Reading Notes

Extended notes on what I've read

Carl J. Ekberg, François Vallé and His World

frontispiece: Coat of Arms

Saved a copy as valleCoatOfArms.jpg

p. 1: François' roots

Quotable: sums up his life nicely.
Has the place of origin as Saint-Saëns, in the Rouen Diocese.
Points out that Pierre and Jean had arrived in the New World before their more famous French counterparts--La Salle and Marquette and Joliet--had begun their more famous explorations.

p. 3-4

Pierre and Jean sailed up the St. Lawerence River in late summer 1657.

p. 4

Married Marie-Thérèse Le Blanc on Jan. 12, 1665 in Quebec.
10 children.
In early 1670s, settled in Beauport.
The seventh child, Charles--our ancestor--was born in 1678.
Charles marries Geneviève Marcou in Beauport, Sept. 12, 1707.
Their 5th child, François, was born Jan. 2, 1716.

p. 6: Two routes to Kaskaskia from Quebec.

p. 7-8: Various Indian tribes mentioned.

p. 8: Geography of Kaskaskia and Cohokia.

p. 9: Mention of Delisle's "remarkable" map.

p. 9-10: Kaskaskia split into two, according to race

The French were fed up with Indian disease and alcohol abuse, but it was they who had caused it.
Absurd to split the town, for many wives in the town were "full-blooded" Indian women.

p. 19: François marries Marianne Billeron

p. 20: Summary of François' early life

Quotable.

p. 73: Western Pennsylvania was much less penetrated by settlers than the areas around the Mississippi

That is, we think of the penetration as moving smoothly from east to west, but it wasn't like that at all.

p. 80-81: A neighbor of François' had an illegitimate daughter with an Indian woman.

p. 83, 84: Father Hilaire - See also the index. - My notes say he was the priest when Marguerite was married.

p. 88: Description of François' neighborhood in the town. - Paragraph 'c' is quotable.

p. 89b: The people in Ste. Genevieve lived according to a different rhythm. - Quotable.

p. 95b: François' most powerful years were 1763-1783. - p. 105b: The militia essential belonged to the Vallé family.

p. 114b: The case of the theft and murder of an Indian slave woman. - "The liberty of slaves to crisscross the Mississippi River in order to participate in such shenanigans reveals much about their freedom of movement and action in the colonial Illinois Country." (p. 114-115)

p. 116b: Summary of Vallé at the 55th year of his life. - Quotable.

p. 120b: Marianne Vallé was one of the most powerful women in colonial Upper Louisiana.

p. 120c-122: Sex life of the Vallés - In his younger days, Francois likely had access to Indian women. - They may have had sex before marriage--not a big deal back then. - Illegitimacy among the white community was rare and for their standing practically unheard of. - Marianne produced children for only ten years. Ekberg speculates that François' sexual relationship with the mother of Marguerite might have ended it--or that he began the affair when she could no longer continue their sexual relationship. - But they continued to be close.

p. 122: Genealogy Chart

From Charles La Vallée and Genevieve Marcou to Marguerite and her half siblings and their children.
Worth scanning.
Maybe worth putting into the family tree.

p. 153ff: Marguerite

Quotable. Perhaps the whole three pages are worth typing or scanning.
She "presents us with the largest mystery of his life."
Footnote 122 mentions a Marguerite born of one of François' slaves. This is discussed more thoroughly on p. 195.
Footnote 124: "Dede Coleman of Festus, Mo., for example, is a descendant of Marguerite and wishes to know the identity of her ancestors."

p.192c-194b: Marguerite inherited slaves when she married in 1778

François' affection for the slave boy Colas.
By 1787, the census indicates, Marguerite and Louis Caron had no slaves left. This suggests hard times, or no stomach for slave owning.

p. 195c: A slave named Marguerite who was inherited by Jean-Baptiste

Her age suggests she may be the Marguerite whose baptism was recorded. (See note under p. 153ff.)

p. 200ff: Different kinds of slavery

p. 238: Ste. Genevieve today

p. 282: Jean-Baptiste's house in new St. Genevieve.

p. 284b-287: An attempt at summarizing François' character.

p. 287c: A summary paragraph about the mystery of Marguerite's mother

Nothing really new here, but it is quotable.

Tiya Miles, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits

p. 32-24: Pontiac's Rebellion

Description of the difference between French and British colonization.

p. 277, Note 48

Discussion of "the foundational work of carefully recovering the history of slavery in New France".

