after his death they became the joint owners of the property, with the exception of a portion on the east side, which was sold by their father to Madame Vitre in 1674. René-Louis's fourth child, Eustache Chartier de Lotbinière, the first Canadian Dean of Notre-Dame de Québec Cathedral, lived there from 1709 until 1713, until it was agreed to be sold by his brothers and sisters. The Lotbinière house (as it had come to be known) and its dependencies were sold by voluntary decree for 10,000 livres on March 14, 1713, to Jean-Baptiste Maillou, architect and contractor to the King of France at Quebec. The minutes of this sale contain an exact description of the property situated between St. Louis and Mount Carmel streets, and the house, which was said to be:

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