Joseph Bailly (7 April 1774 – 21 December 1835) was a fur trader and a member of an important French Canadian family that included his uncle, Charles-François Bailly de Messein.
Bailly was one of several Canadian from prominent families who were important in the western fur trade. In 1822, he established a trading post near present-day Porter, Indiana, making him the foremost pioneer of that area.
Early history and ancestors Joseph Bailly was an early fur trader on the Great Lakes. He and his children had significant influence as the region transitioned from English colonialism to frontier expansion of the United States. He was born Honore Gratien Joseph Bailly de Messein on 7 April 1774 in Verchères, Quebec; a village which originated with a land grant to his great-great-grandfather Francois Xavier Jarret, Sieur de Vercheres in 1672.Howe, Frances Rose 1851-1817, The Story Of A French Homestead In The Old Northwest, James Dowd Publishers - Bowie, Maryland 1907 / repub. Heritage Books 1999. It is located up the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal, on the opposite bank. Bailly was a sixth–generation French-Canadian, descending from Jehan Terriault and Perrine Brault, who were original colonists in Acadia in 1637. Bailly's great-grandfather Nicholas Antoine Coulon, Sieur de Villiers was a trader and Army officer who was killed by Meskwaki people on the shore of Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1733. His uncle, Father Charles-Francois Bailly de Messein, spent more than twenty years as a Catholic missionary to the Mi'kmaq Indians of Nova Scotia, and was appointed coadjutor Bishop of Quebec in 1788. Following the family interest in the fur trade, Joseph Bailly received an advanced education in Montreal, and served a clerkship with the North West Company. In 1792, at the age of 18, he finished his education, and entered the fur trade at Michilimackinac. Although from a prominent family, they had little money. His father died in 1795, and Joseph became the main support of his mother, younger brother, and sister for several years.Joseph Bailly, Trader of Lake Michigan; Chris Light; Fifth Annual George Rogers Clark Trans Appalachian Frontier History Conference; October 3, 1987, Vincennes University, Vincennes, Indiana,
Fur trader In the winter of 1792–93, Bailly entered into extensive fur trading with Ottawa villages in central Michigan. From 1793 to 1810, his winter residence was a trading post located near an Ottawa village at the foot of the Maple River Rapids, in Lebanon Township, Clinton County. Bailly owned additional trading posts from 1793 to 1822 on Lake Muskego, Muskegon River, Michigan (now Muskegon, Michigan); from 1793 to 1810 in Chig-au-mish-kene village on Grand River (now Lyons, Michigan); from 1807 to 1815, in Parc aux Vaches village on St. Joseph River (south of present-day Niles, Michigan); from 1807 to 1828 on the Calumet River, Indiana; and from 1807 to 1828 on the Kankakee River, Illinois.
First marriage and expansion of the business Joseph married Angelique McGulpin (Bead-Way-Way or Mecopemequa) in 1794 in Maketoquit's village at the foot of Maple River rapids, Michigan. Angelique was born about 1780 in Chig-au-mish-kene village on Grand River, Michigan. She was a daughter of Maketoquit (Black Cloud), the chief of a large band of Grand River Ottawa. He located his main village in what became Essex Township of Shiawassee County, on the south side of the Maple River, but the band used a winter camp in Lebanon Township of Clinton County (now the village of Maple Rapids) for gathering maple sugar. Children of the marriage were Francis Bailly, born in 1795; Alexis Bailly; born in 1798; and Sophia Bailly, born in 1807. The marriage ended in divorce. Francis remained with Maketoquit's band and Alexis was sent to boarding school in Montreal. Sophia was adopted by a close friend of both parents, fur trader Magdelaine Laframboise, who summered on Mackinac Island and wintered on Grand River (now Lowell, Michigan).
Second marriage and beginning of a trade empire Joseph Bailly entered into a financial partnership with Dominic Rousseau of Montreal which dominated the fur trade on the upper Great Lakes out of Mackinac Island and challenged the giant North West Company. Rousseau and Bailly maintained large warehouses on Mackinac and in Montreal; trading in numerous locations with several fleets of voyageurs.
Joseph married Marie Lefevre de La Vigne (Mo-nee or Tou-se-qua) in 1810. She was born in 1783 in Ma-con, a large mixed-band Indian village on the Raisin River west of present Monroe, Michigan. Her mother was a Potawatomi of the St. Joseph Band (now known as the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians). Marie married Kougowma (or Kiogima), also called La Vigne, a medicine man in the Mackinac band of Ottawa, who took her to Mackinac Island. Kougowma died between 1804 and 1809. Bailly adopted the two daughters from this marriage, Agatha born in 1797 and Therese, born in 1803. Five more children were born of this second marriage, who were Esther in 1811, Rose in 1813, Eleanor in 1815, Robert in 1817 and Hortense in 1819.
Third marriage theory Joseph's marriage to Angelique McGulpin, born circa 1790Ottawas and Chippewas of Michigan, Treaty of March 28, 1836, Transcribed and compiled by Larry M. Wyckoff, ref #412 at Mackinac, is usually considered to be his first marriage. The marriage is confirmed through Mackinac County marriage recordsMCGULPIN, ANGELIQUE - MCGULPIN, BAILLY, JOSEPH - BAILLY, MACKINAC,--,,00 XXX 1797 for Mackinac. These records imply that this was not a marriage of an Indian to a Frenchman, but of a mixed-blood to a Frenchman, since marriages with Indians were not recorded. Research also shows that Angelique was the daughter of Patrick McGulpin, a Scottish trader at Mackinac, and not the daughter of a native. Only their daughter, Sophie, is confirmed through baptismal recordsSophie Bailly, born March 1807 of Joseph Billy and Angelique McGulpin, baptized on Aug. 9,1821, godfather was Eloy Bourassa and godmother was Marie, Judith Bourassa. at Mackinac to be the child of Angelique and Joseph. She was born early in 1807. Their son Francois would remain among his mother's people the Ottawa as a medicine man.
