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Show I Sons of Quebec Who "Fathered" American Cilfcl BY ELMO SCOn WATSON j j' II AMERICAN visitors to Si Quebec this summer are due to learn some V I facts about the history yof their own country of wkich they probably have never before been aware. At least, they will if their journeying happens to take them through certain cities, towns and villages on highways connecting these communities with Montreal and the City of Quebec and the main trunk roads in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York and the Middle West. At the entrance to these municipalities mu-nicipalities they will see signposts sign-posts bearing plaques similar to this: olet. The province of Quebec, however, has done better by him with both a county and a town bearing his name. Out in Utah is a city which bears the name of a man who was born in the City of Quebec. It is the City of Ogden which honors Peter Skene Ogden, son of a New York Loyalist, who fled to Canada during the Revolution and who became one of the leading lead-ing magistrates of the province. His son joined the Hudson s Bay company at an early age and as one of its factors played an important im-portant part In the early history of the fur trade in the Great West. One of his contemporaries in this period was another Quebec-born Quebec-born boy, Dr. John McLoughlin, who also entered the H. B. C. service, established Fort Vancouver Van-couver on the Columbia, reigned there as the "Emperor of the West" and has come down in history as the "Father of Oregon." Ore-gon." Riviere-du-Loup was his birthplace and there the commemorative com-memorative plaque has been preoted. Moreover he wa9 a trusted lieutenant lieu-tenant of Cadillac and a renowned re-nowned fighter of the Indian enemies ene-mies of the French until he perished per-ished at the stake in a Chickasaw Chicka-saw village in 1736. Before that time, however, he had built a trading post and earth fort on the present site of an Indian city which now bears his name. To this little town of Vin-cennes Vin-cennes in 1789 came a young man who was a native of St. Antoine on the Richelieu river in the province of Quebec and during the next few years his name became be-came famous in the adjoining territory of Illinois. It was Pierre Menard. He was a friend of Francisco Vigo, the Italian trader who had been such an aid to George Rogers Clark in the conquest of Vincennes ten year earlier and he accompanied Vigo on a trip east to Carlisle, Pa., where they had an interview with George Washington in regard re-gard to a plan for defense of the western frontier. A few years later Menard moved to Kaskaskia, 111., the oldest old-est town in the Mississippi val- .. T-. iiMfliiilgliLL IIJIH Sjllllll r mil ViL-; LA SALtt j EN'CETTE LQCAUTE VECUTj cAVEUER D LA SALIE, DECOU r VREUR bu MISSISSIPP. jrfXREUR j FONDATEUR de NIAGARA m mm DE JOLIET (tLimoisj etoe MEMPHIS , vMTOKSSffjj IN THIS TOWN LIVED CAVELERI DE LA SALLE. ; DISCOVERER: OF j THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI FDOTi fER OF NIAGARA, wv ram. JOLIET. ilmkAND MEMPHIS '.TEKNtsat, $ Like the City of Quebec, that other Canadian metropolis, Montreal, Mont-real, was also the birthplace or home town of a number of notables nota-bles in the early history of the United States. It was the birthplace birth-place of two brothers destined for fame by their exploits in the Lower Mississippi valley. One of them was Pierre le Moyne, Sieur D' Iberville, born there in 1661, who became the founder of the French colony of Louisiana and later founder of the City of Mobile, Ala. The other was Jean Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur Bienville, Bien-ville, born in 1680, who became the founder of the City of New Orleans and of Biloxi, Miss. As governor of the colony which his brother founded, Bienville established estab-lished the "code noir" which re- fv J fit ' fS Y 1 SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAq settled, was adopted by the Indians and married a tiri that tribe. He began worst, J lead mines on the west bart, the Great River and today V the city of Dubuque, Iowa, grew up from that mining camt and a village named Julia, , short distance away, perpetuate his fame. Another native of St. MicH was Noel Le Vasseur, who at it age of seventeen went West i company with 60 other advente ous youths, Joined up with i citato ci-tato Rocheblave (who was the last governor of the terrikr of Illinois under British rule) n became a fur trader in the r ploy of