Pierre Pillet dit LaSonde (profile Pillet-43) was one of my wife’s documented 6th Great-Grandfathers in New France. He was a farmer and councilman/judge at Kaskaskia in Upper Louisiana (Pais des Illinois) from about 1721 until his death circa 1768. He was married to Catherine Marie Madeleine Boisron circa 1720; unknown if at New Orleans, Kaskaskia or somewhere in between.
Pierre and Madeleine are assumed to have met in mid-1718 during a voyage from France along with 150 other colonists aboard the ship “Le Comte de Toulouse” to the new French colonial capital of Louisiana at New Orleans, where construction of the town had begun about six months earlier. Madeleine was about 15 at the time and traveling with her father, who was a member of the King’s Attorney for Louisiana’s office, while Pierre was an unknown age. He was, however, a member of a “miners” squad in the French Army. He was one of nine miners originally sent to build fortifications and tunnels to protect the new town, its defensive artillery, and the troops who were also sent, from competing Spanish forces. On the ship’s manifest Pierre was identified only as “La Sonde”
Pierre Pillet dit LaSonde is presumed by many family trees (over 700 trees at Ancestry with likely a lot of copying!) to be the Pierre Paillet who was baptized on 21 Jul 1704 (this baptism verified with church records) in Berneuil-sur-Aisne, Oise, Picardie, France, the son of Jean Paillet and Marie Hauart. But this association appears weak to me as this would mean that Pierre was only 14 at the time he was in the French Army aboard the ship. Also the “dit La Sonde” name addition shows up nowhere in the church records of this family.
No alternate person for being Pierre has been proposed so far as I know, only possible alternate birth dates of 1695 and 1690 have been offered for an unknown person, my guess is to make his age in 1718 more reasonable.
After his enlistment was likely over, Pierre and Madeleine migrated up the Mississippi River to Kaskaskia where they are believed to have arrived by 1721. It is known they leased half of a farm for a period of 5 years in Kaskaskia in 1724 before later buying their own farming property. Later, Pierre was also involved in the buying and selling of many properties in Kaskaskia and the surrounding area through the years, from which it appears the family became relatively wealthy.
I have not found a single corroborative document that lists Pierre’s age at a given date, or his birth date. Are there any genealogists at WikiTree who have uncovered data for the birth date, location and/or family members in France, or the age at his death, of Pierre Pillet (Pilet) dit LaSonde so I can put this mystery to bed?
