250 Years Ago ... Introducing the Becquets of Nouvelle Chartres

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

This coming week we celebrate the birthday of my ancestor Jean Baptiste Becquet.  On October 25, 1725 he was was baptized in the little chapel at Fort de Chartres in what is now southern Illinois.  We don't know the exact date of his birth but in those days children were baptized within days of their birth if possible.  37 years later, in 1762, he was still living in Nouvelle Chartres with his wife and children, supporting his family by working as a blacksmith.

Jean Baptiste Beccquet was born in Nouvelle Chartres but his father, Jean Baptiste Nicolas Becquet, was an immigrant from Paris (the parish of St. Sulpice).  The son of a locksmith, Jean Baptiste Nicolas also become a locksmith.  His wife, Catherine Barreau (or Barreaux), was a seamstress from Poitou.  In 1720 they set off for Louisiana and the New World, traveling on the French ship La Gironde.  It would have been a long (and dangerous) voyage back in the days of sailing ships.

 La Gironde would have set sail from La Rochelle and first made for Cape St. Vincent, off the southern coast of Portugal. From there the captain would hope to pick up a wind that would take the ship south past Madeira and the Canary Islands. The ship would then continue southwest across the Atlantic until it reached the correct latitude for Saint Domingue, where it would head due west.  A stop in Saint Domingue would have been welcome as the passengers would, by now, have been on the small, 75 foot keel length ship for seven to nine weeks, and maybe longer depending on the weather.

After a stop in Saint Domingue,  La Gironde would sail due west past Cuba before heading northwest.  From this point forward the ship would be working against contrary winds and currents. After two to four weeks it would finally reach the sandy coast between Pensacola and Mobile.  Before the port of New Orleans was built, ships put in at islands along the coast.  During this period their ship would have put in at Ile aux Vasseaux (Ship Island, Mississippi).

Cargo and passengers would then be transferred to a smaller boat to be piloted the 160 kilometers up the Mississippi to New Orleans.  This portion of the trip could take an additional one to two weeks because the lower Mississippi delta was so difficult to pass through. Sometimes, if the winds dropped, a ship could be stalled for up to two weeks at the bend known as Detour aux Anglais (English Turn), forty kilometers before New Orleans.

But finally they would glimpse the relatively new settlement of Nouvelle Orleans -  New Orleans.  I’ll let Kenneth Banks describe an arrival:

Only at this point did passengers and crews glimpse the first signs of the French settlement:  two small and incomplete sets of earthworks on either side of the river and the first smattering of thatched slave huts and rough log cabins along the riverbanks. Important and weary passengers, as well as critical dispatches, could be put ashore at this point as well and proceed by horse or on foot to New Orleans.  Although some historians have calculated that it was theoretically possible to sail to New Orleans from France in about twelve weeks, contemporary ships’ logs show that the average crossing approached seventeen weeks, at least a month longer.

 


La Gironde arrived in August 1720 and we don't know how long the Becquets stayed in New Orleans waiting for a convoy to leave for the Illinois Country and the new Fort de Chartres. After the long ocean voyage, the Becquets must have been relieved to arrive back on dry land.


We don't know exactly why Jean Baptiste Nicolas Becquet and Catherine Barreau decided to travel to Louisiana. We don't know if they were recruited to specifically go to the Illinois Country or if that decision was made when they arrived in New Orleans. Since Becquet was a skilled craftsman he was probably recruited as part of a scheme that led to what became known as the Mississippi Bubble. A Scottish financier named John Law formed a company for the exploitation of Louisiana and was given the monopoly by the regent for Louis XV, who was still a minor. As part of the charter, the company was required to recruit settlers. The Becquets were probably recruited as part of this scheme. The scheme is too complicated to go into since it is only a peripheral part of our story, but at the end of this post I've appended a video that explains it.

In any event, the Becquets did not stay in New Orleans.  The most arduous part of their journey was still ahead of them – a trip up the Mississippi River that would take at least three, sometimes four, months. This trip up the Mississippi would have been entirely by water. As historian Kenneth Banks remarks, “roads are barely mentioned in official correspondence relating to Louisiana." But in the days before steam engines, the trip against the fast current of the Mississippi would have been laborious.  The boats would have been rowed, poled and winched (by tying ropes to trees upriver and pulling the boats to them) in a long slow journey north.

