♂Augustin Tougas Lovellette

Augustin Tougas Lovellette (25 February 1809 – 25 January 1866) was a merchant and trader of Wabash County, Illinois, the son of one of the French families who first settled near Rochester on the Wabash. A family narrative remembers him as a merchant and pork packer who owned boats that carried his products down the rivers to New Orleans, and says that during the Civil War he was “an ardent southern sympathizer, and a believer in slavery”. He was the third great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Eleanor Tougas Lovellette (1830–1898).

Early life

He was born about 1809, probably a son of Augustus A. Tougas dit Laviolette and Ellenore S. Renaud dit Deslauriers, both children of the old French post at Vincennes, Indiana. An index of the St. Francis Xavier register at Vincennes records the baptism there on 26 May 1814 of an Augustin born 5 March 1810, son of “Augustin Tougas” and “Eleonore Renaud Delaurier”, and the family narrative gives that baptism as his. His father’s family had by then settled across the river in Illinois, in Coffee Precinct near Rochester. A county history published in 1883 names the Tougas family, “also named Lavulette,” as prominent among the few French families who located there about 1800. That history explains the name by a stepfather: Mrs. Tougas married “a man by the name of Lavulette,” and “some of the children of Mrs. Tougas, assumed the name of their step-father.” The story is mistaken: Laviolette was the family’s by-name in Canada generations earlier, and the widow’s second husband was André Montplaisir. The Rochester branch wrote the name Lovellette, and his own children appear in the records as Lovellette, Lavanlette and Tougas. His mother died in 1822, when he was thirteen.

Marriage and family

Early in 1830 he married Julia Adele Laplante (1811–1861), a daughter of Jean Baptiste La Plante of Vincennes. An index of the St. Francis Xavier register at Vincennes, which names her parents, dates the marriage 4 January 1830; the family narrative gives 4 February 1830, at Rochester. According to a biography of Julia written by a granddaughter, her mother and brothers wanted her to marry another admirer, “but she married the man of her own choice.” The couple had ten children, born between 1830 and 1850, the eldest Eleanor; a daughter, Mildred, died as an infant in 1849, and a son, Hyacinth, who bore the name of Julia’s brother Hyacinthe, died in 1860.

The family narrative calls him “a successful merchant, farmer, and a good citizen … one of the pioneer merchants of Mt. Carmel, St. Francisville, and old Rochester”, who also ran a pork-packing business and shipped its products by his own boats to New Orleans. In 1850 the census found him in Wabash County, a farmer. On 21 September 1857, at Mount Carmel, he settled, as administrator, the estate of William T. Lovellette, deceased, and signed the account “August T. Lovellette, Adm’r”. He built a large country home in Coffee Precinct near Keensburg and Rochester, and later a house on the bluff overlooking the Wabash, where Julia died on 31 August 1861.

Store and trade

His grandson B. A. Harvey recalled, in a paper printed in the Mount Carmel Daily Republican-Register on 21 March 1925, that the grandfather kept a store at Old Rochester Mills and made semi-annual trading trips to New Orleans. Harvey, who called him “August Tugas, Jr.”, had his first experience of a store in that shop as a small child. In 1860 the grandfather sold out at Rochester and bought the general stock of C. B. Goforth in Mount Carmel. The 1860 census found him in Mount Carmel Township with his wife and three children in the household. The business ran on in Mount Carmel until about 1863, when he was caught up in the failure of Abraham Mauck & Bros. A Mount Carmel Democrat advertisement for dry goods and groceries, printed on 9 May 1862, names “A. T. Lovellette, at Goforth’s old stand” - the store whose stock he had bought.

The Civil War and later life

Illinois had been a free state since 1818 and stayed with the Union, but the family narrative says that in the war he sided with the South and believed in slavery, “as the French owned slaves during the early days of the great northwest territory”. The French settlers at Vincennes and in the Illinois Country had indeed held slaves under French and then British rule, and some French families kept them long after the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 forbade the practice.

In 1864, three years a widower, he married again. The Illinois Statewide Marriage Index records his marriage to Angeline M. Keneipp at Lawrence, Illinois, on 24 November 1864; the family record gives her birth as about 1828 in Wabash County. The Keneipps were already connected to his family, for his son-in-law James Harvey’s sister Jane was the wife of Silas Keneipp. He died in January 1866 and was buried near Rochester, where his parents also lie.

Notes

The family record carries two birth dates for him, 25 February 1809 and 5 March 1810, both at or near Vincennes; the family narrative gives 5 March 1810 in Coffee Precinct. The same narrative dates his death 25 May 1866 in Coffee Precinct and gives his age on his gravestone as 56, which fits either birth date. The 5 March 1810 date is the one the baptism index gives. Neither census age decides between them: each birth date is one year out in one census and two years out in the other. The 1850 census gives his birthplace as Illinois, which fits the Coffee Precinct of the family narrative rather than Vincennes.

A second Augustin

Another Augustin was baptized at Vincennes on 15 May 1808, born 25 February 1807, a son of François Touga and Geneviève Vallé; his birth day and month are the same as the first of the two dates above. An index card made from the 1830 marriage gives Julia’s husband that birth date and those parents. The card is a compiler’s reading rather than the register’s own words, and the family’s own accounts and the name Lovellette both point to Augustus and Ellenore; the register entry of the 4 January 1830 marriage would settle which Augustin she married.

The store and the grandson’s paper

The store and trade paragraph rests on one family source: a recollection by his grandson, B. A. Harvey, printed in 1925, long after the events. It calls him “August Tugas, Jr.” The title may point to an elder August Tougas as his father, one more pointer toward the parentage given in the body, but it does not settle the question; the 4 January 1830 marriage record would decide it. The advertisement names only “A. T. Lovellette”; it is tied to him through the Goforth stand, which the grandson’s account links to him.

The second marriage

The date and place of the marriage come from the Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 1763-1900, held by the Illinois State Archives. The index entry, for 24 November 1864 at Lawrence, Illinois, names the couple as August L Lovelette and Angeline M Kenneipp. The index spellings are its own; the names used here are Augustin Tougas Lovellette and Angeline M. Keneipp. An index entry is not the licence or the return itself, so the marriage rests on the index alone. Earlier accounts placed the marriage at Wabash; the index places it at Lawrence.

The birth date and birthplace of the bride, about 1828 in Wabash County, come from the family record, which gives her only as “Miss Keneipp” and does not name her first name. An index of the 1860 census for Lukin Township, Lawrence County, lists an Angeline Kennepp born about 1832 in Ohio. If that is the same woman, the family record’s year and place would not fit her. The index does not settle it.

The groom is identified by the surname, the initial, the year, and the family record’s second marriage in 1864. The name alone does not settle it: another A. T. Lovellette, with a wife named Samantha, was living at St. Francisville in Lawrence County in 1880.