Mary Hobart Williams

Mary Hobart Williams (née Marie Madeline Jourdain; c. 1809 – c. 1886) was a French-Menominee Métis woman who held land on the Fox River in present-day Wisconsin for six decades, from the 1820s until her death in the 1880s. Her diaries, spanning 1834 to 1877, are a significant primary source for understanding Métis women's experiences during the era of American settler colonialism in the Great Lakes region.

Biography

Marie Madeline Jourdain was born around 1809 in the Green Bay region. She was the daughter of Joseph Jourdain, a prosperous French blacksmith, and a Menominee woman. Her Menominee relatives gave her land on the Fox River as dowry. Following the marriage, the Episcopal Church renamed her Mary Hobart Williams, after Bishop John Henry Hobart.

The land Williams held is now Lost Dauphin State Park, named after her husband's fraudulent claim to French royalty.

Archival collections

Mary (Mrs. Eleazar) Williams Diaries, 1834–1877, Box 5, Folder 6, Eleazar Williams Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society "Wife of Eleazer Williams (Mary Madeleine Jourdain) Folder," F. G. Parmentier History Collection, Miriam B. & James J. Mulva Library, St. Norbert College, De Pere, Wisconsin