John Jacob Astor. E roamed the new state of Ulii. and became the founder oi li present town of Bourbons 111. (Incidentally, this town i; named for Francois Bourbc nais, and Beauharnois, the tot of his birth, has a plaque cc: memorating that fact.) LeVi seur became a great favorite : the Indians and his into; with them was so great that b was appointed United State agent to supervise the remro of some of the tribes from E nois to Iowa. Resenting the forced departure from tk homeland, the Indians threaten to stage an uprising and only 1 forceful character of Le Vass; prevented a serious outbreak; hostilities. Because of this k he has been called a "sect William Penn." In the town of L'Asumpfe stands a marker recording 4 fact that "here was born Sai; mon Juneau, founder and fc mayor of Milwaukee." fe was the son of Francois b Therese La Tulipe, whoi! France at the outbreak dt French revolution and cta! their name to Juneau in f fort to put their old life be& them as much as possible. At a early age Salomon Juneaiif came an employe of the tef mained in force until the purchase pur-chase of Louisiana by the United NOEL LE VASSEUR States and much of it was incorporated incor-porated in the law of the Amer- ley, and from that time on he ican state which bears the name played an increasingly important of the French colony. Another part in the development of the native son of Montreal was territory. When Illinois became Jacques Porlier, founder of the a state he was its first lieutenant-City lieutenant-City of Green Bay, Wis. governor and he also was one of Although Antoine de la Mothe he founders in St. Louis of the Cadillac was born in France, famous Missouri Fur company. Montreal claims him as one of , Mmof as 'amou 83 'Tl her sons, but Detroit, Mich., calls Menard was his nephew, Michel him "father." For it was Cadil- M.ena b?m st-Dea on the lac who laid the foundations of Rheheu 180o. He became a fur trader in the Old Northwest For the province of Quebec has erected such markers in more than a score of its citie3 and towns. It has done this to commemorate the deeds of some of its "sons who made good in foreign parts" and to draw the attention of Americans to the historical, link between it and their country through these men. The list of them is truly an impressive im-pressive one. It includes explorers, ex-plorers, fur traders, churchmen, soldiers and civil officers who had a leading part in the development de-velopment of regions now embraced em-braced in nearly half of the states of the Union. Moreover, many of these "native sons" of Quebec "fathered" some of our most important cities, situated in all parts of the United States fromi,.N York to California (Sand from Minnesota to Louisiana. Loui-siana. Outstanding in this list is the name of Cavelier de La Salle, who has the distinction of being the "founder" of no less than three American cities Niagara, N. Y.; Joliet, 111., and Memphis, Tcnn. Another city in Illinois bears his name, as does the . county in which it is located, and there is a La Salle county in Texas and a La Salle parish in Louisiana to commemorate the deeds of this intrepid explorer ex-plorer in the country where the last scenes in the drama of his life were enacted. Although La Salle was born in France, Ville La Salle was his "home town" and there the commemorative marker has been erected. The City of Quebec, the first settlement in the province, founded by Samuel de Cham-plain Cham-plain (whose name is perpetuated perpetuat-ed in the beautiful lake in northern north-ern New York) was the home town of three other explorers in what is now the United States. They were Father Marquette, the priest; Louis Joliet, the fur tm- ' ''"g'5JtM"" V",' '' ?' " V ! ; fS i-4 , ! " I it . " ,1 i , f . . . 4 V "' ) v. ' " , . , V( in iii -On tl Waifa fcmin if iif-r-m-VniT-"til at the age of sixteen, worked for his uncle in Illinois and Missouri and became so attached to the Indian mode of life that he joined a band of Shawnees, who later made him their chief. He went to Texas in 1833, became a member mem-ber of the convention that declared de-clared the independence of the Lone Star republic 100 years ago and was the founder of the present pres-ent city of Galveston. It seems a far cry from such bustling modern cities as Milwaukee Mil-waukee and Superior, Wis.; Ogdensburg, N. Y.; Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.; Dubuque, Iowa; St. Paul, Minn., and Kankakee, ; i ' 'A' jV'K. ,v '' '- a ' n i ' i ' 111., to the quiet little villages and towns in Quebec, but