Saint Jean de Lalande

Saint Jean de Lalande (c.1623-1646) was a French lay missionary and martyr, one of the eight North American Martyrs and, with Saint Isaac Jogues and Saint René Goupil, one of the three who died on what is now United States soil. Born in Dieppe, Normandy, he crossed to New France around 1642 and served the Jesuit missions as a donné: a lay "given man" bound to the missionaries by contract rather than vows, doing the missions' manual work of building, fishing, tending the sick, and assisting the priests, attached to the Jesuits' Trois-Rivières residence.