The information stated above as the background of Angelique is ascribed to several researchersManuscript, unpublished, Rita Duncan, Indiana, 1999 to be Bailly's first wife. According to tradition, fur traders would take native wives, whom they would "set aside" when the arrangement was no longer convenient. Being an Indian woman, there probably was never a church marriage. Preliminary research into this first wife has identified her as an Ottawa Woman of the Grand River Ottawa, named Monee. Without a sanctioned marriage, the church allowed a new marriage, to Angelique McGulpin. The evidence for his marriage to Angelique comes from his "third" marriage in 1810. At that time, the church (according to Joseph's daughter) refused to allow a divorce from his "first" (i.e., church–sanctioned) wife. Therefore, Joseph married Marie in a civil ceremony.
Records show that his six children born from 1799 to 1803 were born in camps along the east of Lake Michigan. Angelique would have been age 9 to 13. Since the youngest, Francois, stayed in the Ottawa villages as a medicine man (doctor), it is unlikely that Angelique was the "first wife". Yet most Indian wives were not considered wives. The reference by Joseph's daughter, therefore, would most likely refer to a metis (mixed blood) or French wife, married in the Church. Therefore, it is concluded by some researchers that Joseph had three wives.
Joseph's third wife was Marie LeFevre. She was born at Riviera des Raisins to LeFevre de Gascon and a French and Indian woman, about 1783. When her father died in 1790, the family was driven away from the Detroit area as half-breeds. They returned to her mother's Ottawa people at L'abre Croche. Here, she was married to an Ottawa medicine man named de la Vigne. After having two daughters, she left him because of his spirit worship. Having been raised in the Catholic Church, she sought to rejoin this religion. By 1810, she was at Mackinac, where she met Joseph Bailly. At this time, because of their common religious concerns, they were married in a civil ceremony. Their six children and Alexis would become the living memory of the Bailly family.
War of 1812 Bailly attempted to avoid involvement in the War of 1812, but found that he could not maintain neutrality. He was a Canadian citizen, and had a huge business headquartered in Montreal. Bailly was appointed a Lieutenant in the Michigan Fencibles, a regiment of Canadian militia, in January 1813. He was seized as a prisoner of war in January 1814, while visiting his post at Parc Aux Vaches (very near the site of today's campus of the University of Notre Dame), by United States militia. He was taken to Fort Detroit and held for two months, until March. Bailly was on Mackinac Island when it was invaded by US forces in July, and was deported with the other Canadian Loyalists to Drummond Island, Canada (now Chippewa County, Michigan), though the Battle of Mackinac Island ended in the retreat of American forces. He sent his eight-year-old daughter Sophia to live with her adopted brother, trader Joseph LaFramboise in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, but the war theater soon expanded westward to that village.
Legal case of Dominique Rousseau In Montreal, a little-known legal case first asserted American jurisdiction over the lands of northern Minnesota and the upper Great Lakes. It took place in the Court of King's Bench, Register of Common Pleas (District of Montreal), Superior Term, 1803–05, seemingly an unlikely place for a case over the rights of the United States within its own territory to be played out.
Dominique Rousseau and Joseph Bailly were both traders from Montreal in the years prior to the American Revolution. Both were of French Canadian parents. In the summer of 1802, Rousseau and Bailly hired Paul Hervieux of Repetingy (Montreal) to act as bourgeois (partner) and take a canoe under an American license issued at Michilimackinac and to go to Grand Portage. Here they were to trade with the Indians and the canoemen of the other companies.
On July 10 or 12 they arrived in Grand Portage Bay. They were ready for trade by 8:00 a.m. the day after they arrived. They had three "little" tents in a spot some 50 feet from the North West Company canoes and ten feet from the shore.
In testimony by Thomas Forsyth, Esquire, a Montreal trader with the XY Company, and Maurice Blondeau, a "merchant voyageur" since 1752, the area had been cleared by a John Erskine (Askin) in the mid-1750s and there had been a "free right to pitch their tents" in any open area although this area was normally occupied by the North West Company.
Shortly after they had set up camp, Duncan McGillivray and Simon McTavish appeared among their tents and ordered Rastoute, Hervieux's clerk, to move beyond the "little fort". This was the establishment of Mr. Boucher. Boucher ran a small trading post, of the North West Company, for the canoemen. Rastoute, having anticipated this possibility, produced a copy of the American–issued trading license. McGillivray and McTavish replied to the effect that it was not valid at Grand Portage.
Later in the day, McGillivray and McLeod returned to the site of Hervieux's tents. With a group of bourgeois and clerks, McGillivray slashed at the trader's tent and McLeod ordered the traders out. They pulled the stakes from the ground. Michel Robichaux, a voyageur of 25 years, heard McLeod threaten, "if you were at Rat Portage...I would break your neck".Gilman, Carolyn (1992). The Grand Portage Story, p. 69. Minnesota Historical Society Press. McLeod then opened a bale of trade goods and scattered it "to the breezes". McGillivray and McLeod then returned to the stockade.