One Strong Woman in the Minnesota Frontier
This post is inspired by the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. The week 10 challenge is “Strong Woman”.
I grew up listening to my daddy tell stories about his French fur trapper ancestor – a great-great-grandfather named Joeseph Lemaitre. We went on wild adventures as he narrated the 19th-century fur-trade. I had images of a big, tall man in buckskin and a raccoon cap carrying a musket over his shoulder walking next to a brown bear.
I clearly had seen way too many movies!
But, as entertaining as this man was, it was his wife I was fascinated by. As the family story goes, she was a Blackfoot Indian woman who was swept off her feet by a French fur trapper and whisked away to love-bird adventures in France before returning to America as a married woman. In my mind, these tales of passion and tragedy made her a strong woman, especially in times when women were seen as frailties that needed protecting.
These were the stories of risk, of love, of adventure … the kind that suck you in as a child. Daddy was a masterful story-teller.
And none of them were true.
That’s right. None of them were true.
The Truth Behind the Stories
My French fur trapper was an Indian Scout before and during the Civil War – in Minnesota, where the Civil War took a back seat to the Sioux uprising. He was also a farmer and a trapper.
My Blackfoot Indian, however, was nothing of the sort. In fact, she was Swiss.
I suppose every genealogist gets to uncover the truth behind family lore. It’s part of the process. The more I have learned about my 3rd-great-grandparents, the more I have come to understand just how strong they both were. I am still fascinated by the life they had together.
My Strong Woman
Veronique Voirol was born on August 18, 1829, in Geneva, Switzerland to Louis Voirol and Claire Girardin. The Voirol family arrived in America sometime in the 1840s – to the best of my knowledge – and settled in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Veronique married Joseph Lemaitre on December 24, 1852. The newlyweds set up housekeeping and stayed for a few years during which four children were born – Edward Alexander and Francis Joseph were the only two who lived past infancy. In 1859, the young family moved to Hutchinson, Minnesota where Joseph could own his own land. They later moved to McLeod County.
They were pioneers, settling in an area that was wrought with “savages” – Sioux Indians – harsh winters and land that needed to be cleared before it could be inhabited. This took strength and determination, the likes of which I can’t even fathom. During the Sioux Uprising of 1862, the family, like so many others, were left with nothing. Penniless. Forced to live in crowded conditions in a log stockade in Hutchinson, protected by soldiers, fraught with illness and hunger.
Below is a photo from a 1944 newspaper depicting the log stockade these families would have lived in. It looks very small.
According to newspaper accounts of the time, “thousands of our frontier people”[1]St. Cloud Democrat, 8 Jan 1863 and their families were left in this situation. Veronique and Joseph lost two more children during this time, one infant and one toddler.
Joeseph’s Death
My 2nd great-grandmother, Isabell (Belle) Lemaitre, was the third youngest of the Lemaitre siblings. When Belle was 4 years old, her father, Joseph, was killed in an accident while transporting wheat to a nearby town. Veronique and Joseph had been together 18 years and had built a life in one of the more perilous parts of the nation at the time.
She was 41 years old with 7 children under the age of 18, the youngest just 6 months old, facing a hard winter without her love. But she did just that. She and her children stayed on the homestead and, in 1873, the land was transferred to her name. Eventually, she sold the land and moved into the city where she lived until her own death on January 7, 1883.
Thinking on the Family Lore
There were many women – wives and mothers – who had to be strong in order for us to be here today. Veronique is one of several in my family but she is one I always gravitate to because of the circumstances of their lives in Minnesota. It’s easy for me to understand why my daddy was intrigued by this family. His stories were captivating, if slightly mythical. The foundation was there, however. What I’ve learned – much in part to a newfound cousin descended from second son, Francis Joseph Lemaitre – is this family was every bit the pioneers Daddy made them out to be. And that’s the stuff family stories are made from.
References
| ↑1 | St. Cloud Democrat, 8 Jan 1863 |
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