♀Ellenore S. Renaud dit Deslauriers

Ellenore S. Renaud dit Deslauriers (about 1782 – July 1822) was a daughter of the French settlement at Post Vincennes on the Wabash who married her fourth cousin, Augustus Tougas dit Laviolette, in 1801, and died in Wabash County, Illinois, at about forty. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Augustin Tougas Lovellette (1809–1866).

Early life

Ellenore was born at Vincennes about 1782, a daughter of Louis Renaud dit Deslauriers, whose family came from Varennes in Canada, and Marguerite Godere, a native of the post. Her parents had married before the church ever recorded it. On 2 August 1784 a visiting missionary, Father Payet, received Louis and Marguerite, who “renewed the mutual consent of marriage which was formerly given in the presence of” Étienne Philibert dit Orléans, the notary of the place, and four witnesses. Vincennes had been without a resident priest, and couples married before the notary and their neighbors; when a priest came, he ratified these marriages, several on that one day. The ratification explains why Ellenore’s birth comes before the only marriage date her parents’ register gives.

She was the eldest known child of a large family: her brother Louis was born in September 1785, and her parents were still having children baptized at Vincennes in 1816.

Marriage and family

On 6 July 1801, at St. Francis Xavier in Vincennes, Ellenore married Augustus Tougas dit Laviolette, the son of Joseph Tougas dit Laviolette and Jeanne Marie Cardinal. Both descended from the same couple five generations back, Pierre Maillet and Marie-Anne Hardy: she through her father’s mother, Thérèse Mallet, and he through his mother’s mother, Marie Anne Mallet.

The couple had at least eight children, the last born in 1818, among them Augustin, born in 1809, through whom the line descends, and Henrietta, born at Vincennes in 1818 and recorded as the daughter of “Eleonore Deslauriers” and Auguste Touga.

Death

Ellenore died in July 1822. She shares a gravestone with her husband, who outlived her by twenty-seven years, near Rochester in Wabash County; the stone names her “Ellenore, wife of A. A. Lovellette” and gives her age as “in the 40th Year”. Her husband’s family by then wrote the name Tougas as Lovellette, from the old by-name Laviolette.

Notes

Earlier records placed her birth in 1785 on the belief that her parents first married in August 1784; the 1784 entry is a ratification of an earlier marriage, and her brother Louis’s birth in September 1785 leaves no room for her that year. The day of her death on the gravestone is not fully legible; the 24th comes from her Find a Grave memorial. A memorial for her mother-in-law, Jeanne Marie Cardinal, gives the same date of death, 24 July 1822, and is probably a confusion of the two women.

Her parentage rests on her marriage on 6 July 1801, which an index of the Vincennes register gives with her parents as Louis Renault or Deslorier and Marguerite Godere; the entry itself has not been seen, and no baptism of hers has been found. The same index has a child “Leonarde”, born on 20 February 1784 to Louis Renaud and Marguerite Coder and recorded as a son, who is otherwise unknown. Her mother was baptized in March 1768, so a birth in 1782 would make her fourteen at Ellenore’s birth. If the gravestone overstates Ellenore’s age, as her husband’s on the same stone does, “Leonarde” may be Ellenore herself. Only the register entry can say.