Timothy Demonbreun
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Jacques-Timothée Boucher, Sieur de Montbrun, anglicized as Timothy Demonbreun, (b. Montreal, Québec, Canada, 1747, d. Nashville, Tennessee, USA, 1826) was a French-Canadian fur trader, an officer of the American Revolution, Lieutenant-Governor of the Illinois Territory and is known as the "first citizen" of Nashville, Tennessee.
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[edit] Hunter and Entrepreneur
Described as "tall, athletic, and dark-skinned, with a large head and an eagle eye," Demonbreun was a striking figure who wore a foxskin cap with a tail down the back. Demonbreun's grandfather, Pierre Boucher, was the first Canadian to be raised to the rank of nobility. The young Sieur de Montbreun served in the French army in Canada during the French and Indian War. After his country was soundly beaten in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, he migrated south to what is now the United States and got into the fur trade. Demonbreun preferred the simple life of a hunter and disposed of the noble title, running it together as his new last name. Demonbreun began coming to the Middle Tennessee area in the 1760s.
In 1766, while hunting near the muddy water at the mouth of a small creek entering the Cumberland River in the region called French Lick, Demonbreun noticed a large number of buffalo and deer using a salt lick. The spring is a natural source of sulfurated water, and eventually became known as Sulphur Dell. He lived in a cave there for several months until he was able to build a cabin on the river to he use as his home base for fur trapping. Demonbreun made frequent trips to the early Nashville settlement to engage in fur trade with Native Americans. When James Robertson and the Watauga settlers came to establish Fort Nashborough in 1778, they were surprised and relieved to find that Demonbreun, a white man, was thriving there.
[edit] Military Service
Demonbreun joined the George Rogers Clark expedition and received an appointment as lieutenant governor in command of the Northwest Territory. He settled at Fort Kaskaskia in the Illinois Territory where he served as lieutenant governor from 1783-1786. In 1786 he resigned from military service and soon thereafter moved permanently to Nashville.
[edit] Bigamy
Demonbreun traveled extensively, and managed two careers and two families. He fulfilled his duties as lieutenant governor of the Illinois Territory and maintained a family in Kaskaskia. but during his time in Nashville, he took a Native American wife and began to raise a family there. Demonbreun had five children by his first wife in Illinois and three by his second common law wife in Nashville.
[edit] Later life
Eventually, Demonbreun developed a thriving mercantile and fur trading business with seventeen employees in the Nashville area. By 1800 his mercantile business on Nashville's Public Square advertised such items as window glass, paper, cured deer hides, and buffalo tongues.
The Marquis de Lafayette visited Nashville on May 4, 1825, and Andrew Jackson presided over a banquet in his honor at the Nashville Inn. Timothy Demonbreun, now very elderly, conversed with the Marquis in their native French. When he died in 1826, Demonbreun divided his substantial fortune among his children.
[edit] Historical Records and Memorials
No record of the burial site of Nashville's "First Citizen" survived. A historical marker at the northwest corner of Third Avenue North, and Broadway in the city marks the site of his home. In 1996 a monument sculpted by Alan LeQuire to honor Demonbreun was erected near Fort Nashborough overlooking the Cumberland River in downtown Nashville.
[edit] Name
Because French orthography was so fluid at the time, and because of widespread variations in English orthography, Demonbreun's name is of some debate. The preferred use today is Timothy Demonbreun, though the first name is sometimes rendered in the French as Timothé, Timothée or Timothe. As for the last name, it derives from the French words for from brown mountain, and is also rendered variously as Demontbrun, de Montbrun, Demontbreun, de Montbreun, De Mont-Breun, and others. Descendants of Demonbreun (it is a very common surname in Middle Tennessee) spell the name with and without the middle "T," as one word or two, with a "U" in place of the "O," with and without the "E," and with an "N" or an "M" at the end. In addition, other variations such as Demumbrine and "Demombrum" also exist. Demonbreun Street in Nashville shows the preferred spelling. The proper local pronunciation is [də 'mʌm bri ən], and rhymes with "Northumbrian."
[edit] References
- Godbout, Archange. Vieilles Familles de France en Nouvelle-France (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1996).
- Tennessee Historical Society. Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (Knoxville, TN: U of TN P, 1998).
