Pierre-Jérême Boucher
(1688-1753).

Pierre-Jérême Boucher was one of two resident assistant-engineers which came to build Fortress Louisbourg, the other was Couagne. During the construction season (May to December) Boucher was on site supervising the works and during the winter he worked at Ile Royale as a draftsman. His boss, the director of fortifications, Jean-François de Verville, was a member of the select and limited group of upper crust officers, the ones with the money and the drag, who could elect not to stay, and usually did not stay at Louisbourg during the long, cold Acadian winter.

Boucher came out in 1717, the year the work first started. He married one of the daughters of Mathieu de Goutin at Port-Dauphin (Englishtown) during the winter of 1733. While, with the capture of Louisbourg, in 1745, Boucher and his family were shipped back to France, we see, in 1749, that Boucher was one of the group sent from France to repossess Louisbourg. Overall Boucher spent some 32 years at Louisbourg and died there in 1753.

"Boucher was ... the author of excellent maps of Ile Royale, and of plans and technical papers concerning fortifications, roads, bridges, and public buildings ..." [DCB.] Like his fellow ranking officer, Couagne, Boucher was good at drawing maps and plans and many of the surviving drawings we have today, while having been signed by Verville, Verrier, or Franquet, were, in fact, made by Boucher (or Couagne)