Sunday, April 24, 2011

Sieur de Beaulieu

Sieur de Beaulieu was a nobleman who entered the fur trade in the early French period, and was one of the voyageurs who accompanied Antoine Lamothe-Cadillac to establish the first permanent settlement at Le Detroit on July 24, 1701.
Plaques and statues in downtown Detroit celebrate the event, and the French-Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan has photographs of those statues on their website.
On their site the Society also lists the names of the French noblemen and informs us that the convoy also included fifty French soldiers and some passengers: "Chacornac, baron de Jaonnes; Pierre Dugue, sieur de Boisbriant; Antoine Lamothe, fils [brother]; Alphonse Tonty, baron de Paludy; a Recollet priest, and Francois Vaillant de Gueslis, S.J."
Images of these statues, and names of the gentlemen/voyageurs, are online at http://fchsm.habitant.org/plaque.html

However, Sieur de Beaulieu's actual name is Louis Chauvin, sieur de Beaulieu, and descendents of this man have told me that in the years I am searching for Beaulieu men, his descendents still used the Chauvin name.

There is a little more information on this site you might be interested in, if you can access it.
When I tried today, the pages were not available.
But the family trees of the persons who were in Detroit have been compiled into a document by Yves Drolet, a member of the societe genealoque canadienne-francais, and is supposedly available online at www.fchsm.habitant.org
It is called "Genealogical Tables of the Quebec Noblesse from the 17th to the 19th Century," and comes in both French and English.

When I searched the U.S. French Catholic Church Records in the Drouin Collection on Ancestry.ca many years ago, I discovered that in 1752 Sieur de Beaulieu had an infant baptized; and that in 1753 the priest "baptized Catherine fille legitime of Sr. Beaulieu and de spouse francoise..."
He appeared to be at Sault Ste Marie, and also seemed to be listed as a 'Commander pour le Roi."
Later I found a translation of above document headed: Makinac, Ste-Anne; Copie "Wisconsin Historical."
It read: "July 15, 1753, I administered holy Baptism to Catherine, legitimate daughter of Sieur Beaulieu and of his wife, Francoise, residing at Sault Ste Marie, born on April 18 last. The godfather was Mr. de Beaujeau, Captain Commanding for the King at this post; and the godmother Mlle Bourassa."

Sooner or later I will have to follow up on this man, to see if his boy children could have entered the fur trade using the name Beaulieu.
You have to follow every lead.

6 comments:

  1. A little online research tells me that Sieur de Beaulieu ended up in Louisiana and, I beleive, had sons there. From the southern Great Lakes and Illinois River, there is a whole system of rivers that led the fur traders south to the Gulf of Mexico -- and the same system of rivers could have carried our "Beaulieu brothers" north again to the Great Lakes and the North West fur trade. There are books on the early settlers of Louisiana -- perhaps we should also be reading them!

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  2. I am descendant of Louis Sieur de Beaulieu's brother Gilles who also was a Courier de bois, in Detroit and the Illinios territories...The Son Louis Marie moved Kaskaskia,. then his son Hypolite moved to New Orleans,..with many Great Uncles, and cousins...Fur trapping stayed in my family all the way to me.

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  3. I have heard that this is the man https://www.lebleuslanding.com/lebleu-s-history/

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  4. Family history gets deaper... Personally I think these people have ties to the "missing french royal family child king Louisxv11 I believe, I'm doing some serious digging and, for some reason the dates are a little off but then again if your trying to hide you might want to falsify some information about yourself.

    Perhaps not only the king escaped but his child as well with him.. where as Marie Antoinette was supposed to come with got left behind, so some records should show sieur debeaulieus remarrying just after marie Antoinette s death in paris..

    Just seems weird to me that for some reason I was lead to looking for french royalty going missing around 1790.. and hit bang on with Luis 17 perhaps surving the french revolution contradictory to know history.

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  6. Been doing more digging, and aside from the possible connections to the missing Gaulish royal family, aka the french/Franco, I've been reading into Arsene LeBlue history and in particular his father Bartholomew LeBlue who is on record to have fought along side Jean Batiste Leffite...
    Lefittes history is mangled by alot of people's wishfull thinking, trying to tie themselves to this man as he is fairly infamous, but history ties him directly to my greatest of grandfather's and his family directly, as well as being dually noted in history books and family journals, whether of kin or not.

    There is enough to lead me to believe that Jean Leffite we as the son of Barthomew, who was inclined to alter his name enough perhaps based on a similar mistake people make when reading my signature, thinking it's says Laffite instead of what it does say LeBleu, as my upper case B resembles a lower case F; along with some fancification my name is commonly missread by those who don't know my actual name. To be honest it was anoying, and now I can't wait for opportunities to pop up where I can show people what they did and how it could tie me to this Master Pirate, having him aslo be a great grandfather if it is true That Jean Baptiste Leffite is actually Jean Baptiste LeBLue, this I think is more likely than anything.

    And the love people thought Leffite had for arsenes sister was only that of brotherly love, which would have been viewd as something different had newcomers around not really understanding what they were seeing.. cuz he could a had her as he was there way before Charles Salier popped in the picture, personally I think the affection that people saw were just that brother and sister, not just because she could never be his, but because it was also incest therefore Charles salier got the girl hands down... No contest..

    Then there are Jean Baptiste LeBLue s Birth records that are missing exact dates and also fit into Jean Leffites lifetime exactly....



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