François de Beauharnois de la Chaussaye, Baron de Beauville

François de Beauharnois de la Chaussaye, Baron de Beauville (bap 19 September 1665 / 1668 – 8 or 9 October 1746, La Chaussée, near Orléans) was a French naval and colonial administrator in France itself and in New France, and a member of the House of Beauharnais.

François de Beauharnois was the son of a lawyer in the Parlement (who was also a lieutenant général at the siege of Orléans and a chevalier de Saint-Louis), a grandson of a premier maître d’hôtel ordinaire du roi (1652) and great-grandson of an Orléans merchant known as "one of the city's richest citizens". François's brothers included Charles de Beauharnois de la Boische, Marquis de Beauharnois (who became Governor General of New France in 1726) and Claude de Beauharnois de Beaumont et de Villechauve (a French naval officer who three times commanded the ships that restocked the troops in New France)

By a marriage between a female Beauharnois and a male from the Phélypeaux family, he also found himself a cousin of chancellor and Secretary of State of the Navy Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain. Pontchartrain's son, Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, made François his protégé and between 1706 and 1710 sought a beneficial marriage alliance for him, in the end marrying him Anne, daughter of the sieur Des Gretz, the rich exempt of the Paris police.

François's career was considerably accelerated by Jérôme's ministerial favour - he became écrivain principal straightaway on 18 April 1691 at Toulon and on 1 April the following year received his commission as commissaire ordinaire, serving in that role at Toulon then Rochefort, Le Havre and Brest until 1702. The creation of "charges vénales" marked the de facto suppression of "commissions ordinaires" and Beauharnois thus left the service.

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