Dumont de Montigny

Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny (31 July 1696 – 1760), or Dumont de Montigny, was a French colonial officer and farmer in French Louisiana in the 18th century. He was born in Paris, France, on July 31, 1696, and died in 1760 in Pondicherry, India. His writings about French Louisiana include a two-volume history published in 1753, as well as an epic poem and a prose memoir preserved in manuscript and published long after his death.

Early life

Dumont was the youngest of six sons of Jacques François Dumont, an avocat au parlement de Paris, that is, a prominent magistrate. The name "de Montigny" was not used by most other members of his family. At least one scholar has asserted that Dumont assumed it as a false title of nobility when living in Louisiana. But scholars have found that a niece is documented as using the same surname.

He was educated at a Jesuit collège, or grammar school, and went into the French military. At this time, interest and investment in the colony was strong due to the financial schemes of John Law and the Mississippi Company. Dumont was assigned to a unit of soldiers sent to develop the land grants or concessions owned by a group of rich Frenchmen including Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, an important patron and protector of Dumont's throughout his life. But in 1720, Law's financial bubble collapsed, and most investors stopped sending supplies to their concessions. As Dumont and hundreds of others lived in camps near Biloxi, Mississippi, they ran short of food and boats to transport them to concessions.

Dumont later wrote in his book Mémoires historiques sur la Louisiane that he left Natchez the day before the revolt.

Return to France

In 1738, Dumont returned to France, He took up residence in Port-Louis, Morbihan, the port from which he had sailed to Louisiana. As captain of the gates in the citadel of Port-Louis, he again quarreled with his superior officers. In 1747, he wrote out a 443-page memoir of his life, dedicated to Belle-Isle. Dumont's book relates one of the two earliest accounts of Moncacht-Apé's journey across North America; the other is in Le Page du Pratz's Histoire de la Louisiane.

After publishing his book, Dumont obtained another commission as a lieutenant in the colonial Company of the Indies, and he sailed in 1754 with his wife for Mauritius and then to Pondicherry, a French outpost in India. He died there in 1760.