M. 9 Jan 1698 in Montreal, New France
Wife: Marie-Madeleine Thunay
D. 2 Nov 1738 in Kaskaskia, New France
While other men were the founders of Detroit, it was people like Pierre Mallet who made the settlement permanent. He lived there during its early history, one of the French fur traders who became a pioneer settler.
Pierre was born in Montreal to French immigrants Pierre Mallet and Marie-Anne Hardy on February 16, 1676, the last of their six children. As a young man, he followed the lead of his older brothers and pursued the life of a voyageur. Pierre signed up for an expedition at age 18 in 1694; it’s not known if this was his first trip. Typically a young man would be assigned to help paddle a canoe to one of the outposts in the Great Lakes region, leaving in late spring and returning in the autumn. Upon arrival back in Montreal with a canoe filled with beaver pelts, he would be paid the amount agreed to in his contract. It’s likely Pierre went on several such trips during this part of his life.
Between expeditions, Pierre found the time to get married, and on January 9, 1698, Marie-Madeleine Thunay became his bride in Montreal. Madeleine was the widow of François Xavier Pelletier who had recently died, leaving her with a young son. Pierre and Madeleine soon had two more children born in 1698 and 1700. Evidence suggests Pierre continued to go on fur trading expeditions during these years, leaving his wife to manage the household in Montreal.
One of the places Pierre visited was Fort Detroit, an outpost established in 1701 on the river that connects Lake Erie to Lake Huron. The fort was built with the intention to establish a permanent settlement—a wooden enclosure that included houses for settlers. In 1706, Detroit founder Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac attracted families from Montreal to move there, and this included Pierre, his wife and children. They traveled in a convoy of canoes that carried 270 settlers and the goods they needed to set up their new households, plus 150 soldiers and a number of laborers. During the long journey, Pierre’s wife Madeleine was in the final stages of a pregnancy, and she gave birth to a healthy boy on August 16th, just one week after they arrived at Detroit.
Fort Detroit circa 1710.
Along with the hardships of the frontier, the new arrivals at Detroit also faced a threat from nearby Indians who had recently attacked the fort. This drove some of the people to return to Montreal, but Pierre and his family chose to stay. He was one of only three men on the 1706 convoy who were known to have brought merchandise to trade with the Indians. On March 10th of the following year, grants of land were formalized, and Pierre received a house and garden, as well as a farm beyond the limits of the village. He was required to pay Seigneur Cadillac 8 livres in rent per year, and 10 livres for “other rights,” presumably the permission he needed to engage in fur trading.
During the next several years, Pierre operated as a fur trader based in Detroit. This also required him to make trips back to Montreal in order to acquire goods to trade, and one such trip was documented in 1707 with his wife and children joining him. They returned to Detroit in the fall. Pierre was the father of two more sons born at Detroit in about 1708 and 1711. By October 1712, the family was back in Montreal again, where Pierre and Madeleine had their youngest child. One of their sons, 8-year-old François, died in Montreal in November 1716, but only Madeleine was present at the funeral. It’s not known if Pierre was again living in Detroit, or was simply away on a fur trading expedition; most likely, he divided his time between Montreal and Detroit during those years. It’s likely that sometimes he went out west on his own during these years.
By the late 1720s, Pierre seemed to be based in Detroit, hiring others to transport merchandise to and from Montreal. On August 19, 1728, Madeleine represented Pierre in Montreal on a contract for a man to work for him. Shortly after, she got permission to move to Detroit with their two sons, Antoine and Paul, and after that, the family settled there for good.
Madeleine passed away in February 1738, and afterwards, Pierre left Detroit for the more remote outpost of Kaskaskia, which was in present-day Illinois. He died there on November 2nd of that year. Pierre’s legacy as a voyageur lived on in his sons Pierre and Paul, who engaged in a venture that took them by land all the way to present-day New Mexico; they were the first white men to travel that route. It’s believed that Paul wound up in the Arkansas Territory, starting a line of descendants there; Paul was captured in Mexico on a later expedition, and sent to Spain, where he likely died.
Children:
1. Marie-Catherine Mallet — B. 27 Oct 1698, Montreal, New France; M. Pierre Perthuis, 18 Mar 1716, Montreal, New France
2. Pierre Mallet — B. 20 Jun 1700, Montreal, New France; D. after 1750, (possibly) Spain
3. Antoine Mallet — B. 16 Aug 1706, Detroit, New France; M. Marie-Therese Maillot (1708-?), 11 Aug 1730, Montreal, New France
4. François Mallet — B. about 1708; D. Nov 1716, Montreal, New France
5. Paul Mallet — B. about 1711, Detroit, New France; D. 1753, Arkansas Post, New France
6. Jean-Baptiste Mallet — B. 25 Oct 1712, Montreal, New France
Sources:
Généalogie du Quebec et d’Amérique française (website)
Quebec Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1979, FamilySearch.org
“8 August 1706: Fort Pontchartrain Becomes a Permanent Settlement on Le Détroit du Lac Érié,” Suzanne Boivin Sommerville, Michigans Habitant Heritage, 2006
Cadillac’s Village, or Detroit Under Cadillac: With List of Property Owners, and a History of the Settlement 1701-1710, Clarence Monroe Burton, 1895
Mallet, Pierre Antoine, Online Dictionary of Canadian Biography
