Jean Baptiste Baudreau III

Jean Baptiste Baudreau, also recorded as Jean Baptiste Baudrau III, was born 14 September 1736 in the West Pascagoula area and was baptized at Mobile on 3 November 1736. He was the son of Jean Baudreau (II) and Catherine Chenet (Vinconneau). He died in 1803. Through his daughter Genevieve Baudrau, who married Charles Leblanc in 1783, he was the grandfather of Joseph, later known as St. Cyr Seymour.

Jean Baptiste Baudreau, identified in the family notes as Jean Baptiste Baudrau III, was born in the West Pascagoula area on 14 September 1736. His baptismal entry states that he was the legitimate son of Jean Baudreau (II) and Catherine Chenet (Vinconneau). On 3 November 1736, Father Jean Francois, pastor of Fort Conde at Mobile and the Pascagoulas and Dependencies, supplied the ceremonies of baptism. His godparents were Jean Baptiste Baudreau and Marie-Josephe Simon dit LaPointe.

Jean Baptiste Baudreau died in 1803.

His daughter Genevieve Baudrau married Charles Leblanc in 1783. Their son Joseph, born in 1788, became known as St. Cyr Seymour and lived from 1788 to 1845. According to Lepre, his children with Marie-Joseph Ryan, who lived from 1786 to 1876, began the large Seymour family of the region.

A later account in The Ocean Springs Record described the Seymour family’s roots as being on the north shore of Graveline Lake, in Section 5, T8S-R7W. It stated that the children of St. Cyr and Marie-Joseph made their livelihoods as subsistence farmers and stockmen, in a manner compared with that of their great-great-grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Baudrau dit Graveline, before leaving the family homestead for Biloxi Latimer, Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, and North Biloxi.

Historical context

Jean Baptiste’s baptism was performed under a parish arrangement described in the record as serving Fort Conde of Mobile, the Pascagoulas, and their dependencies. The surviving family notes also place related Baudrau and Simon dit LaPointe family events in the Pascagoula and Dauphine Island area during the early eighteenth century.

Sources & research

MBI, Act 46, p. 19. Baptismal record of Jean Baptiste Baudreau, dated 3 November 1736.

Lepre, 1995, pp. 54-61.

The Ocean Springs Record, 15 January 1998.

Family notes, No. 358.

Graveline Society Publication of 2004, article “New Discovery,” by Eloise Genest.

Census Tables 1699-1732.

Family notes, No. 350.

MAA, BB1, p. 102. Marriage record dated 1 March 1734.

Love’s Legacy, p. 29.