Joseph and Magdelaine LaFramboise

Joseph and Magdelaine LaFramboise. Where The Rivers Meet. , Joseph LaFramboise Sr. , 1765-1806, The first trading post in the Lowell area was built by Joseph LaFramboise who traded along the Grand River as early as 1793. While its exact location is not known, it was built on the north bank, west of the Flat River about 1796. He chose this area because there was a large Native population of approximately 500 Odawa living here. As a trader, LaFramboise brought goods from Mackinac Island in exchange for beaver, otter, mink, ermine, muskrat, and fox pelts they had trapped and tanned., Joseph LaFramboise was one of six brothers from Trois Riviere, Quebec, trading in the northwest. They were well connected in the trade. Joseph was a known business partner of Charles Langlade, an influential Metis from Michilimackinac who had been trading at Grand Haven since 1795. Joseph traded in West Michigan and Wisconsin as early as the 1780s. He built about 20 posts from the Kalamazoo River to Grand Traverse Bay as his "fur chain." The headquarters of his fur chain was the log trading post he built near Lowell because the Flat River was the richest furring river in Michigan at that time. Each spring, he returned to Mackinac Island with the furs acquired over the winter months when fur was prime., Joseph married Magdelaine Marcotte in 1794. His marriage to Magdelaine gave him connections to the Odawa bands along the Grand River, and gave her status in the world of traders on Mackinac Island., In 1806, while the family and the voyageurs were returning by batons from Mackinac Island, Joseph was killed., Magdelaine LaFramboise , 1780-1846, Magdelaine (Magdelene, Madelene) was born in 1780 to Jean Baptiste Marcot(te) and Marie Neskesh, daughter of Odawa Chief Returning Cloud (Kewinaquot). Marcotte was a Northwest Company Factor or Chief Agent. He helped to move the mainland Fort Michilimackinac buildings to Mackinac Island (1780). Jean Baptiste Marcotte had seven children. Before his death he sent his older children to Montreal to be educated. Magdelaine was not sent because her father died when she was just three years old. She moved with her mother and sisters from Fort St. Joseph to Mackinac when the British abandoned that Fort to the United States. Later, they returned to live in the Odawa village at the mouth of the Grand River., Magdelaine married French fur trader Joseph LaFramboise in 1794. The couple had two children, daughter Josette (1795) and son Joseph Jr. (1804). Madame LaFramboise was Michigan's first record businesswoman. After Joseph was killed in 1806, Madame obtained a trader's license and took over as the fur trader. She visited outposts and supported heart works and engages. It was said "there was at that time no better fur trader than she.", After the War of 18 12, she began doing business with John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company. The American Fur Company records in 1818 show that she earned between $5,000 and $10,000 per year. A good trader of the time was happy to earn $1,000 per year., Madame's trading rights were transferred to Rix Robinson when she retired to Mackinac Island in 1821., Madame was deeply religious and energetic. She taught catechism to local children, ran a boarding house for Odawa children so they could go to school, helped the poor, paid the salaries of the Mackinac priests, and finally gave a tract of land for St. Anne's Church. Her only request was that she and her daughter be buried under the high altar of that church. Madame LaFramboise died in 1846, at the age of sixty-six.