Historian Margaret Kimball Brown writes:

  

The trip was hazardous.  The river itself was treacherous enough with snags, sawyers, currents and mosquitoes (a major complaint) but the greatest danger along the route was from hostile Indians, particularly the Chickasaw, who were affiliated with the English.  Many accounts tell of death or capture by the Indians.

Because of danger from the Chickasaw, travelers from New Orleans to the Illinois Country always traveled in convoy.  But at last they arrived in the Illinois country where the new fort and administration was being established.  Jean Baptiste Nicolas Becquet's services as a locksmith would have been invaluable at the fort. Locksmiths were a specialized type of blacksmith; they not only made locks for doors and boxes but also could make weapons.

Historian Margaret Kimball Brown has often referenced Jean Baptiste Nicolas Becquet in her work on the Illinois Country.  She has even created two fictional letters from Becquet back to his family in France to give us a better idea of what a journey up the Mississippi must have been like in those days.   You can read them here (starting on page 3).

In her book about Praire du Rocher Brown writes:

[Becquet] was apparently quite skilled, as a major part of his work in the Illinois was as a gunsmith.  He was not just a specialist though.  He was able to turn his hand to all types of blacksmithing  Becquet made locks, keys, and other items, including the metal work for the early churck of Ste. Anne at Fort de Chartres.  In 1725 a soldier, Francois Derbes, contracted with Becquet as an engage to work at the forge for him.  In the contract Derbes also agreed that he would arrange to have his guard duty done at Fort de Chartres at his own expense.

The trade as a locksmith/ gunsmith was an important one.  Becquet held a contract in 1737 to repair and maintain the guns of the troops and those in the royal storehouse.  He also was to keep up the guns of the Indians, some of whom were hunters employed by the government.  Later he had a partnership with a gunsmith in Kaskaskia to carry out royal contracts in gunsmithing. 

As Brown points out, from documents still existing from the era, we know that he was literate.  And he was successful.  As she said, "if he came to improve his lot in the New World, he apparently succeeded."

As he and his wife, Catherine, baptized their son, Jean Baptiste Becquet, in October of 1725 they could not have known that within that son's lifetime the French Regime in Illinois would end but that he would be a part of the founding of the last great French settlement in North America, St. Louis.

PS:  If you are interested, this video is an entertaining and, from what I can tell, accurate summary of the Mississippi Bubble.

_________________________
NOTES and SOURCES:

Banks, Kennth J.,  Chasing Empire Across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic 1613-1673, pp 84-96.

Belting, Natalia Maree, Kaskaskia Under the French Regime.

Brown, Margaret Kimball, History as they Lived It: A Social History of Prairie du Rocher, Ill.

250 Years Ago ... Wars of the 1700's

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.
 
In 1762 one of the biggest wars the world had ever seen was coming to an end and France had lost.  But the French residents of North America might be forgiven for thinking that wouldn't matter to them.  They were used to war and used to the idea that things never changed much because of war.

There was almost constant war during the 1700's.  And, yes, battles were fought in the New World.  But until 1762 none of the European wars deeply affected the French colonies in North America.

In 1702 Queen Anne's War (or the War of the Spanish Succession, as it was known in Europe) was fought.  In that war, the English in Carolina fought the Spanish in Florida.  Meanwhile, in the north, the New Englanders fought the French in Acadia and tried to take Quebec, with disastrous results.  That war ended in 1712 with the Treaty of Utrecht.  France was forced to give England a piece of land far north in Hudsons' Bay that it had not returned in the previous war.  France did lose Acadia (Nova Scotia) and Newfoundland, which was a blow.  They relocated their people to Cape Breton Island and built the fortress of Louisbourg to guard the entrance to the St. Lawrence river.

The next war, which began in 1739, was a war between Britain and Spain with a picturesque name: The War of Jenkins Ear.  Basically, Spain had a policy of stopping and seizing ships suspected of carrying contraband.  Robert Jenkins was a British ship's master who claimed that the Spanish had stolen his cargo and cut off his ear.  Jenkins kept the ear, pickled, in a jar.  In 1738 British imperialists, who were hawks, used Jenkins for propaganda, parading him (and his ear) before Parliament and eventually forcing the Prime Minister to confront Spain and demand that she stop seizing foreign vessels.  Spain refused.  Britain declared war.   As part of the war, Britain granted American governors the power to give "letters of marque" to sea captains that desired to attach Spanish ports.

