The McCracken Family Home Page:Information about Janot Dumouchelle
Janot Dumouchelle (b. Abt. 1773, d. date unknown)
Notes for Janot Dumouchelle:The surname is found as Dumouchelle, Dumouchel, Du Mouchel, and others.
This is composed to help establish the identity of the parents of our ancestor, Archange Dumouchel, the wife of Louis Rene Trudeau. If these deductions are correct, her parents are Jean Dumouchel and Marguerite Janot dit Lachapelle.
William Morrison of Kaskaskia, Illinois, established a branch store at Cahokia in 1800 which operated until 1825. In Ledger D of the Bryan & Morrison Store Records, of the Cahokia Store, on page 287 appears in 1813 the name:
"Dumouchel, Jannot". This is the same name, "Janot Dumouchelle", that the priest recorded as father of Archange when she married to Louis Rene Trudeau, and the mother as Marguerite. (The surname, on that marriage document, for Marguerite was erased, indicating that the priest, for some reason, had difficulty with the names.)
"Janot" is a surname, often found as "Janot dit La Chapelle". The Lachapelles were closely associated with the
Trudeau family in Wabasha, Minnesota, when Celina Trudeau (daughter of Louis Rene Trudeau and Archange
Dumouchel) and her husband Octavo Barker resided there. Isabelle (wife of Octavo's fellow river pilot, Joseph
Lachapelle) was witness at their marriage.
It is possible that Jean Dumouchel, son of Louis Pascal Dumouchel (probably, baptized March 31, 1725, but born two years earlier, the son of Bernard Dumouchel Jr. and Marie Anne Tessier; and grandson of the immigrants to New France, Bernard and Jeanne Juin) and Francoise Sauvagesse, had Marguerite Janot dit Lachapelle for his first wife, thus accounting for the name "Janot" Dumouchel, as father, used by the priest who recorded the marriage of Archange Dumouchel and Louis Rene Trudeau. Jean Dumouchel was in Cahokia, Illinois, on June 4, 1813, when he married Marie Lagotterie, (thus if he had been married to Marguerite, she was deceased). On July 2, 1815, Marie Lagotterie, widow of Jean Dumouchel, married the local blacksmith in Cahokia, widower twice before, Simon Bertrand. (Simon's grandparents were Jacques Bertrand and Marie Louise Dumouchel.) Obviously, Jean Dumouchel had died between 1813 and 1815, probably soon after his marriage to Marie Lagotterie. Thus (if this deduction is correct) both parents of Archange, Jean and Marguerite, were deceased, as the preist recorded it. To further indicate this relationship, Antoine Trudeau, son of Archange Dumouchel and Louis Rene Trudeau, was baptized at Cahokia on June 9, 1822, with Marie Lagotterie, the former wife of Jean Dumouchel, as godmother. Marie Lagotterie, would then have been the step-mother of Archange.
Another connection is the marriage of Jean Dumouchel's sister. On November 28, 1793, at Cahokia, Illinois, Marie Josephte Dumouchel, the (not quite) fifteen year old daughter of Louis Pascal Dumouchel and Francoise Sauvagesse, married Louis LaBossiere. On November 16, 1795, at Cahokia, their same (then) twenty-one year old daughter married (secondly) Antoine Grandbois.
Louis Pascal Dumouchel arrived at Mackinac, from Montreal, on June 3, 1759. He married Francoise in 1769. The children of Louis Pascal Dumouchel and Francoise were: Bernard born March 22, 1770; Francoise born May 12, 1772; Jean born January 12, 1772; (these were baptized together on July 9, 1775, at the Mission St. Ignace de Michilimackinac by P. Gibault); Joachim born June 1776; Josephte born December 26, 1777; Magdelaine born August 7, 1784; (these were baptized July 22, 1786, by Priest Payet. It is interesting that Nellie May Stringham in "familysearch" has the Dumouchels listed as "Janot born about 1773, Marguerite born about 1777, Archange born 1799". This is quite supportive of Janot being actually Jean Dumouchel born January 12, 1772.
Paul Dumouchel, son of immigrant Bernard, had been to the Detroit area as early as 1701. July 6, 1703, Francoise Dumouchel agreed to go with De La Mothe Cadillac for two years to serve the Cadillac family in the establishment of "Cadillac's Village", the beginning of Detroit. Robert Janot dit Lachapelle came to Detroit in April 1707. Paul Dumouchel, son of Paul, arrived there in 1708, settled, married but left no issue. Pierre, nephew of Robrt Janot arrived at Detroit in 1709. Francoise and Paul Dumouchel, Robert and Pierre Janot are all listed as inhabitants of Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit (Cadillac's Village) in 1710. Louis Joseph Dumouchel, son of Paul Dumouchel and Marie Louise Tessier, lived and was buried on October 24, 1783, at Detroit.
