M. 8 Feb 1770 in Post Vincennes, Illinois Territory
Wife: Barbe-Elizabeth Levron
D. 14 Jun 1794 in Vincennes, Northwest Territory
During the 18th century, present-day Indiana was populated with a few scattered outposts of French families, and villages of Indigenous tribes, which made for a culture mixed with elements of each group. This is where Louis Godere spent his life.
Louis was born on May 14, 1739 to François Godere and Agnes Richard at Ouiatenon, a small garrison and village on the Wabash River. Louis was one of about ten children; his father was involved in the fur trade, and his mother was the daughter of an interpreter of Native American languages. The name Godere appeared in records spelled many different ways — Godere, Gaudere, Gauder, Codere, Coder. Most people in the region were illiterate, and Louis couldn’t sign his name on documents, suggesting he had little or no education.
It's easy to imagine Louis as a young child playing outside his home among fur traders, frontier soldiers, and Indigenous people. Ouiatenon was a French outpost next to an existing village of the Wea people, a sub-group of the Miamis tribe (Louis’ great-grandmother was a Wea). The location was said to be favorable because it was near the head of navigable water that fed into the Mississippi River system. Inside Ouiatenon's stockade were a double row of ten houses, a chapel, and a blacksmith’s shop. There may have been as many as 90 dwellings outside the stockade walls housing a mixture of French and Wea, and during the years 1720 to 1760, the population was as much as 3,000.
Fort Ouiatenon in 1752.
It’s not known exactly when the Godere family moved downriver to Vincennes, but it was likely sometime around 1750. Louis’ father died around then and his mother remarried in Vincennes in 1756. The outpost of Vincennes was down the Wabash River, also with a garrison surrounded by French settlers, but differed from Ouiatenon in that grants of land were awarded to them. During the late 1750s, the Goderes were among about 60 families living there. People worked on farms in long ribbon-shaped lots along the river, while living in log cabins clustered together in a village near the fort.
France controlled Vincennes until the British defeated them in the French and Indian War in 1763. This was around the time that Louis came of age. Just before the British takeover, he received a grant of farmland. But when the French authorities vacated the town, their church was left without a priest, and there was no one to perform marriages. Louis sought to make Barbe-Elizabeth Levron his wife, so the couple declared their intentions in front of witnesses, and proceeded to live as a married couple. Their first three children were born before a priest visited Vincennes and made their marriage legal on November 8, 1770. They went on to have eight more children.
The British authorities weren’t much of presence in Vincennes until they sent a military regiment to man the fort during the American Revolution. The French people carried on as best they could, but when they had their chance, they aligned with the Americans by signing an oath of allegiance on July 20, 1778, and Louis was one of the men who put his mark on the document. The following year, George Rogers Clark led a force that was a mixture of Americans and French; it’s not known if Louis played any part in the action, but his brother François served as a lieutenant. François’ wife is believed to be the woman known as Madame Godere, who was credited with making a flag for the Americans. It’s likely that Louis was one of the many Vincennes people who assisted in the fight as well.
Louis' mark on the oath of allegiance.
After the war, with former French outposts under the control of the newly formed United States, the culture Louis had known gradually died out. Vincennes continued on with an influx of American settlers from places like Kentucky and Virginia, but Ouiatenon was wiped off the map by order of President Washington in 1791 — a military force burned the largely now Indigenous settlement to the ground. Louis continued to live and farm in Vincennes until he died on June 14, 1794. His wife lived only a few more years and died on September 11, 1798.
Children:
1. Françoise-Agnes Godere — B. 4 Nov 1766, Fort Vincennes, New France; D. about 1835; M. Louis-Favel Ravellette (~1758-1835), 2 Aug 1784, Vincennes, Northwest Territory
2. Marie-Josephe Godere – B. 16 May 1768, Fort Vincennes, New France; D. 12 Jul 1794, Vincennes, Northwest Territory; M. Honore Denis
3. Louis Godere — B. 8 Feb 1770, Fort Vincennes, New France; D. 11 Jan 1795, Vincennes, Northwest Territory
4. Felicité Godere — B. 20 Nov 1773, Fort Vincennes, New France; D. 25 Feb 1795, Vincennes, Northwest Territory; M. Alexander Vallé, 23 May 1793, Vincennes, Northwest Territory
5. Pierre Godere – B. 6 Nov 1775, Fort Vincennes, New France
6. Jean-Baptiste Godere — B. 1 Aug 1777, Fort Vincennes, New France
7. François Godere — B. 13 Sep 1779, Vincennes, Northwest Territory; D. 24 Feb 1837, Vincennes, Indiana; M. (1) Marie Boneau (1786-1831), 30 Jan 1804, Vincennes, Indiana; (2) Genevieve Carie (1789-1855), 27 Dec 1832, Vincennes, Indiana
8. Elizabeth Godere — B. 9 Sep 1781, Vincennes, Northwest Territory
9. Marie-Louise Godere — B. 2 Oct 1785, Vincennes, Northwest Territory, M. François Cadoret (~1780-?), 28 Jan 1802, Vincennes, Indiana
10. Joseph Godere — B. 22 May 1786; D. 1787
11. Françoise Godere — B. 31 Mar 1788, Vincennes, Northwest Territory
Sources:
History of Knox and Daviess Counties, Indiana, 1886
St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church Records: Baptisms 1749-1838, Barbara Schull Wolfe, 1999
St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church Records: Marriages and Deaths 1749-1838, Barbara Schull Wolfe, 1999
Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Genealogical Research Databases, dar.org