The War of Jenkins Ear led directly, without any pause, into the War for the Austrian Succession (known in North America as King George's War)  which began in 1744.  Britain entered the war on the Austrian side but continued its war with Spain.  France and Spain allied to defend against what they saw as British aggression.  There were a lot of land battles in Europe that I won't go into.

There was a land battle too between British Georgia and Spanish Florida that came to naught when the Georgians realized they might be forced to lay seige to St. Augustine.  Not liking the idea of a seige in a swamp, they retreated.  Later, Spain sent a force from Cuba against Georgia but it never actually attacked.   In 1743 the Georgians again tried to attack St. Augustine and again gained nothing.

In the meantime, the French used their base at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island to attack New England shipping.  Some plucky New Englanders took the opportunity of the war to attack Louisbourg and, after a 46 day seige, Louisbourg surrendered to them. There were great celebrations in Boston and other New England towns.

But, alas, when the war ended and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, Britain returned Louisbourg to France and France returned Madras, in India, to Britain.  France also withdrew from the Austrian Netherlands.  The status quo was re-established and no one was happy.  The American colonists, especially, were furious at having to give up Louisbourg.

But to people living in the Mississippi River Valley, like my ancestor Jean Baptiste Becquet, European wars would have seemed a long way off.  They didn't affect day to day life except perhaps when ships were sunk and supplies didn't get through.  And even when your country lost, there was no real affect on  day to day life.



After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed in 1748, most people assumed that it was just a matter of time before war broke out again. The new Governor-General of New France, the Comte de la Galissoniere, surveyed the situation in North America.  In September of 1748 he wrote one of his many dispatches back to France, explaining the importance of the Illinois Country, a place which many French bureaucrats saw as an unnecessary expense.  W.J. Eccles, one of the foremost Canadian historians, describes it in The Canadian Frontier:  1634-1760:

He declared categorically that the Illinois country was of very little economic value to France, that for a long time posts and settlements there would merely be a source of expense to the crown and that the French settlers in the region would certainly not become very prosperous. Yet, he declared, the crown must maintain them, regardless of expense, to protect the investment already made, but, more significantly, because they served as a barrier to English expansion, enabling the French to dominate the Indian nations of the lower Mississippi and retain their trade and allegiance.  (emphasis mine)

 Galissoniere believed that, although France could not hope for large profit from North America, Canada and Louisiana could ultimately be self sufficient and their real value would come from growing a large French population.  He believed that the Britain so valued their North American colonies that a large French presence in North American would force Britain to "divert a sizable part of their navy and army" to protect those colonies, thus reducing the forces available to fight in other theaters of war.  But if Britain seized the Illinois country then the "trade with the interior would be destroyed, Louisiana would be quickly lost, and the Spanish colonies, even Mexico, would then be in grave danger."

But, already, land speculators in Virginia, Pennsylvania and other colonies (many of whom were the leading men of the colonies) were already preparing to form the Ohio Company to exploit the land west of the mountains and war hawks in Britain were very interested in destroying French overseas trade.  The British were aided by the local Indians who enjoyed having British traders and posts so close to them. The land speculators had no plans at all to preserve the hunting grounds of the Indians but they offered the Indians high quality merchandise at prices cheaper than the French could offer.

Galissoniere, knowing a bad situation when he saw it, decided to send a French expedition to the Ohio country to map it and to make clear that France claimed it as her own.  But the leader of the expedition, Celeron, found the situation even worse than Galissoniere feared.  It was relatively easy to drive the few British traders from the area, but the local Indian population were not impressed by the show of force and not inclined to give up their trading privileges with the British.  They put up a resistance.

Galissonier's successor, Jonquiere, took a different approach.  He tried to woo the local Indian population with presents and promises.  But he too was unsuccessful; the Indians wanted to be able to trade with the British.  Finally, his successor, Duquesne, went all in and sent troops to build a fort near the forks of the Ohio.

The Seven Years War (or the French and Indian War as the British colonists called it) began in America in 1754 when an American force, led by George Washington, was sent to tell the French to vacate their new fort.  The French politely refused.  Two years later the world was at war on a global scale. Winston Churchill said it was the true first world war. Battles were fought in Europe, North America, Central America, India and Africa. Many European countries were involved but, from the perspective of North America, it was a war fought between Great Britain, on the one hand, and France and Spain on the other hand.
At first, the war went well for the French in North America.  They defeated far larger British forces and were holding their own in the war.  But by 1759 the British had defeated the French navy and from that point on things went downhill as supplies and reinforcements could not get through.  More importantly, trade goods could not get through and that affected relationships with the Indian allies of the French.

