Included amongst the laborers hired to assist Samuel de Champlain in "inhabiting, clearing, cultivating and planting" New France were the names of Zacharie and his father Denis.

[4] Cloutier was one of the first Frenchmen recruited by Robert Giffard de Moncel to expand the colony of New France by settling the Beauport area near Quebec City.

[8] In 1652 Cloutier received a grant of land from Governor Jean de Lauzon in Château-Richer, Quebec.

By 1800, Cloutier had 10,850 French-Canadian descendants, the most of any Quebec colonist, according to marriage records studied by the Historical Demography Research Program of the Université de Montréal.

Most sources state the surname was originally given to a person who crafted and sold nails, coming from the Latin word clavus 'nail' (clou in French).

[citation needed] A common error found in Internet family trees in 2004 was that Nicolas Cloutier was listed as Zacharie's grandfather, due to a misreading of "N.. Cloutier" as referring to a person whose first name started with the letter N, when in context the "N.." signified that the first name was unknown.

In 1984, a monument was erected in Beauport (which has since been merged into Quebec City as of 2002) to commemorate the 350th anniversary of Cloutier's arrival.