Marie-Therese Guyon Cadillac

Marie-Therese Guyon Cadillac (1671–1746) was a French-Canadian-American pioneer. She is known as "The First Lady of Detroit."

Biography Cadillac was born in Beauport, Quebec City, to her parents Elizabeth Boucher and Denis Guyon, the latter a merchant and farmer. Both of her parents died before she turned twenty. It is not known who subsequently took care of her, but it is thought that her two brothers and her uncle may have played a role. On March 8, 1683, she was sent to the Ursuline Monastery of Quebec, where she would remain until April 4, 1684, before returning home in 1685.

At the age of seventeen, on June 25, 1687, Cadillac married Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a French military leader who helped to found the first settlement that would later become the city of Detroit. The couple lived together in Nova Scotia for several years.

Cadillac and her husband generated the bulk of their capital from the fur trade and rent from land grants. Cadillac used her wealth to help build La Ville du Détroit into a city she hoped would rival Montreal and New York. She and her husband also started Detroit's first fine arts collection that was displayed in the town's church St. Anne.

She had thirteen children.

Cadillac was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.