DAVION, ALBERT (Antoine), member of the community of the seminary of Quebec, parish priest on Île d’Orléans, and missionary in Louisiana; b. at Saint-Omer in the province of Artois, France; d. 1726 in the parish of his birth.

Abbé Albert Davion arrived in Quebec on 24 May 1690. He was first the parish priest at Saint-Jean and Saint-François on the Île d’Orléans, and then in 1698 he was chosen by Bishop Saint-Vallier [La Croix] and the directors of the seminary of Quebec to accompany Abbé Jean-François Buisson de Saint-Cosme (1667–1706) to found missions in Louisiana under the direction of Abbé François de Montigny*. According to Abbé Henri-Jean Tremblay*, procurator of the seminary of Quebec in Paris, he was “a very good priest,” but in such poor health that life away from the colony did not suit him at all. Abbé Davion and his fellow religious set out from Lachine on 24 July 1698, accompanied by 12 paddlers. The travellers followed the Ottawa River route and reached Fort Michilimackinac on 8 September. There they found the explorer Henri Tonty, who guided them as far as the Arkansas (Quapaw) country, which they reached on 27 December. On 4 Jan. 1699 the expedition continued on its way and stopped 200 miles farther south, among the Tunica, where Davion agreed to found a mission. But Abbé Montigny and he decided first to go on as far as Fort Maurepas on Biloxi Bay (Biloxi, Mississippi). On his return from this voyage Davion settled among the Tunica, on the banks of the Yazoo River (Miss.). He established strong ties with them, but after the violent death of Father Nicolas Foucault in 1702 he left his mission and sought refuge in Mobile (Alabama). There were regional tensions, and he limited himself to occasional stays with the Tunica, primarily serving as priest to the French colonists.

In 1722 he withdrew to New Orleans. But the Capuchins, to whom the missions in Lower Louisiana now belonged, asked for his recall. Abbé Davion sailed for France in 1725. He lived with his family before dying after a short illness on 8 April 1726.

Noël Baillargeon