| Notes |
- According to the (approved) 28 Oct 1965 SAR application of Dr. Lionel Thomas Wolford, Jacques Fontenette was a "Brigadier of the Carabiniers, Province of Louisiana" in which capacity he "served with his Company under Dr. Bernardo de Galvez, Gov. of Louisiana against the British in 1779-81."
According to Jane G. Bulliard (citation details below), he was a "natif de St. Carlos de la Mississippi". Our first thought was this might mean he was born in the town on the Mississippi now called St. Charles, Missouri, but that place appears to have been founded in about 1769.
From "Négresses Libres and the Republic" (citation details below):
One of the many prominent Louisiana Creoles to resettle at the nascent Attakapas District was Jacques Bénigne FONTENETTE fils, known in the Spanish provincial era (1762-1803) as Santiago. He had been born at the Tchapitoulas District on 21 April 1754 to Royal Surgeon and Councillor Jacques Bénigne DE FONTENET père, M.D., of Bourgogne, France and Marie-Geneviève ESNOUL-DE LIVAUDAIT, a Louisiana Creole of an illustrious history in colonial and provincial Louisiana.
Like many of his bourgeois Creole, Canadian, French, and Spanish contemporaries, Jacques fils entered the military. He eventually rose to the ranks of brigadier of the Company of Detached Carabiniers, By 1790, Jacques fils resettled at the Attakapas District, owning land and a plantation near Église Saint-Martin, southwest Louisiana’s first permanent Catholic Church, in St. Martinville. He did not arrive alone. In 1804, he made several donations of slaves and land to free people of color, and liberty to slaves:
* to Marie-Louise – négresse libre: a 30-year-old négresse créolisée [Creolized negress] slave named Tétie, who he had purchased by civil act in New Orleans from Mr COIRIN;
* to André (age 21) and Nanette (16) – mulâtres slaves belonging to him, children of Julie – négresse: freedom;
* to Marie-Louise – négresse libre, and to her 9 mulâtre children Jacques dit Coco, Pouponne, Zénon, Joseph, Pierrot, Pétion, Hortance, and Thérence, as well as to André and Nanette – both mulâtres libres born of a different mother to Marie-Louise: land at Isle à Labbé, on the eastern side of Bayou Têche, measuring 5 arpents frontage by 40 arpents depth, for all 12 to share in equal portions
* to Pouponne – mulâtresse libre: an 11-year-old négritte slave named Rozine who, like Tétie, he had purchased by civil act in New Orleans from Mr COIRIN.
All of these mulâtres and mulâtresses consistently used the FONTENETTE surname, and are presumed to be Jacques fils’s natural children. When Jacques fils contracted marriage to Charlotte Louise PELLERIN, an Attakapas Creole, in 1800, he brought to their marriage 30 heads of slaves, among other valuables. I have no documentation yet, but it is possible that Julie and Marie-Louise, and their children, were among those unnamed slaves in the civil marriage contract.
In any case, Jacques fils was no “petit habitant” or peasant. Witnesses to his marriage to Charlotte read like an encyclopedia of French and Spanish colonial and provincial Louisiana’s most decorated military officials, including Louis Chevalier DE VILLIERS – captain of the Mixed Legion of the Mississippi, Charles OLIVIER de Vézin – who had served as Regidor Perpétuel [Permanent Alderman] of Spanish Louisiana [...], Marin LE NORMAND – lieutenant of the Legion of Mississippi, Barthélemy GRÉVENBERT, Louis Pelletier DE LA HOUSSAYE – captain of the Legion (Charlotte’s brother-in-law), Alexandre Chevalier DE LA HOUSSAYE (also Charlotte’s brother-in-law), Louis and Jean-Baptiste PELLERIN (Charlotte’s brothers) – both officers in the Fixed Spanish Louisiana Regiment.
Whether Jacques fils fathered Julie and Marie-Louise’s children, is unimportant. What is noteworthy is his conscious decision to give them all a fair shot in life during a period when the fate of most peoples of color in European colonies, like Spanish Louisiana, revolved around permanent servitude, for generations. Jacques fils, like many of his ilk, chose a different path, and he should be recognized for his fortitude and generosity.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
1754 - 1818 (64 years)
[2, 3, 4]