Pioneer Life in the Fox River

Valley'

By Annie Susan McLenegan

Early French Settlers, 1745-1816

Fox River valley-the beautiful and fertile region comprised in the counties of Brown, Outagamie, and Winnebago-was doubtless the earliest explored portion of Wisconsin. The Fox and Wisconsin rivers, with the swampy portage of a mile and a half between, formed a natural trade route between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi.

Up to about 1830, the history of the valley is practically the history of the Green Bay settlement. The story of this outpost of civilization, beyond the early and flitting visits of French missionaries, explorers, and soldiers-now familiar to us all begins with a small group of French pioneers.

1 The twelve illustrations accompanying this paper are printed directly from engravings on wood made for and originally appearing in Martin Mitchel and Joseph H. Osborn's Geographical and Statistical History of the County of Winnebago (Oshkosh, 1856; 12 mo., pp. 120), now a very rare pamphlet. In 1886 Mr. Osborn presented the engraved blocks to the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and these are now utilized for the first time since the original publication fifty years ago. The cuts, which are admirable examples of the now seldompracticed art of wood engraving, closely follow the daguerreotypes taken therefor in 1855 by J. F. Harrison; Mr. Osborn considered them faithful presentations.-ED.

Augustin de Langlade and his son Charles, by an Ottawa wife, came to Green Bay in 1745 to engage in trade with the Indians, and proved to be the first permanent white settlers within the present limits of Wisconsin.1 Charles de Langlade led the Indians of the upper lakes who assailed Braddock on the fateful ninth of July, 1755; he died at Green Bay in 1800. His wife was Charlotte Bourassa, daughter of a prominent Montreal merchant; and their daughter Domitelle was united to Pierre Grignon, Sr., when she was thirteen years old, and became the mother of the famous Augustin Grignon. He in turn married Nancy McCrea, the daughter of a trader and a Menominee woman, who was related to the well-known chiefs Tomah and Oshkosh.2

From 1745 to 1785 the Green Bay settlement was almost stationary. In the latter year there were seven resident families, who with the fur-trade engagés and others numbered but fifty-six souls. It was, nevertheless, the largest white community in what is now Wisconsin; in 1783 there were but four traders on the site of Prairie du Chien, and a few had a rendezvous in 1793 at Milwaukee. In the latter year, only one Frenchman, Laurent Barth, was at the Fox-Wisconsin portage.

At that time there was in Green Bay, says Augustin Grignon in his "Recollections," "my father, Pierre Grignon, Sr.," who "was born in Montreal, and early engaged as a voyageur with traders in the Lake Superior country. Having saved his wages, he after a while engaged as a trader on his own account and located at Green Bay prior to 1763. He had served on some expeditions, probably during the old French War. * * By his first wife, a Menominee woman, he had three children. By his marriage with my mother, he raised nine children and died in November,

*

*

*

*

1 The following material is taken from Augustin Grignon's "Recollections," in Wis. Hist. Colls., iii.

2 See R. G. Thwaites, "Oshkosh, the last of the Menominee sachems," in Oshkosh Times, April 22, 1876.

1795. * * He was a spare man, six feet in height, of light complexion, a man of bravery, and full of animation, but by no means quarrelsome. He was highly esteemed, and was regarded as strictly upright in all his dealings. He was particularly hospitable, and no year passed but he entertained many traders going to, or returning from, their winter trading-posts." He possessed two Osage slaves, Jocko and Collo. Several Pawnee slaves were at the time owned by the whites at Mackinac, and Augustin Bonnetèrre, a Green Bay trader, bought and married one of these; their children were living in 1857. There were but two negro slaves in the Green Bay community.

Another noteworthy figure in the settlement at the mouth of the Fox, was Joseph Jourdin, whose daughter Madeline married Eleazer Williams, the so-called "lost dauphin," and whose log-cabin was to be seen until 1897. John Lawe was an English Jew, educated at Quebec. His nephew, of the same name, succeeded him quite early in the fur-trade at Green Bay, and married Thérèse Rankin, the daughter of an English trader and a Chippewa mother. He served under Col. Robert Dickson and was an associate judge of Brown County, dying at Green Bay in 1846. In 1812, John Lawe and Pierre Grignon kept the only two trading stores in Green Bay. Jacques Porlier came from Montreal in 1791. In 1815, he was commissioned by the English government as justice of the peace at Green Bay, and in 1819 was made ensign of the Green Bay militia by Gov. Lewis Cass of Michigan territory. In 1820, Porlier was chief justice of Brown County, and held various offices until 1836, dying at Green Bay in 1839. His cottage, built in 1802, belonged later to the Tank family, and is still standing. Louis Porlier of Green Bay, a son-in-law of Augustin Grignon, was a son of the old judge. Nothing but

1 See Wis. Hist. Colls., vi. For a careful survey of Williams's pretensions, consult W. W. Wight, "Eleazer Williams-his forerunners, himself," Parkman Club Papers (1896), i, pp. 133-203.