the visitor to the latter will find in the plaques which are erected there the link between them. At Mascouche is one which tells him that here lived Repen-tigny, Repen-tigny, founder of Sault Ste. Marie; at Oka is one which records re-cords the fact that it was the home of Francois Picquet, who founded Ogdensburg; at Berthier was born J. B. Faribault, founder foun-der of Kankakee, and St. Michel d'Yamaska was the birthplace of J. B. Lefebre, who founded Superior. Su-perior. Vital Guerin, a pious churchman church-man who was born at St. Remi de Napierville, founded a mission, mis-sion, which he called St. Pauls, on the Upper Mississippi. Today the capital of Minnesota, its name DR. JOHN McLOUGHLIN that city in 1701. At one time also he was commander at Fort Michilimackinac (on the present Mackinac Island, Mich.) and later he became governor of Louisiana. Another of Cadillac's connections with American history his-tory lies in the fact that in 1691 he was made lord of Bouagnat and Mount Desert, Maine, and nearly a century later the commonwealth com-monwealth of Massachusetts confirmed con-firmed to his granddaughter, Mme. Gregoire, so much of Mount Desert Island as was not already granted to others. Another French-born "son of Montreal" was Daniel Greysolon DuLhut, leader of a famous band of "coureurs du bois," fur trader and explorer of the Upper Mississippi, whose name is perpetuated per-petuated in the modern city of Duluth, Minn. Two other explorers ex-plorers whose birthplaces are marked by commemorative plaques are La Verendrye, first white man in Wyoming and discoverer dis-coverer of the Big Horn mountains, moun-tains, who was born at Trois-Riviere Trois-Riviere (Three Rivers) and Nicolas Perrot, who lived at Becancour. At the entrance of the village of Contrecoeur in Quebec stands a signpost which tells the visitor that here was born Captain Contrecoeur, Con-trecoeur, "who erected a fort where now stands the city of Pittsburgh, Pa." But that is not his only claim to fame. For it wa3 this same captain, who, as commandant of Fort Duquesne, sent out the force of French and Indians, to try to delay the advance ad-vance of general Braddock and who won that amazing victory over the superior force of British redcoats and Colonials one hot summer day in 1755. Visit the little town of Beaumont Beau-mont and the marker will tell you that here lived Jean Baptist Bap-tist Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes. He was not only a relative of Joliet, the explorer, but he was also an explorer in his own right Y" : - . T v i, s i y a j fjpl f4gX'- fM . ' II vM I :- ' SALOMON JUNEAU ican Fur company in Wis J and in 1818 settled on the f site of Milwaukee as ag the A. F. C. TwoyearjJJ. married and he and lus" came the first permanent settlers in Milwaukee, w the first postmaster of town, the first president became a village m . when it was made a cw he became its first ma or. Among the other W Quebec where comme; markers have been jd the following: St. Fierr tagny, birthplace Ji Blanchet, first bishop of St. Henri-de-Lauzon, J of Louis Blanchett , St. Charles, Mo., praj; Plaines, birthplace J Beaudry, a pioneer an ( of Los Angeles, w r Louiseville, bithp!f. 0( Ge minGervais, founder oi Minn. . jt is And last but no lw Uptown of Mas mog,r,t was born Franco : bry. the man j fame as one of tne s distance riders in w . the West, in 18-V M., to f from Santa i Fe. ceoM pondence, Mo., a 8nd miles, in eight dj hours, and two J win a bet of that time to six jy City, Ariz., and-th f perpetuate the nam frontiersman. on 0 Wetero N SIEUR D'IBER VILLE trader, and an almost "forgotten man" of our early history whose explorations preceded those of the other two by 40 years. He was Jean Nicolet, discoverer of Lake Michigan, the first white explorer of the present state of j Michigan, the first white man to set foot in what is now Wisconsin and by some historians believed to be the first white man to see the prairies of Illinois and the present site of Chicago. Illinois has a city named for Joliet; both Wisconsin and Michigan Mich-igan have Marquette counties, and the latter has a city named for the Jesuit priest. But neither i state has thus honored Jean Nic- I PIERRE MENARD shortened to St. Paul, occupies that site and a great deal more. In 1762 in the little town of St. Pierre-les-Becquets a boy was born to whom was given the name of Julien Dubuque. At an early age he left his native land and made his way through savage sav-age tribes to Prairie du Chien in far-away Wisconsin where he |