Jean-Baptiste Baudreau dit Greveline "Colonizer of Louisiana"

Jean-Baptiste Baudreau dit Graveline, often identified in family material as a colonizer of Louisiana, was born at Montréal on 18 May 1671 and died at Pascagoula in January 1762. He was associated with Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville’s Louisiana expeditions, lived at Biloxi, Mobile, Dauphin Island, Pascagoula, and later Old Biloxi, and engaged in farming, cattle raising, trade, and colonial affairs. The supplied material identifies him as the son of Urbain Baudreau dit Graveline and Mathurine Marguerite Julliett dit Avignon.

Jean-Baptiste Baudreau dit Graveline was born 18 May 1671 at Montréal, Québec, Canada, the son of Urbain Baudreau dit Graveline and Mathurine Marguerite Julliett dit Avignon. He was baptized that day at Notre-Dame in Montréal. In the 1681 census of Montréal, “Baptiste,” aged 11, was living with his family. Family notes state that this is the last record then found for him in the Montréal and Québec parish archives.

The family material places Jean-Baptiste in Canadian expeditions against the Iroquois and in the Hudson Bay and Newfoundland campaigns associated with Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville. It specifically records his participation in the Hudson Bay attacks in September 1697. He was present for the inventory of his father’s estate at Montréal on 17 January 1699.

In 1699, Jean-Baptiste was reportedly among 60 Canadians who sailed from Newfoundland to Rochefort, France, with Joseph Le Moyne de Sérigny. The men waited under orders connected with d’Iberville’s prospective expedition to the new Louisiana colony. The notes say that Jean-Baptiste married a first wife, Suzanne, at La Rochelle in 1699; her surname is not given. They also describe her as Protestant, but this characterization should be treated as family-source information. In October 1699 he departed La Rochelle aboard La Renommée with d’Iberville and arrived at the Mississippi coast, at Biloxi, on 8 January 1700. He was listed among the Canadians in the Biloxi census of 25 May 1700.

When the colonial center moved to the Mobile River in January 1702, Jean-Baptiste moved to Fort Louis. The supplied notes call him a militia captain and count him among the founders of Old Mobile. In June 1702 he built a substantial one-story house of young pine, described as about 50 feet long and 20 feet wide, with an exterior covered gallery. Its walls reportedly used mortar of damp clay, sand, and oyster shells, and much of his allotted land was used for a private garden.

By 1705, he was no longer in the King’s service. The notes associate him and other residents with plans for plantations and trade with Havana, Vera Cruz, Pensacola, and the King’s stores on Massacre Island. In 1706 he and several partners traveled toward France by way of Havana, seeking to develop a beaver-fur trade. In France, their venture encountered an existing fur monopoly. By October 1707, Jean-Baptiste had purchased the ship Marguerite and returned to Mobile with supplies that were sold at a profit. During a stop in Havana, he bought a bull and other cattle. A 1707 listing identifies him with four enslaved people: two Indian men, one Indian woman, and one Black man.

After the dismissal of the Canadians from the King’s service on 1 March 1708, Jean-Baptiste moved to Dauphin Island. He believed its grasslands would support cattle raising. He made another voyage to France in the spring of 1709. That fall, the Marguerite returned with passengers and additional cattle obtained through Havana. Because the Mobile colony was in serious difficulty, he sold the vessel to Bienville for 2,000 livres. Suzanne’s first mention in the colony, according to the notes, is while Jean-Baptiste was living on Massacre Island; the notes therefore suggest, rather than establish, that she may have arrived on this voyage.

By the summer of 1710, Jean-Baptiste and other families were living on Dauphin Island. His residence there was described in the supplied material as the finest private home in the colony: a two-story building said to have cost more than 2,000 livres. During a pirate attack on the island in September 1710, his house was reportedly spared. The account states that he and three other Canadians defended the cattle from returning pirates by firing from changing positions, making their small group appear larger. Suzanne died on Dauphin Island in October 1713.

In October 1716, Jean-Baptiste and several Canadian associates formed a commercial company. He traveled from Mobile toward the Spanish Kingdom of León, in territory now described in the notes as East Texas or Tejas. During the journey, the party was reportedly attacked by 60 Indians, who took 33 mules and the travelers’ belongings. Jean-Baptiste returned to Mobile on 25 October 1717.

The supplied material identifies Marie Suzanne Panyouasas as his second wife and states that they married in 1717, although the record excerpt supplied for their marriage is dated 3 July 1727. That 1727 record names Jean Baptiste Boudreaux of Graveline, resident of the Capiene River, and Suzanne, an Indian woman. It states that their son, Jean B. Boudreaux Jr., aged ten, was legitimized by the marriage. The notes also identify Marie Suzanne as a daughter of Pierre Panyouasas and Marianne, and give her approximate birth as 1706. These details contain chronological and naming uncertainties that cannot be resolved from the supplied material alone.

