Charlotte (Boussa) D'Hauterive (abt. 1691 - 1745)

Wife of Renaud (D'Hauterive) Bernard — married 1736 in New Orleans, Louisiana

Descendants

Died 18 Dec 1745 at about age 54 in Mobile, Louisiana, New France

Biography

RENAUD D’HAUTERIVE

HUSBAND OF CHARLOTTE BOUSSA, THE WIDOW OF FRANCOIS ORBANNE DUVAL

The first D’Hauterive of record in the United States, who might possibly be related to our family, is RENAUD D’HAUTERIVE. This gentleman was born in 1691 and was from Tours, the capital of the French province of Touraine, France. He was the son of the “grand voyer” (highway commissioner or surveyor) of Tours.

“Corporal d’auterive” is on a list of those who embarked on the ship Marechal de Villars on January 26, 1719 for Louisiana from La Rochelle, France. Later in 1719 he is listed as Commandant at Fort Saint Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches, Louisiana, during the absence of Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, its long-time Commandant. On January 21, 1721 he is included on a “List of Officers who command 25 Companies of Infantry which the Company maintains in Louisiana – at Natchitoches replacing M. Blondel who has died.” On November 23, 1723 he was a member of a Council of War held at the Fort of the Natchez which decided to grant peace to the Natchez Indians. This information is from the Mississippi Provincial Archives, 1704-1743, by Rowland and Sanders.

From the “History of Acadiana” by Jim Bradshaw in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser of September 30, 1997: “Opelousas owes its origin to a military post. In 1719, Capt. Renauld D’Hauterive sent Ensign Nicholas Chauvin de la Freniere and two others to establish a military presence in the area.”

Renaud is found in an April 1, 1730 “List of Officers in Louisiana and Their Assignments” (Captain Renault D’Hauterive-New Orleans) and is mentioned on December 2, 1731 in a “List of Persons Comprising the Four Companies Stationed at New Orleans” (Renault D’Hauterive–Captain-absent in France). He returned to Louisiana in 1731. The above information is from First Families of Louisiana, by Glenn Conrad.

By 1731 he is confirmed as owner of a twenty-two arpent front tract of land above the city of New Orleans and on the same side of the river, on which there was a brickyard – almost certainly part of what later became the D’Auberville plantation. Referring to a plantation on the Bayou St. John, “A map of the early 1730’s in the Library of Congress….marks a house on the former Langlois property as belonging to Capitaine du St. Derive, no doubt the abbreviation of Renaud D’Hauterive, subsequent owner of the Langlois plantation” – from Bayou St. John in Colonial Louisiana, by Edna B. Freiberg.

From the Census Tables of the French Colony of Louisiana, 1699-1733, by Charles Maduell: “Renault D’Hauterive purchased land from the widow Duval whom he married and by contract with M. de Bienville. Listed in 1731 Census of Inhabitants along the River Mississippi was the brick manufacture of D’Hauterives, which included: 1 European worker, 1 man capable of bearing arms, 36 negro slaves and 2 negro children”.

On March 24, 1734 there is a sale of property of the deceased Sr. de Vilainville, “adjudication to Sr. D’Hauterive of said plantation on the river, measuring 12 arpents, frontage by ordinary depth for sum of 400 livres which he shall pay cash with costs.”

In the List by Bienville of Officers in Louisiana, on April 25, 1734: Renaudan town of that name near the field of battle, and was fought May 20, 1736.

D’Hauterive was in the second campaign against these Indians in 1740. He was a member of the council of war, and advised the retreat of the French, from the country of the Chickasaw Indians, which advice was followed.”

Quoted in the Mississippi Provincial Archives, by Rowland and Sanders is a a letter dated June 29, 1736 from Bienville to Maurepas in Paris: “My lord will permit me to call his attention to the fact that on the entire staff here only Mr. Diron and I are decorated with the Cross of St. Louis. I should be infinitely satisfied if he would procure one for Chevalier de Noyan, the major, another for Mr. D’Auterive, a former captain, who were both wounded in tD’Hauterive is listed as the “son of the surveyor of Tours in Touraine, served in France as Lieutenant….the ‘attache’ to the ‘bien faire’, came to the colony in 1720 as Captain….of good conduct and representation – age of 43 years.”

From “Valliere-Vaugine Family” by Myra Vaughan, in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 15: “In 1736, in an account of the sanguinary and disastrous battle, fought near the present site of the city of Memphis, by the French against the Chickasaw Indians, D’Hauterive was wounded, and M. de Bienville speaks of him as ‘a Captain of Grenadiers’. This battle was called Ackia, from the Indihe attack on the Chickasaws….These favors which it would please his Majesty to grant would fall upon good officers and would make no small impression on the others in the circumstance that we are in of a very active war.”

Gayarre, in his History of Louisiana, gives a 1740 list of the French officers, and in the report of Bienville accompanying this list, he says that Dauterive had been for a long time in the French service, before coming to Louisiana, and that he was a Captain when he came to Louisiana in 1720. In 1736 he was made Chevalier of the Order of St. Louis….and in 1740 ‘then fifty-two years of age’, he was Major of New Orleans, a position of trust, which carried with it a salary of 1,200 livres per annum.”

