The Salliotte Family
Pioneers Of the Downriver Area
by Frank Rathbun, November 20, 1952
Courtesy of The News Herald (originally published in The Mellus Newspapers)
PROBABLY NO other name has been as closely associated with the development of the city of Ecorse than that of the Salliotte family whose progenitors, according to tradition, built the first log cabin on the shore of the Detroit River, near the mouth of the Riviere aux Ecorces, now Ecorse Creek.
Family tradition also relates that the earliest members of the family in the New World came from the Alsace-Lorraine sector of France with the early Jesuits and made their way to Michigan with the pioneer priest-explorer Father Marquette.
One of the first records of the name in Michigan is found on an early census of Detroit in 1779, which lists the name of Jean Saliot, his wife and two children.
THIS EARLY Detroit resident, who married Marie Magdalene Jourdain, was probably the father of at least two sons, Jean Baptiste and Alexis Moses Salliotte, and two daughters, Marie, who married Joseph Bondy, and Therese, who married Dominique Bondy.
Jean Baptiste Salliotte (1776-1824) married Marie Jeanne Bondy in Detroit in 1799, and after her death in 1816, married Catherine Chene, who died in 1822. He was the only member of the family listed in the 1820 census of Detroit.
Alexis Moses Salliotte evidently was the first of the family in the Downriver area. Prior to his death, Alexis and his wife, Archange Bourassa, had at least two sons, Moses and Hyacinth.
MOSES Salliotte, born in Ecorse in 1807, according to data on his tombstone in the Ecorse Cemetery, married Charlotte Cook, born in Yorkshire, England in 1815.
Old-time residents of Ecorse, who recall conversations with Moses Salliotte prior to his death in 1892, relate that Salliotte could speak little English other than that taught him by his wife after their marriage.
Moses Salliotte and his wife who died in 1848, had five children including, Alexis M., Joseph, Gilbert, Julian, who married her cousin Joseph Drouillard, and Anne (1845-1930), who married her cousin, Oliver Salliotte.
ALEXIS M. SALLIOTTE, born in 1837, married Mary Sylvia Rousson, and became an active political figure in the Downriver area. He served many years as both treasurer and clerk of Ecorse Township and was postmaster of Ecorse for nearly two decades. When Ecorse incorporated as a village in 1902, he was elected first village president.
Alexis Salliotte's children included Cora Lefebre, Frances Monahan, Alma O'Boyle, Etta Nelson, Elizabeth Grattan, Eleanor, Adam and Simon, who married Louise Loeffler but had no children.
Joseph Salliotte, second son of Moses and Charlotte, was Ecorse village assessor from 1903 to 1906. He married Marie Rouleau and, secondly, Mary Moran. His children included Emma Labadie, Charlotte Adam, Gertrude Cummings and the late Ignatius J. Salliotte, prominent Downriver lawyer who served as a member of the state constitutional convention in 1901 and was Lincoln Park's first village attorney.
GILBERT SALLIOTTE, third son of Moses, never married. He enlisted in the Army during the Civil War and was shot through the cheek and mouth.
Hyacinth Salliotte, brother of Moses and second son of the pioneer Alexis, was born in 1810 and married Adelaide Labadie.
Their children included Mary, Samuel, a civil veteran; Cleophus, who married Juliette Labadie; Antoine, who married Agnes Abbott; Edessa, who married Alex Campau; Angelique and Peter.
ANTOINE, born in 1841, was also a Civil War veteran who served with General Sherman in his famous march through Georgia and was twice wounded in action.
Antoine's children include Ecorse Municipal Judge Alger E. Salliotte, who has held the judicial post since 1934, and Roy B. Salliotte, who was killed at the battle of the Meuse-Argonne in France in 1918. The Roy B. Salliotte American Legion Post in Ecorse was named for this First World War hero.
Other children of Antoine and Agnes (Abbott) Salliotte were Stella Drouillard; Ida Meloche; Inez, deceased; Henry, a retired Ecorse barber; Matilda Bondie; Joseph, deceased; Cecelia Hyde, deceased; Emma Laginess; Verna Theis; Alvin, a lieutenant with the Ecorse fire department; Eldred Helle, deceased; and Syvella Nelson.
ANOTHER BRANCH of the Downriver Salliotte family is probably descended from Jean Baptiste Salliotte (1776-1824), brother of the Ecorse pioneer Alexis Moses Salliotte.
John B. Salliotte, probably a son of Jean Baptiste, married Isabella Roulo about 1830 and had five children, including Susan Drouillard, Charles Louis, who married Marie Labadie; Emily, John and Oliver, who married Anne Salliotte, his cousin, daughter of Moses and Charlotte (Cook) Salliotte.
Charles, who served on the first village council of Ecorse, had several children including Martha Stewart, Rose Miller, Alice Hebert and George, deceased.
THE COUSINS, Oliver and Anne Salliotte, had six sons, four of whom were active in village politics for many years earlier in the century.
The eldest son of Oliver and Anne Salliotte was Alfred (1865-1937), who served on the village council from 1919 until 1927. He married Minnie Maurice and had three children, Alger, Myrtle and Joseph, deceased.
The second son was Theodore (1867-1933), village president from 1913 to 1915, who never married. Levi Salliotte, born in 1878, married Mary Merrier and served as village treasurer 1906-1907
THE OTHER sons were Albert (1876-1943), who married Anne Labadie; Eli, born in1883, married Gertrude St. Amant; and Ellis, born 1880, who was treasurer in 1916-1917.
Ellis Salliotte now living in retirement in Wyandotte, married Maude Bondie, Minnie Kline and Mary Siehrs. There were two children of the second marriage, Dorothy and Leslie.
Several Ecorse streets near property of the early Salliottes today bear names of many members of the family, including Alexis, Hyacinth, Charlotte and Agnes, while Salliotte Street runs from Ecorse into Southwest Detroit.
(Addendum – handwritten notes added: John B. Salliotte died Feb 1874. Sisiters of John B. Saliotte, Jr; Mary, Angelique, Madaleine, Therese, Catherine and Susan)
