Joseph Bailly

Joseph Bailly (7 April 1774 – 21 December 1835) was a fur trader and a member of an important French Canadian family that included his uncle, Charles-François Bailly de Messein.

Bailly was one of several Canadian from prominent families who were important in the western fur trade. In 1822, he established a trading post near present-day Porter, Indiana, making him the foremost pioneer of that area.

Early history and ancestors Ancestors of Joseph BaillyJoseph Bailly was an early fur trader on the Great Lakes. He and his children had significant influence as the region transitioned from English colonialism to frontier expansion of the United States. He was born Honore Gratien Joseph Bailly de Messein on 7 April 1774 in Verchères, Quebec; a village which originated with a land grant to his great-great-grandfather Francois Xavier Jarret, Sieur de Vercheres in 1672. It is located up the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal, on the opposite bank. Bailly was a sixth–generation French-Canadian, descending from Jehan Terriault and Perrine Brault, who were original colonists in Acadia in 1637. Bailly's great-grandfather Nicholas Antoine Coulon, Sieur de Villiers was a trader and Army officer who was killed by Meskwaki people on the shore of Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1733. His uncle, Father Charles-Francois Bailly de Messein, spent more than twenty years as a Catholic missionary to the Mi'kmaq Indians of Nova Scotia, and was appointed coadjutor Bishop of Quebec in 1788. Following the family interest in the fur trade, Joseph Bailly received an advanced education in Montreal, and served a clerkship with the North West Company. In 1792, at the age of 18, he finished his education, and entered the fur trade at Michilimackinac. Although from a prominent family, they had little money. His father died in 1795, and Joseph became the main support of his mother, younger brother, and sister for several years.

Fur trader In the winter of 1792–93, Bailly entered into extensive fur trading with Ottawa villages in central Michigan. From 1793 to 1810, his winter residence was a trading post located near an Ottawa village at the foot of the Maple River Rapids, in Lebanon Township, Clinton County. Bailly owned additional trading posts from 1793 to 1822 on Lake Muskego, Muskegon River, Michigan (now Muskegon, Michigan); from 1793 to 1810 in Chig-au-mish-kene village on Grand River (now Lyons, Michigan); from 1807 to 1815, in Parc aux Vaches village on St. Joseph River (south of present-day Niles, Michigan); from 1807 to 1828 on the Calumet River, Indiana; and from 1807 to 1828 on the Kankakee River, Illinois.

First marriage and expansion of the business Joseph married Angelique McGulpin (Bead-Way-Way or Mecopemequa) in 1794 in Maketoquit's village at the foot of Maple River rapids, Michigan. Angelique was born about 1780 in Chig-au-mish-kene village on Grand River, Michigan. She was a daughter of Maketoquit (Black Cloud), the chief of a large band of Grand River Ottawa. He located his main village in what became Essex Township of Shiawassee County, on the south side of the Maple River, but the band used a winter camp in Lebanon Township of Clinton County (now the village of Maple Rapids) for gathering maple sugar. Children of the marriage were Francis Bailly, born in 1795; Alexis Bailly; born in 1798; and Sophia Bailly, born in 1807. The marriage ended in divorce. Francis remained with Maketoquit's band and Alexis was sent to boarding school in Montreal. Sophia was adopted by a close friend of both parents, fur trader Magdelaine Laframboise, who summered on Mackinac Island and wintered on Grand River (now Lowell, Michigan). at Mackinac, is usually considered to be his first marriage. The marriage is confirmed through Mackinac County marriage records for Mackinac. These records imply that this was not a marriage of an Indian to a Frenchman, but of a mixed-blood to a Frenchman, since marriages with Indians were not recorded. Research also shows that Angelique was the daughter of Patrick McGulpin, a Scottish trader at Mackinac, and not the daughter of a native. Only their daughter, Sophie, is confirmed through baptismal records at Mackinac to be the child of Angelique and Joseph. She was born early in 1807. Their son Francois would remain among his mother's people the Ottawa as a medicine man.

The information stated above as the background of Angelique is ascribed to several researchers to be Bailly's first wife. According to tradition, fur traders would take native wives, whom they would "set aside" when the arrangement was no longer convenient. Being an Indian woman, there probably was never a church marriage. Preliminary research into this first wife has identified her as an Ottawa Woman of the Grand River Ottawa, named Monee. McLeod then opened a bale of trade goods and scattered it "to the breezes". McGillivray and McLeod then returned to the stockade.

Hervieux and his men moved their camp beyond the "little fort" of Boucher. Here they remained through the rendezvous. Upon their return to Mackinac, Bailly and Rousseau filed suit for recovery of damaged and lost goods in the courts of Montreal, Quebec. "The Court having heard the parties by their Counsel and duly examined the evidence of Record ... It is Considered that the Plaintiffs do recover the sum of Five Hundred Pounds current money of this province, with costs of suit." Bailly and Rousseau won their case and established the precedence of American rule over these parts of the upper lakes. In the summer of 1804, the North West Company, under its British license, moved its rendezvous from American soil at Grand Portage to Fort William in Thunder Bay, on British soil.

The pioneer becomes a citizen Joseph Bailly returned to Mackinac Island in 1817 to establish US citizenship, prior to re-entering the fur trading business. By 1820, he was the principal trader on the Calumet River of northern Indiana. In 1822, Bailly moved his young family there. His daughters Agatha and Sophia remained on Mackinac Island. Therese was in school in Montreal, but joined him later. They were the first family of European descent in northern Indiana, and their home became a popular and lively stop for travelers between Chicago and Detroit or Fort Wayne. The family was well known for their refinement and graciousness. The extensive trading post that Bailly established hosted the Indian bands of the region, especially the Potawatomi. His trading influence extended westward to the Sac and Fox villages of Illinois. Bailly purchased over of land, drafting plans for developing a commercial harbor, city and infrastructure at the mouth of the Calumet. The Bailly home was a center of the Catholic faith in northern Indiana, but Joseph also strongly supported the Baptist Carey Mission to the Indians. His wife and daughters also acquired extensive land holdings through treaty grants and skillful speculation. The town of Monee, Illinois in Will County, Illinois is named for Mrs. Bailly.

