M. about 1777 in (probably) Post Vincennes, Illinois Territory
Wife: Marie-Josephe Levron dit Metayer
D. 1 Oct 1809 in Vincennes, Indiana Territory
During the 18th century, France laid claim to vast parts of North America, and adventurous men left Canada to make money in the fur trade. Some would produce children with indigenous women, and the outposts where they lived became populated with their bi-racial descendants. One of them was François Turpin.
François had a somewhat unusual background. He was born in about 1750 in Kaskaskia, a trading post in the Illinois country, to Joseph Turpin and Hypolite Chauvin de La Freniere. His paternal grandfather had been a fur trader based in Montreal who sometimes worked outside of the law as a coureur de bois, and several of his children wound up living at Kaskaskia. François’ other grandfather had also come from Montreal, but he became an early colonial settler on the Gulf Coast; it was on a trade expedition to Mexico that he acquired a female indigenous slave who would become François’ grandmother.
Although François was born in Kaskaskia, he likely didn’t have any memories of it. It’s believed that his father died around the time of his birth, and his mother relocated to Louisiana with a second husband in 1751. (Another possibility was that François was born up to seven years earlier, and so would have known the place of his birth as a small child.) His step-father was named Joseph de LaMirande, and in some records “LaMirande” was added to François’ name. During the mid-1750s, the family lived in Post Opelousas, Louisiana, where François’ mother died in about 1758 and his step-father remarried.
The places François lived.
How did François end up moving back near where he was born? Without any records, we may never establish a clear timeline of when he lived where, but an older sister who married in 1751 stayed in Kaskaskia into the 1770s, and this connection may have drawn François back. Interestingly, the older sister eventually relocated to Louisiana with her third husband, leaving only François in the north.
At some point, François settled in Post Vincennes, which was then under British control. The earliest record of him there was the baptism of his oldest child, François-Joseph, on October 20, 1777. François’ wife was Marie-Josephe Levron dit Metayer, but their marriage is missing from church records, possibly because no priest was assigned to the town. They went on to have eight or ten more children, with the youngest born in 1798. At least four of the children died as infants or young children.
François had his part-indigenous heritage in common with many of the people living in Vincennes. A culture developed from a mixture of French and Native American customs, which can accurately be labeled as Creole. The people lived in a tight community of log cabins, painted white and situated on narrow streets. Outsiders sometimes viewed the people of Vincennes as being lazy, but others described that “they developed a deep appreciation of their own happy lot and an attitude toward outside interests that amounted in many cases to indifference, as they leisurely hunted, fished, traded with the [local tribes], raised a few vegetables, a little corn, and tended their small herds of cattle.”
Most remarkable about the Creole people of Vincennes is what they did during the American Revolution. While the French who lived in Canada largely supported the British, those who lived at Vincennes eagerly signed an Oath of Allegiance to the American cause. On July 20, 1778, a visiting priest named Father Pierre Gibault encouraged all the men in town to sign or put their “X” on the oath. François was one of the men who signed his name. The following February, George Rogers Clark led a successful attack on the British holding Fort Vincennes, giving the Americans a strategic foothold in the West.
François signed his name on the Oath of Allegiance in Vincennes.
After the war, many of the French settlers participated in the transition of Vincennes into an American town. François served on the Northwest Territory Court of General Quarter Sessions grand jury in August 1798, and he was a member of the first Grand Jury of the territory of Indiana that met on March 3, 1801. In 1799, François was named in a lawsuit involving a debt owed by his father-in-law, Joseph Levron dit Metayer, to a man named André Lacoste (he had married Joseph’s widow in 1773). The suit was filed 28 years after Joseph Levron had died. François never showed up at court, and the ruling was that he and his wife, along with a few other heirs, were to pay $1,450, a very large sum of money. It’s not known if anyone actually paid.
