Just in time for Bastille Day, I thought I would write a quick blog on some research I've done over the past few months into our French ancestors who lived in Illinois in the early 18th Century. First, a quick history of the French in North America. As we know, European countries began to explore and colonize North America starting in the mid-16th Century. The French got into this game with Jacques Cartier entering and exploring the St. Lawrence River on numerous voyages in the mid 1500s. In 1603, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain established a French settlement in what is now Quebec City. The French, like all of the Europeans, wanted to find a passage to the Pacific and had high hopes that the great Mississippi River they'd heard so much about from the native peoples would get them there. It was actually 350 years ago in the summer of 1673 that French explorers Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette traveled down the Mississippi from Quebec. They learned a
This blog will discuss my family genealogical research