Descendants Bailly's son, Francis Bailly, became a medical doctor, and a medicine man of the Grand River Ottawa band. Following the forfeiture of the Ottawa lands on Maple River, Francis, his cousin Maketoquit, and a sub-chief man named Wintagowish purchased the land containing their village on Maple River in an attempt to co-exist with the new inrush of settlers. When it became impossible, they agreed to resettle on a reservation at Elbridge, Oceana County, Michigan.

Alexis Bailly was a prominent pioneer fur trader to the Sioux bands in Minnesota, founding the town of Wabasha and the Wabasha County government, and serving in the Minnesota Legislature.

Daughter Sophia Graveraet and her husband lived on Mackinac, and traded with the Ottawa and Chippewa (Ojibwa) in the region of Grand Traverse Bay. She was the "Indian grandmother" in the tales from the books of Ottawa-Chippewa chronicler John Couchois Wright.

Daughter Agatha Biddle was a leader of the Mackinac Island community, and became chief of the Mackinac band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians. Her home, which was in her family for several generations, is an historic feature operated by Mackinac Island State Park since 1959, which demonstrates life on the island from the early fur trade era.

Therese Nadeau died as a young mother, at the Bailly homestead in Indiana. Her sons, all traders, became leaders at the Prairie Band Potawatomi Indian Reservation, where the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Indians were sent, and pioneers of Shawnee County, Kansas.

Esther Whistler was in charge of the fledgling stages of Bailly's grand development called Baillytown, which ceased on her sudden death in 1842. Her trader husband and sons followed the relocation of the Sac and Fox tribe, and were pioneers of the towns of Burlington, Coffey County, Kansas and Stroud, Lincoln County, Oklahoma.

Rose Howe was the wife of an early Chicago banker and entrepreneur, a New Englander named Francis Howe, who died alongside three of their children in a cholera outbreak in Chicago during the summer of 1850. Following his early death, Rose and her mother became active investors in Chicago's commercial development. From 1869 to 1874, Rose and her daughter Frances extensively toured Catholic shrines of Europe and the Middle East.

Eleanor became Mother Mary Cecilia Bailly of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, based near Terre Haute, Indiana. She was a protege of foundress Saint Théodore Guérin, and succeeded her as a leader of the order. Her biography of Saint Mother Guerin, published posthumously, was part of the formal evidence supporting canonization in October 2006.

Robert Bailly died in childhood, while a student at Carey Mission.

Josephine Bailly married Chicago businessman and developer Joel H. Wicker, one of two brothers for whom Wicker Park and the Wicker Park neighborhood are named. One of his many projects was to clear the lands acquired by Joseph Bailly, subdividing them and selling farmsteads to pioneering families of modest means. She also died as a young mother.

Bailly's death and legacy Home in Porter County, IndianaJoseph Bailly died of illness on 21 December 1835 in his home in Porter County, Indiana, and was buried in the family cemetery nearby. The trading post, family home and cemetery remained in the family through three generations, until after 1918. They became focal historic features of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966, which became the Indiana Dunes National Park in 2019, and are currently in use demonstrating everyday life and culture before the settlement of Indiana by people of European origin. Nearby Chellberg Farm, part of the original Joseph Bailly land holdings which was purchased from Joel Wicker by a Swedish immigrant family from Chicago, showcases life from the subsequent pioneer period. The Joseph Bailly Homestead became a National Historic Landmark in 1962. It was included in the new Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966.

Joseph Bailly is the subject of two published semi-fictional biographies. The Story of a French Homestead in the Old Northwest, by his granddaughter Frances Howe (1907), is a wildly inaccurate and romanticized version of the family story. Howe, who was partially raised on the Bailly homestead, was an extremely pious and probably racist woman who wrote devotional literature for the Catholic Diocese of South Bend. Her book reads in part like a religious tract. Howe, who has been described as a "swarthy" Indian and a middle-aged spinster, reportedly acted superior to her immigrant neighbors living next to the homestead and gradually became a recluse. (It is told that children from the neighboring Chellberg farm would come over and peek in the window and make faces at her, calling her an old Indian.) In order to be accepted into society in turn-of-the-century Indiana, Howe was prepossessed with making her family seem "white" and properly Catholic, and seems to have written the book in order to give the family acceptable genealogical and moral credentials.

In her attempt to literally whitewash much of the family history, Howe reportedly had the bones of many Native Americans who had been buried in the large grave around her grandparents disinterred. With her adopted daughter Emma Cecilia Bachmann (an orphan from Terre Haute), Howe had also attempted to turn the Bailly homestead into a girls' school but failed. Emma married in 1908 (marriage certificate #39900 in Jackson County, MO) and moved to Los Angeles. Her adopted mother died while living with her in California in 1917.

The Bailly family was also celebrated in the book Wolves Against The Moon, by Julia Cooley Altrocchi (1940); and several pamphlets and papers.

Research continues In 2005, teams under the direction of Valparaiso University professor Randa Duvick began translating Joseph Bailly's 1799-1802 fur trade business account book from the original French language. Viewing the account book as an important historic resource, Duvick has compared the translation to an archaeological dig, revealing rarely discovered intricate detail about everyday life over the large areas of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois that Bailly covered in his trade.