Around 1718, Jean-Baptiste moved to Martin’s Bluff on the west side of the Pascagoula River in present-day Mississippi. There he farmed and raised cattle on a river plantation, with the labor of Indian and Black enslaved people, as stated in the notes. The March 1725 census at Pascagoula listed Graveline with two children, Magdeleine and Jean. The colonial census of 1 January 1726 listed him at Pascagoula with two children, 19 Black enslaved people, and two Indian enslaved people. Magdeleine was married in her father’s house on 26 August 1726.

Jean-Baptiste continued to appear in family and parish events. On 12 September 1724, he and his daughter Magdeleine were godparents to Jean B. C. Ladner; the same day they were also godparents to two Black children named Jean Baptiste and Magdelaine. He signed as a witness at his son Jean’s marriage at Pascagoula on 1 March 1734, witnessed the 1735 marriage of Guillaume Bousquera and Marie Anne Preau at Fort Condé in Mobile, and served as godfather to grandchildren in 1736. A 1733 map reportedly marks his home, with a cross above it, on the west side of the Pascagoula River; the notes interpret this as indicating that the home was being used as a church.

After 1740, the notes say Jean-Baptiste married a third wife, Martha LaVergne. In July 1744, he sailed to Cuba to return his son Jean Baptiste to provincial Louisiana, where the son faced kidnapping charges filed by the guardian of Marie Henriette. In 1747, Jean-Baptiste petitioned for support for his grandchildren Julie and Pierre and their mother, Marie Henriette; the petition was granted. Martha LaVergne died in 1747. He attended a guardianship hearing for his granddaughter Marthe in New Orleans on 19 March 1748.

A will dated 16 September 1750 describes Jean-Baptiste as residing at La Bellefontaine at Old Biloxi. In it, he said he had been born in Montréal, had come to Louisiana with Iberville, and believed himself the sole survivor of about 100 men who had arrived with that expedition. The will also records his disinheritance of a son after serious family conflict. Family notes state that he gradually became blind during the 1750s.

A 1748 letter attributed to Governor Vaudreuil praised Graveline’s work in settlement, voyages to France, commerce with Vera Cruz and Havana, introduction of horned livestock, generosity, and service with the militia. This is an assessment by the cited governor rather than an independent finding established here.

Jean-Baptiste Baudreau dit Graveline died at Pascagoula in January 1762. The supplied notes identify two children: Magdeleine Pany Baudreau dit Graveline, born between 1708 and 1711, and Jean Baptiste Baudreau dit Graveline II, born in 1717. Because the notes also warn that Jean-Baptiste had a younger brother of the same name, born 19 years later, the identification of some records after about 1705 remains uncertain.

Historical context

Jean-Baptiste’s life unfolded during the early French settlement of the Gulf Coast. The supplied material places him among Canadians who accompanied or followed d’Iberville to Biloxi and Mobile, at a time when the lower Louisiana colony reportedly had only 240 Frenchmen and Canadians. It also depicts a colony dependent on sea travel, trade with Caribbean and Atlantic ports, agriculture, cattle raising, and enslaved labor, while facing conflicts involving European powers and Indigenous nations.

Sources & research

Bouzage Bosarge, pp. 95–100; specifically p. 95 for the 1697 service account and p. 96 for the 1750 will.
Programme de Recherche en Démographie Historique, University of Montreal.
Old Mobile, p. 443; pp. 113, 224, 391–394, 398, 442, and 446–448; pp. 88–90; appendices; illustrations.
Census Tables 1699–1732.
Love’s Legacy, pp. 29 and 123.
The Descendents, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 1981.
Graveline Society Publication of 2004, “New Discovery,” by Eloise Genest.
The Historical Journal of the French in Louisiana, USL History Series, pp. 100–105.
Exploration des affluents du Mississipi et découverte des montagnes Rocheuses (1679–1754), chapter VI.
SRAoM, no. 396.
Carte de partie de la Louisiane …, Baron De Crenay, March 1733; Archives Nationales, Section d’Outre Mer, DFC, Louisiane, 1A.
Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana.
National Archives, Washington, D.C., Reference Division D, manuscript item 126, vol. 203, pp. 473–474.
Letter of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, October 1713.
Certification of marriage by F. Ferdinand, Curate, Mobile, 28 January 1762.
Family notes cited as “No. 700 Family notes,” “No. 714 Family notes,” “No. 174 Family notes,” and “No. 178 Family notes.”