It seems that Archange's father is Jean Dumouchel, born January 12, 1772, son of Louis Pascal Dumouchel and his
Native wife, Francoise Sauvagesse. He was baptized on July 9, 1775, by Father Gibault, the missionary pri at the
Mission of St. Ignace de Michilimackinac, along with his brother Bernard (two years older) and his sister Fycoise
(two years younger). The fact of the delay from birth to baptism, suggests that they were not available to the presence of a priest, they living, probably, in the vicinity of Le Pointe, on the southern shores of Lake Superior, where lived the tribe of Courtes Oreilles (Short Ears), who w Francoise's people. The father was avoyageur and trader among the Indiar For generations these Frenchmen were encourage to take native wives, for it improve relations, and encouraged trade.
Using the reasoning above, there is a Marguerite Janot dit LaChapelle who fits nicely for a wife for this Jean Dumouchel. She was baptized on February 27, 1774, at St. Francois D' Assise, Longue Pointe, Tie de Montreal, the daughter of Nicolas Janot dit Lachapelle and Marie Elizabeth Brochu. Various members of this family, who appear continually in Montreal records, had been well connected to the fur trade from Montreal to the Mississippi River, for many years, and had intermixed with the Natives. Bazile Janot dit LaChapelle, brother of Nicolas, appears quite prominently, in that area south and west of Lake Superior.
It is generally accepted that Etienne Brule and Grenolle visited the Lake Superior area before 1622. Brule is said to have reported on it in 1618. Grenolle, in his diary, says that the Ojibway were calling the rapids "Sault de Gaston" after the brother of Louis XIII, indicating that Frenchmen had been there even earlier. It is possible that the Bois Brule River was explored by the adventurous Etienne, although some say that the name came solely from "burnt wood". The paths of the portages were well worn when Radisson and Groseilliers arrived at Chequamegon Bay in the fall of 1659, showing there were many "commers and goers" by those involved in the fur trade, previous to their time. At the bay, Radisson and his brother-in-law, built a cabin, then went off south westerly to Lac Court Oreilles. In the spring of 1660 they built a fort at Chequamegon Pointe, across from where the Ojibway had their fortress on what is now Houghton Pointe. Father Claude Jean Allouez, the priest who preformed the marriage of Louis Tetreau and Noelle Landeau, (ancestors of this writer, Harry Tatro) at Trois Rivieres, set up a mission on the bay in 1665. For the next hundred years the French continued the trade with the Courte Oreilles, and it is there among these Ojibway that Louis Pascal Dumouchel found his wife.
He had arrived in the area forty-six years after the Treaty of Utrecht, when France had revived her post at La Pointe, and had "enjoyed the high water mark of French activity in the fur trade on the west end of Lake Superior". At that time the whole peninsula was called "La Pointe", and it was later that the settlement on Madeline Island took the name. Joseph Gauthier, Chevalier de la Verendrye (youngest of the four sons of the explorer Pierre) had command of La Pointe from 1751 to 1755; followed by Pierre Hertel de Beaubassin 1756 - 1758 and Sieur Come de Ia St. Luc 1758 - 1762. A period of confusion took place when New France came into the hands of the British. The Ojibway were hostile to the English, and on June 4, 1763, they captured the British fort at Mackinac, using the guise of a la crosse game. It was then that Alexander Hemy obtained exclusive rights to trade south of Lake Superior, and was astute enough to take as a partner Jean Baptiste Cadotte, the son of a Frenchman and Ojibway, who himself married into the tribe, and was equally accepted by French and natives. In 1765 the French Canadian party of voyageurs set up quarters on Chequamegan Bay.
In 1768, the year before Louis Pascal Dumouchel's marraige to Francoise, Henry's franchise expired, and, anyway, interest in fur trade to the distant north-west, even to the Pacific, took primary interest. This resulted in the formation of the North West Company trading out of Montreal, using the French-Canadian and Metis voyageurs to make it very successful in competition with the British Hudsoh's Bay Company. The Henry/Cadotte partnership was represented in the La Pointe area in 1782 by Michel Cadotte, son of Jean Baptiste. He served the Native villages at Lac Courte Oreilles and Lac du Flambeau. Madeline Island was named for the Ojibway wife of Michel Cadotte. About 1787 the Henry/Cadotte partnership was absorbed by the North West Company and Michel Cadotte was its agent at La Pointe.
More About Janot Dumouchelle:
Ancestral File Number: C1N7-45.77
Children of Janot Dumouchelle and Marguerite are:
- +Archange Dumouchelle, b. 1798, d. April 27, 1850, Davenport, Iowa.
Children of Janot Dumouchelle and Marguerite are:
- +Archange Dumouchelle, b. 1799,
77, d. 1898, St. Louis, Stl., Mo77.