The Drouillard Family
Pioneers Of the Downriver Area
by Frank Rathbun, September 18, 1952
Courtesy of The News Herald (originally published in The Mellus Newspapers)
WHILE THE average person could have difficulty giving the first name of his great-grandfather, a 19-year-old Lincoln Park girl has traced her direct ancestry back more than 300 years through nine generations. Joan Drouillard, descendant of one of the Downriver area's earliest pioneer families, and a student at Marygrove College, has studied old documents, family records and ancient tombstones to record the Drouillard family tree back to Jean (John) Drouillard and Jane Cheaveu, residents of Marennes, France, in the mid-1600's.
Joan, the daughter of Frank Christopher Drouillard, lives at 1301 Goddard, on land which has has been in the family for more than a hundred years. The genealogical-minded girl is planning a journalistic career.
ACCORDING TO Miss Drouillard's records, the family tree runs from Jean and Jane through their son, Simon, born in 1668 who migrated to Canada as a young man, marrying Margaret Ferret, at Quebec in 1698.
The line continues through Simon's son, John, born in 1707, who married Elizabeth Rapin and moved to Montreal where his son, Simon, was born in 1734.
Simon Drouillard, who married Margaret Martin (St. Jean in French) was an early resident of Sandwich, a suburb of Windsor. He later moved to Detroit , where he died in 1805.
ONE OF Simon's sons was Jean Baptiste Drouillard, born in Sandwich in 1773, who married Elizabeth LaBeau in 1795 and came to Detroit, where he died in November, 1819.
Among Jean Baptiste's children was Toussaint Drouillard, born in 1805 at Detroit, who is the ancestor of most of the Drouillard families in the Downriver area.
Toussaint Drouillard, while still a young man, moved to the almost uninhabited Downriver section, where he purchased one of the famous "strip farms," a 100-yard-wide piece of land extending several miles inland from the Detroit river, near the mouth of the Riviere aux Ecorces, now Ecorse Creek.
WHILE THE exact location of his holdings is not known, Drouillard's land evidently ran from what is now the northern portion of Wyandotte through present-day Lincoln Park and perhaps into Allen Park, along Goddard Road.
Dozens of other French families settled on similar parallel plots of land fronting on the Detroit river, while to the north were other strip farms parallel to the Detroit River, extending from the Rouge River to the St. Cosme Line, now Southfield road. Toussaint Drouillard married Theresa LeBlanc, born in 1807, probably a daughter of Pierre LeBlanc, another early Downriver settler. Drouillard's name appears on many old documents, including a petition in 1827 to incorporate the area between the Rouge and Raisin Rivers into a township to be known as Ecorse.
TOUSSAINT DROUILLARD died in 1870, and his wife in 1879. Both are buried in the old Mt. Carmel Cemetery, on Northline in Wyandotte, where their graves are marked by granite slabs, on which their names are still faintly discernible.
Their children included Toussaint, junior; Peter, George, John, Joseph, Clarissa, who married a Cicotte, Elizabeth, who married Abram Montie, and possibly others.
Toissaint Drouillard, junior was born in 1830 and married Susan Perry. He farmed a portion of the land owned by his father, near the Lincoln Park-Wyandotte border and died in 1891, leaving five sons, eight other children having died in their Youth.
HIS SONS included Edmund (1861-1931), a school teacher and supervisor of Ecorse township for several years, who married Ovid Bouchard; George (1863- 1935) who never married: Columbus (1866-1941), a building contractor, councilman and first village clerk of Ecorse who married Melvina Sanch; Eli (1873-1936) who married Mary Eberts [add: a member of another early Downriver family], and Alfred, who died unmarried.
The second son of Toussaint Drouillard, senior, was Peter, born April 23, 1834, who married Catherine Solo and later a second wife whose name is not known.
Also a farmer, Peter Drouillard's homestead was near Goddard and Fort, in what is now Lincoln Park. He died in 1906, leaving several children, including Peter, junior (1873-1947), grandfather of Miss Joan Drouillard, who married Anna LeBlanc.
LITTLE IS known concerning the three remaining sons of the pioneer Toussaint Drouillard. George, however, had six sons, including Thomas (1877-1950) who served on the Ecorse police force for many years; Henry (1886-1941) a well-known proprietor in Ecorse; Charles, James and William, who is still living in Toledo.
Other grandsons of Toussaint Drouillard, senior, were Thomas Drouillard (1858-1931) and Simon Drouillard (1863-1940), probably sons of either John or Joseph.
A devout Catholic family, early members of the clan worshipped at St. Francis Xavier Church in Ecorse, where they journeyed each week by horse and buggy and from their scattered farms in the area.
Older members of the family relate how babies were bundled up soon after birth to be taken to the church for baptism.
Dozens of descendants of this pioneer family still reside in the Downriver-Dearborn-Detroit area, many in homes located on, or near the original strip farm purchased by their ancestor, Toussaint Drouillard, nearly 125 years ago.
