Robert Giffard de Moncel

Robert Giffard de Moncel
Born	1587 Mortagne (Perche), France
Died	1668 Beauport, New France
Occupation	surgeon, apothecary, colonist, seigneur, businessman
Spouse(s)	Marie Regnouard
Children	2 sons, 4 daughters
Parent(s)	Guillaume Giffard and Louise Viron

Robert Giffard de Moncel (1587–1668) was a French surgeon and apothecary who became a prestigious colonist and businessman and eventually a nobleman of the French colony in North America, New France.

As a naval surgeon, Giffard made several voyages to Quebec between 1621 and 1627. He is known to have had a cabin in the woods outside of the colony in the latter year.

On a return voyage in 1628, he was captured by the English adventurer Sir David Kirke and lost considerable equipment for colonization. Giffard returned to France. Kirke later captured and held Quebec until its return to the French in 1632.

In 1634, Giffard was granted one of the first seigneuries in New France and he returned to the colony accompanied by his wife and two children. The colony - with Samuel de Champlain still as Governor - was continuing to experience a lack of immigration. Giffard's grant of a league of land along the Beauport and St. Lawrence rivers was in exchange for his commitment to bring other settlers. His recruitment efforts in Perche, a French Province, yielded other notable pioneers Jean Guyon du Boisson, Zacharie Cloutier, Noël Langlois, Jean Juchereau de Maur and Marin Boucher, all from the Norman Perche. This series of settlers came to be called the Percheron Immigration, as this region provided the greatest number of new colonists.

In 1636, the marriage contract for Robert Drouin and Cloutier's daughter Anne was signed in Giffard's house, at one time the oldest house in Canada. This is the earliest marriage contract in Canada's archives.

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