♂Louis Renaud dit Deslauriers

Louis Renaud dit Deslauriers (14 May 1759 – after 1815) was a French inhabitant of Post Vincennes, on the Wabash River, who lived under French, British and American rule without leaving the town he was born in. His godfather was “Mr. St. Ange, Commandant of the post”, the French officer who governed Vincennes. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Ellenore S. Renaud dit Deslauriers (1782–1822).

Early life

He was born at Vincennes on 14 May 1759 and baptised the next day, the son of Jean Baptist Renault Deslaurier, a native of Boucherville near Montreal, and Therese Mallet, whose parents came from Montreal. The commandant stood as his godfather; the register gives no reason for the choice. His mother was buried in September 1763, when he was four, and his father was dead by 1779.

Many family trees merge him with his younger brother François and call him “Louis Francois”. The register holds two baptisms: Louis in May 1759 and François in February 1761. Both brothers stood as witnesses, named together as “brothers of the bridegroom”, when their brother Jean Baptiste’s banns were published on 9 July 1779. So two men were alive and in the same church on the same day. A 1785 baptism names the husband of Marguerite Godere as Louis, which settles which brother is the ancestor.

Marriage and family

Louis married Marguerite Godere (also written Codère, Goder) before the notary of the post and four witnesses, with no priest present, and on 2 August 1784 a visiting missionary received the couple at St. Francis Xavier, Vincennes, where they renewed their consent. The couple had at least sixteen children, born between 1784 and 1816. Several died young, among them a daughter Marguerite in 1787 and a son François, born in 1798, who died before his second birthday. Their daughters married into the town’s French families: the Tougas, Vachet, Peltier and Racine households.

The last child, Andre, was christened at Vincennes on 15 May 1816. That makes Louis about fifty-six at the birth and Marguerite in her late forties. When and where Louis died is not known.

Notes

Many trees give his death as “1790 or 1796”. No source supports either year, and his children’s baptisms, which name him as the father through 1816, show that both years are wrong. No burial record for him has been found.

The index to the parish register dates the baptism of a son, Leonard, to 20 February 1784, six months before the church ratification, and dates both Ellenore and a son Louis to 1785. Ellenore’s other records suggest she was born about 1782. These dates rest on indexes and transcripts, not on the register pages themselves.

The date of the first marriage before the notary is not recorded; the 1784 entry, read in a typescript of the register, is a ratification of it.