As Fred Anderson points out in his Crucible of War:  The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, the relationship between the French and its Indian allies was the key to retaining it's North American colonies:

France maintained its empire in America for more than a century despite the steady increase of British power and population because the governors of Canada had generally sponsored cordial relations with the Indian peoples of the interior.  Trade was the sinew of these intercultural relationships, which in time of war became the military alliances that made the frontiers of the British colonies uninhabitable and rendered a successful invasion of the Canadian heartland impossible.

 
As trade goods became difficult for the French in Canada to obtain, the alliance became frayed.  The Indian allies didn't receive "pay" as such, but they expected "presents" in appreciation of their efforts.  The French could not deliver "presents" because its ships were not getting through.

However, the biggest problem for the French may have been the French commander sent over to lead the Canadian troops - the Marquis de Montcalm.   Rather than let the Canadian troops and their Indian allies fight in the manner that they had always fought, Montcalm sought to impose a European "order" on the local troops.

... Montcalm  had aggravated the situation, and accelerated the failure of the alliances, by seeking to command the Indians as auxiliaries, rather than to negotiate for their cooperation as allies. Eventually the combined effects of poor supply  and Montcalm's Europeanized command alienated even the converted Indians and the habitants, so that in 1760 the chevalier de Levis and his regulars stood alone, abandoned by the peoples that they had crossed the Atlantic to defend.

As Anderson points out, the British moved in the opposite direction.  At the beginning of the war, using European tactics,  the British were losing.  George Washington watched General Braddock and his troops go down to defeat by the French and Indians outside Fort Duquesne.  But once the British started to allow the colonists to fight in their own style, the tide turned.

By 1759 Quebec had been taken by the British.  Then on September 8, 1760, with Montreal surrounded, the governor of New France surrendered.  New France was occupied, awaiting news of what would happen to them when peace was negotiated.  If past history was any model, things would go back to the status quo.

In 1762 the British still had not taken Louisiana but the people of the Illinois Country had spent two years wondering  when they too would be attacked by the British.  What they could not know was that ongoing peace negotiations in Europe would bring an end to the war and would change their lives forever. 

I Refer You to ...

It has been a busy week so no time to blog.  But I did read two interesting things this week that I want to recommend. 

First, I recommend that everyone read this very thought provoking essay by Sarah Sentilles in which she reflects on the responses to her writing and how they seldom are about the substance of her writing but are about her, personally.  In reflecting on what she sees as the sexism inherent in reviews of works by women (fiction and nonfiction), she says "I am beginning to understand why Mary Ann Evans changed her name to George Eliot."   Sentilles is a theologian and I've never read any of her work but I like the way she argued her point in this essay.

Second, I recommend Rohan Maitson's blog post in which she asks if she is making excuses for Dorothy Sayers' novel "Gaudy Night".

Maitzen teaches Gaudy Night  in one of her classes and some of the students have raised questions about the novel that she addresses in her essay.  I love Dorothy Sayers' novels and I like Maitzen's responses to her students' criticism, but I also applaud her for opening up her responses to the larger world for a critique.

250 Years Ago ... The Lay of the Land

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

In October 1762, my ancestor Jean Baptiste Becquet lived in the village where he was born: Nouvelle Chartres.  Despite its name, Nouvelle Chartres was not located in France; it existed in what is now Southern Illinois.  Nouvelle Chartres was the little village that lay outside the walls of Fort de Chartres which was located along the Mississippi River about 50 miles south of what would become St. Louis and about 85 miles north of the confluence with the Ohio River.

It is probably helpful to understand the geographical relationship of the French villages along the Mississippi.  The following map will help.  You can orient yourself to St. Louis in the north and Kaskaskia in the south. Just above St. Louis, on the western side, would be the Missouri river.  Further below Kaskaskia, on the eastern side, would be the Ohio River.  Of course in 1762 St. Louis did not exist.  But Cahokia, across the river did exist as did all the villages reflected further south on the map.

Both Cahokia and Kaskaskia began as Indian villages in which Catholic missions were established.  The Mission of the Holy Family was founded in Cahokia in 1699 by the Recollect Fathers to serve the Tamaroa and Cahokia tribes.  The Mission of the Immaculate Conception in Kaskaskia was even older, being founded by that great exploring Jesuit priest Father Marquette in 1675 near Starved Rock on the Illinois River.  In about the year 1700, the Kaskaskia tribe decided to move away from Starved Rock and find a better location in the south.  The Mission of the Immaculate Conception travelled with them. 