François died on October 1, 1809 and was buried in the St. Francis-Xavier church cemetery in Vincennes. The following year, he was posthumously involved in a dispute of land ownership in Kaskaskia. The plot of about 12 acres had originally belonged to François’ father Joseph Turpin, and Francois had deeded it to a man named Pierre Menard in 1801. But in 1803, the children of François’ sister had deeded the same land to another man, John Edgar, claiming that François was never the legal heir because he was really the son of his mother’s second husband. The case became one of trying to prove who fathered François: Joseph Turpin or Joseph de LaMirande. Some witnesses swore François was born over a year after Joseph Turpin had died, and others said that he was born much earlier. The ruling was that François was indeed Joseph Turpin’s son and Pierre Menard could claim ownership of the land.
Debunking the incorrect identity of François’ wife
Some researchers have said that François was married to a woman named “Françoise Mallet.” This was a wrong assumption — in fact, no one by that name existed in Vincennes. The faulty information arose from a transcription of a baptism at St. Francis Xavier church during the 1790s. It has François as the father of the child, but the mother was identified as “Françoise Mallet.” Because François has the name “LaMirande,” some concluded there were two François Turpins, and only this one was the son of Joseph Turpin and Hypolite Chauvin.
None of the other records for François Turpin’s children include the name “LaMirande," but each one gives Marie-Josephe Levron as the mother. Also, the name “Françoise Mallet” shows up in no other records in Vincennes. Therefore it seems likely that there was a mistake in the transcription for the record (or in the original record) that names Françoise Mallet.
Children:
1. François Joseph Turpin – B. 20 Oct 1777, Vincennes, Indiana; M. Josephine Guelle, 14 Jul 1805, Vincennes, Indiana
2. Antoine Turpin – B. 13 Jan 1779, Vincennes, Indiana; D. 18 Aug 1786, Vincennes, Indiana
3. Jean-Baptiste Turpin — B. 30 May 1782, Vincennes, Indiana; D. 18 Aug 1786, Vincennes, Indiana
4. Marie-Josephe Turpin — B. 15 Oct 1784, Vincennes, Indiana; D. 7 Mar 1786, Vincennes, Indiana
5. Raphael Turpin – B. 8 Sep 1786, Vincennes, Indiana
6. Louis Turpin — B. 13 Mar 1789, Vincennes, Northwest Territory; D. 8 Aug 1845; M. Celeste Joyeuse, 2 May 1830, Vincennes, Indiana
7. Rosalie Turpin — B. Mar 1791, Vincennes, Northwest Territory; M. Charles Grimard (1776-?), 19 Dec 1809, Vincennes, Indiana Territory
8. (probably) _________ Turpin — B. 25 Feb 1793, Vincennes, Northwest Territory; D. 25 Feb 1793, Vincennes, Northwest Territory
9. (probably) François Diego Turpin — B. 21 Mar 1794, Vincennes, Northwest Territory
10. Ursule Turpin — B. 3 Feb 1796, Vincennes, Northwest Territory; D. 8 Aug 1797, Vincennes, Indiana
11. Elizabeth Turpin — B. 12 Nov 1798, Vincennes, Northwest Territory; D. 1835, Vincennes, Indiana; M. François Ravellette (1791-1857)
Sources:
Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes depuis la fondation de la colonie jusqu'à nos jours, Cyprien Tanguay, 1890
Roster of Soldiers and Patriots of the American Revolution Buried in Indiana, Mrs. Roscoe C. O’Byrne, 1938
History of Knox and Daviess Counties, Indiana, 1886
St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church Records: Baptisms 1749-1838, Barbara Schull Wolfe, 1999
A complete survey of cemetery records, Knox County, Indiana, collected and compiled by Mrs. Alta Amsler
Wabash Valley Visions & Voices Memory Project, visions.indstate.edu
The Family of Joseph Turpin, Sadie Greening Sparks, 18 Oct 2000, sadiesparks.com
Enumeration of Males Residing in the District of Poste Vincennes, 8 Oct 1787
