Jean François Benjamin (Dumont) Dumont de Montigny (abt. 1696 - 1760)

Born about 31 Jul 1696 in Paris, Île-de-France, France

Husband of Marie Baron — married 19 Apr 1730 in Saint Louis Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, New France

Died 1760 at about age 63 in Pondicherry, Puducherry, India

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Biography

Jean François Benjamin (Dumont) Dumont de Montigny is Notable.

Dumont de Montigny was a French colonial officer and farmer in French Louisiana in the 18th century. His writings include a two-volume history of French Louisiana published in 1753, as well as an epic poem and a prose memoir published long after his death.^[1]

Jean François Benjamin Dumont was born in 1696. He was the youngest of six sons of Jacques François Dumont, a Paris magistrate. He was a sailor in the French colonial navy, and sailed to Quebec in 1715. He spent time there as a patient in the hospital Hôtel-Dieu^[2] until he sailed back to France.

Dumont obtained a commission as a lieutenant and engineering officer. In 1719 he sailed from La Rochelle, France, to Louisiana. He was assigned to forts at Yazoo and Natchez. In 1722 he explored the Arkansas River with Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe. His patron was Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle. He sometimes quarreled with his superior officers, including the colonial governor, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. He was imprisoned briefly on multiple occasions for insubordination.

Dumont was assigned to serve at Fort Rosalie in Natchez from 1726–1728. He lived at the farm of Jean Roussin and Marie Baron near the Tioux villages south of Natchez. At the fort he clashed with the commandant de Chépart, and escaped from a detention ordered by Chépart in January 1729. He was not present at Natchez revolt of November 1729, where Jean Roussin was killed.

Dumont resigned his commission and married Marie Baron, widow of Jean Roussin. Their children included Marie Françoise, born 28 November 1731, and Jean-François, baptized in New Orleans on 2 January 1733. He worked as a market gardener. He joined the civilian militia during the unsuccessful Chickasaw Campaign of 1736.

In 1738, Dumont returned to France with his wife Marie and two children Marie Françoise and Jean François. He lived in Port-Louis, Morbihan, the port from which he had sailed to Louisiana. He obtained yet another commission, this time as a lieutenant in the colonial Company of the Indies. He and Marie sailed in 1754 to Mauritius and then to Pondicherry, where he died in 1760.^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "Dumont de Montigny," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumont_de_Montigny (accessed March 28, 2023).
2. ↑ Registre journalier des malades de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, Marcel Fournier et Gisèle Monarque, avec la collaboration de Dominique Ritchot et du PRDH

   1717-09-22 — Binjamin dit Dumont, Jean-François (21 ans), paroisse Saint-André, Paris-des-Arcs, matelot du navire du Roy Lastrée. pg 858

3. ↑ "Dumont de Montigny, Jean (1696-1760). Bibliothèque nationale de France.

• Dumont de Montigny, Jean-François-Benjamin, Gordon M. Sayre and Carla Zecher (ed.), The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715-1747: A Sojourner in the French Atlantic, (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2012) p. 56.