First they crossed the Mississippi and settled near a small river in what is now south St. Louis which the French called River des Peres.  But the Kaskaskia were unhappy with the location and soon were on the move down the Mississippi again, finally settling in 1704 near the confluence with what became known as the Kaskaskia River.  In 1714 the Mission built a stone church and by 1718 there was a village with French settlers, mostly fur traders and their Indian wives. 

 

During this time both Cahokia and Kaskaskia came under the jurisdiction of New France, governed out of Quebec.  But in 1717 the Illinois Country, as it was called, was transferred to the new colony of Louisiana, to be governed out of the new town of New Orleans.  The following year the governor of Louisiana sent the Sieur de Boisbriant north to Kaskaskia to establish an administrative center.  When Boisbriant arrived in 1718, he brought sixty-eight soldiers, hired workers and convicts (who were required to work off their debt to society), greatly increasing the European portion of the population.

Listening to the complaints by the Jesuit missionaries that the French traders were corrupting the Indian converts, Boisbriant divided the community into three parts.  The French stayed in Kaskaskia, the Kaskaskia Indians moved to their own village six miles up the Kaskaskia River and the Metchigamia Indians moved sixteen miles up the Mississippi.  Then Boisbriant set about choosing a site where he could set up operations. 

The site Boisbriant chose for the new fort was about 16 miles upstream from Kaskaskia, just below the new village of the Metchigamia, right on the edge of the Mississippi.  The first fort was small, only a wooden palisade shaped in a square with two bastions.  Upon completion in 1720, the center of government for the Illinois Country moved to the fort and a small village grew around it that was sometimes referred to as Nouvelle Chartres. 

Meanwhile, in 1719 a Frenchman named Phillipe Renault arrived from France having obtained the rights to conduct mining operations in the area.  He used part of his land grant to create a small village, just north of the Metchigamia village, where his workers might live.  He named it St. Phillipe after his own patron saint. The mining operations were not successful but the village remained after Renault left. 

There were two other villages that are not on that map.  In 1722, Boisbriant's nephew was given land between Fort de Chartres and Kaskaskia and he founded the small village of Prairie du Rocher which means “Prairie by the Rock”.  It was located about four miles south of Fort de Chartres.  If Nouvelle Chartres existed to support the Fort and Kaskaskia existed to support the fur trade, Prairie du Rocher was primarily intended as an agricultural community.

The town of Ste. Genevieve is also not on the map.  It lies on the west side of the Mississippi just above Kaskaskia. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in Missouri.  There is some dispute as to the date it was founded, oral tradition setting the date about 1735 but later historians believing it was not founded until closer to 1750.  In any event it was in existence in 1762.   Ste. Genevieve was founded mostly as an agricultural community, the land on the western bank being very fertile.

Of all the settlements in existence in 1762, only three survive today.  Cahokia remains and is essentially a part of the St. Louis metro area, with a population in excess of 16,000 in 2010.  It contains the Church of the Holy Family (formerly the Mission) which is an original French building.
 

Ste. Genevieve also remains, having a population in excess of 4,000 people in 2010.  It is a picturesque little town that still retains its French roots and has the best collection of French colonial houses in the country.  Prairie du Rocher also still exists as a tiny little village with a population of 604 in 2010.  Just up the road from Prairie du Rocher is the restored Fort de Chartres (only the Magazine is original) which is now operated as a state park.   

Nouvelle Chartres disappeared when its raison d’etre disappeared –the French surrendered the fort to the British who abandoned it in the 1770s during the War for American Independence and the Americans had no interest in using it.  All trace of it was eventually destroyed by the flooding Mississippi.

  

Kaskaskia had the most dramatic ending.  The town was destroyed in 1881 when the Mississippi River changed course.  The River, which once ran to the west of the town, completely shifted and now runs to the east and Kaskaskia, although still a part of Illinois, is now only reachable from Missouri. It is essentially an island.  There is still a Church of the Immaculate Conception on the land, but not much else. The Church is a brick building dating from the mid 1800’s that was moved brick by brick when the town was moved.   There is no town anymore but the church remains.

The enclave of French villages along the Mississippi were far from other French settlements but it is surprising how many travelers passed through them.  The French traders traveled widely and news traveled with them. And of course news traveled with military convoys traveling to and from the Fort.

 By 1762 it seemed that all the news was bad news. But that is another story.