From Mississippi Valley Melange, by Winston De Ville: “Although all male members of Louisiana nobility were by no means knights in the ‘Royal and Military Order of St. Louis’, that distinction was the highest honor to which a Louisiana colonial could reasonably aspire.” Renaud D’Hauterive is described in 1740 by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, the Governor of the Colony, as “D’Hauterive: He understands service and is faithful in performing well without prejudice; good conduct and of fine appearance.”

Renaud D’Hauterive was married in 1736 in New Orleans to CHARLOTTE BOSSUA, the widow of Francois Orbanne (Baume) Duval, the cashier of the Company of the Indies which was the private corporation commissioned by the King of France to govern the Louisiana colony. Charlotte Bossua Duval and her daughter, Charlotte, had embarked from La Rochelle, France, on May 27, 1719 on the Marie, arriving in New Orleans in 1720.

Following his marriage to the widow Duval, D’Hauterive negotiated to pay Francois Duval’s debts to the Company. In the Registry dated January 21, 1737, in a declaration by Mr. Renaud D’Hauterive, Marine Captain, acting as husband of Dame Charlotte Bossua, widow of Francois Orbanne Duval, it says that “he protests against appraisement of the lot formerly owned by the estate of deceased Le Blanc, sold to Mr. D’Auseville, as this land belongs to the Succession of the deceased Duval who acquired it from Sieur Brusle, who was then Agent of the Company of the Indies, on April 7, 1724.” On 11 Oct 1737 D’Hauterive sold most of this land to Sieur Broutin, Engineer of the King, for 2,000 livres.

From Bayou St. John in Colonial Louisiana, by Edna B. Freiberg: “In 1737 Louis Brazillier quadrupled his holdings on the bayou by purchasing the adjoining Langlois plantation….from M. Renaud D’Hauterive….It is possible D’Hauterive sold the plantation because of the financial problems he and his bride were having with the estate of her former husband. (On June 10, 1757, this land was adjudicated to Alexander Latil, {the father-in-law of Bernard Antoine Dauterive, Chapter 6-B} who sold it on August 26, 1771 to Juan Brazillier}.

Sr. Francois Duval, Cashier of the Company of the Indies from 1731 to 1735, had died owing his employer a large sum. When his widow remarried plantation owner D’Hauterive, the couple assumed the debts of her former husband’s estate, and on January 15, 1736 acknowledged that Duval’s Succession owed the Company of the Indies 191,975 livres. Nothing was done about the debt for over a year (until March 23, 1737) when D’Hauterives, sensing a superior bargaining situation, suggested to Commissary Salmon that a compromise be effected, by which the D’Hauterives be permitted to settle the debt for 20,000 livres. Though this represented only a small percentage of what they owed, the Company, which was attempting to wind up its affairs in Louisiana, accepted the proposition, provided the whole debt be paid off within two years. The D’Hauterives received their receipt for payment-in-full in September of 1739.”

In 1738 Renaud D’Hauterive was Commandant of the Post of New Orleans. He was a senior officer, holding the position of Major (Commander of the Garrison).

In the “Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana”, dated September 21, 1739, in the Louisiana Historical Quarterly, there is a “Statement of Condition of Plantation of Mr. D’Hauterive”, when sold to Mr. Bobe Descloseaux, September 9, 1739. It contained: a list and description of buildings; a list of Negro slaves; utensils, furniture and household goods; and utensils used in the manufacture of indigo and cattle. It was signed: Charlotte Bossua D’Hauterive. And, on December 10, 1739 there is a six-page record of the sale of land “fronting on the river and buildings thereon”, by Charlotte Bossua to Sr. Morand for 8000 livres “of which 7000 are to be paid to the Company of the Indies”.

From A History of the Bouligny Family, by Fontaine Martin: “When he died in 1743 he was a senior officer, holding the position of major (commander of the garrison) at New Orleans.”

In De Ville’s Gulf Coast Colonials, Renaud D’Hauterive is called: “Dauterive, Chevalier de St. Louis: Major at New Orleans who died in New Orleans, Louisiana, before December 18, 1745”.

From They Tasted Bayou Water, by Bergerie: “In documents of 1727-1730, found in the Louisiana Historical Quarterly, the name of Captain Renaut D’Hauterive is mentioned. On two occasions, in legal papers dated 1734, Sieur D’Hauterive, Captain of a Marine Company in New Orleans, is referred to. Whether this is the same family as Jean Antoine Dauterive is not known.”

From Alabama Church Records, by Winston De Ville: “18 December 1745: Dame Charlotte Bossua, died the same day, wife of deceased, Mr. D’Auterive, Chevalier de L’Ordre Militaire de St. Louis, Major de la Nouvelle Orleans. De La Lande, king’s scrivner, at the funeral, is nephew of the deceased.”

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Sources

1. ↑ http://attakapasgazette.org/vol-6-2015/dhauterive-billaud-allied-families-bk-1-ch-1/ D’HAUTERIVE, BILLAUD & ALLIED FAMILIES: BK 1, CH 1

See Also:

• Binet, Patrick; Cousins des Amériques: ascendance et parentèle de Josefa Evelina Muzard (1835-1913); 1998 pg 268