Domestic Servant
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Le Domestique | The Domestic Servant
Young lady getting dressed with her servant ("Jeune femme à sa toilette avec une servante", circa 1650 oil painting by Gerard ter Borch, Wikimedia Commons).
The term domestique, or domestic servant, whether it was used in France or in New-France, was associated with:
Servants working in a home
Agricultural servants
Personal servants
Any person at the service of another, without specifics
Domestique also included all servants, of any type, working for religious communities and hospital staff, which represented an important group in the colony. At the beginning of New France, most of these servants were 20-somethings who came from France on indentured service contracts. But as time progressed, most servants increasingly came from the colony itself, and were younger and younger in age.
Domestic servants could be men or women, adults or children. It wasn't uncommon for parents to "rent out" one or more of their children as servants due to poverty. Servants could also be orphaned children, placed under servitude by their guardians, or, more likely, by the crown prosecutor.
In an urban environment, the domestic servant was responsible for all of the housework and even the cooking if their employer was part of the upper class, or a wealthy merchant, for example. In rural areas, servants did all sorts of farm chores; they cleared and cultivated land, herded livestock and looked after it. Women also looked after the livestock and poultry, and tended the kitchen garden, in addition to cleaning the house and doing the washing. Young servants, whose numbers increased in the late seventeenth century, were often too weak for heavy tasks, so they were assigned housekeeping and garden chores, in addition to tending the animals.
A domestique could also be called serviteur, or serviteure/serviteuse/servante (for women), which directly translate to servant.
The occupational surname Servant, derived from old French, is still common in Canada today.
"The Little Country Maid" (1882 oil painting by Camille Pissarro, Wikimedia Commons).
"A man ill with a cold, wrapped in blankets" (wood engraving by an unknown artist, Wikimedia Commons).
Sources:
Arnaud Bessière, “Les domestiques canadiens, ces oublié(e)s de l’histoire de la Nouvelle-France“, Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies (2018); electronic edition, OpenEdition Journals (http://journals.openedition.org/eccs/845).
Government of Canada, “Musée virtuel de la Nouvelle-France”, Canadian Museum of History (www.museedelhistoire.ca/musee-virtuel-de-la-nouvelle-france/), citing original research by Arnaud Bessière, Ph.D.