p. 39ff: Slavery under the French

Canada is imagined as a haven for people escaping from American slavery via the Underground Railroad.
But actually it was a society who by then had been engaged in slavery for two hundred years.
First African slave, 1628.
Indigenous slaves began with gifts from other Native Americans, and eventually turned into outright purchasing of slaves.
The French did not see Native Americans as a separate caste of human being. (At least initially.) But they saw the Africans "as occupying a fixed inferior status." (p. 39)
Indigenous slaves were difficult to hold. African slaves were much less likely to run away.
With the English colonies as an example, "French Canadians began to seek access to black bodies just as eagerly as they had harvested beaver carcasses." (p. 40)

p. 40ff: The Code Noir

"strove to align the practices of owning human being with the ethics of Catholicism" (p. 40)
Not always strictly followed.
But it did provide "a small measure of legal protection" (p. 41).
The word Panis was used to designate indigenous slaves. (p. 41ff)

p. 46-47: Indigenous slaves could be part of the family

Difference in attitude toward indigenous and African slaves.
"Native slaves in New France were part of a population that theoretically could be, and in some cases had been, economic partners, political allies, cultural brokers, and people accepted as kin. If black slaves were held at a social distance by French colonists in the North, Indian slaves were held with a dangerous degree of intimacy." (p. 47)

p. 47: Marriages with Native Americans

Most such marriages took place between Frenchmen and Native women, though some Brits participated as well.
"Many of these cross-cultural marriages seem to have been consensual and resulted in close bonds between wives, husbands, children and extended kinship circles."

p. 49: Frenchmen were willing to sell their own children

First she describes the use of god-parenting to establish relationships with mixed indigenous and French offspring.
- Sometimes the men would be godfathers to their own children.
Then: "French slaveholders were willing to hold and sell the children of Native sex partners as slaves."
- But she doesn't say explicitly whether these would be children of Native women they had married.
- I think not.

p. 50: The "invisible population" of indigenous women

"Intermarriages and intimacies between Frenchmen and Native women existed on a spectrum that blurred into sexual slavery, and it is often difficult, in evaluating existing records, to distinguish among these various relationships. Due to their ambiguous position in relation to Native groups and the pattern of French-Indian intermarriage, indigenous women may well be the most invisible population in the history of American and Canadian slavery."

p. 51: Church records are the most useful for unearthing the history of enslaved people in Detroit

"And so it is in the Ste. Anne's Church register, a record book kept by priests in the second oldest diocese in the present-day United States, that the shrouded lives of people in bondage during the era of Pontiac's War emerge."

p. 51: Most enslaved people from 1760-1800 were indigenous women.

p. 55: Slight parallel to Marguerite Vallé

Pregnant woman gives birth to child in prison.

p.62, b-c: Slight parallel to Marguerite Vallé

Panis slave has children with a Brit. After half a dozen years he gives her full freedom.
She leaves the kids behind and disappears. They grow up and become slave owners.
"The children of an enslaved mother, they were now part of a mixed-race class that participated in slavery."
"She fades into the shadows of colonial history like so many other Indian women held as slaves across the Great Lakes."

p. 63-64: Enslaved men and women played central roles in Detroit's history, however invisible they remain to us today.

"Enslaved people could be found laboring in every capacity in the town—in bedroom, in kitchens, in wheat fields, and in manufactures." (p. 63b)

p. 76-77: The wealth gained in early Detroit and held until modern times had "its roots in greed, graft, and forced racialized labor."

p. 80: Lt. Gov. Hamilton--of the Battle of Vincennes fame--appears.

p. 81 ff: George Rogers Clark

He was supposed to do what he did at Vincennes all the way to Detroit.
An extended quotation from a letter by Jefferson to Clark instructing him on his mission and the benefits to be gained by its successful outcome--both military and financial.
Clark wrote a proclamation on December 24, 1778, which claimed that the black and Native slaves in French Illinois had too much freedom.
It appears that this proclamation had the force of law, since he had taken over the towns of Kaskaskia and Cohokia.

p. 84: Hamilton again, charged with barbarity by American illustrators.

Zachary M. DuClos, The Way We Were

Vol 1: French Involvement in North America

p. 4ff: Early travel to the New World

May mention the shop our Vallé people took over. (See http://www.leveillee.net/ancestry/AncetresPierreJeanVallee.htm )

p. 59: Mentions Marguerite

p. 191: St. Genevieve history

A lot of these names are familiar.
No mention of old vs. new Ste. Genevieve

p. 223: Importance of French settlers in Battle of Vincennes

p. 312: Good map of the Illinois Country

p. 313: Genealogical charts

It may be worth looking at these charts to fill in my tree.

p. 343: Has Marguerite's mother as an Indian slave named Louise

ID = 119

p. 402, index page for Valle, Francois

Checked every page mentioned.

Vol. 2: Our French Canadian/Arcadian Ancestors

p. 5: Marguerite and Francois will be covered later.

p. 82: Marguerite's story.

Mother NOT ID'd as Louise.
Following Ekberg.

p. 503: Index for Vallé, Marguerite

Checked all pages.

Adventures in Genealogy

Reading Notes

Carl J. Ekberg, François Vallé and His World

Tiya Miles, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits

Zachary M. DuClos, The Way We Were

Vol 1: French Involvement in North America

Vol. 2: Our French Canadian/Arcadian Ancestors

Other Reading Notes

Books Read

Rosemary A. Chorzempa: Korzenie Polskie: Polish Roots

W. Daniel Quillen: Mastering Online Genealogy

Melnyk, Marcia Yannizze: The Weekend Genealogist

Wellauer, Maralyn A.: Tracing Your Polish Roots