President Thomas Jefferson and James Madison Bestow an Original Tract of the Great Frontier “French Grant”, Given by Congress to Aid Defrauded Citizens of Their Former Ally

A great rarity, we have seen no other, let alone for one of the original settlers

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The town as Gallipolis, or “City of Gauls”

 

The recipient, one of the five original families, once fought a bear and survived

In 1790, land speculators representing the Scioto Company persuaded several hundred French immigrants to come to the United States. When the French immigrants arrived in the Ohio Country, they...

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President Thomas Jefferson and James Madison Bestow an Original Tract of the Great Frontier “French Grant”, Given by Congress to Aid Defrauded Citizens of Their Former Ally

A great rarity, we have seen no other, let alone for one of the original settlers

The town as Gallipolis, or “City of Gauls”

 

The recipient, one of the five original families, once fought a bear and survived

In 1790, land speculators representing the Scioto Company persuaded several hundred French immigrants to come to the United States. When the French immigrants arrived in the Ohio Country, they discovered that the company’s representatives had misled them. The land that they had purchased actually belonged to the Ohio Company of Associates rather than to the Scioto Company. The fact that the French, our recent allies, had been swindled did not sit well with many in the United States. In March 1795, Congress indemnified the French by establishing the French Grant near Gallipolis, Ohio, to compensate the immigrants for their treatment by the Scioto Company by giving them land. Some of the French immigrants chose to settle in the French Grant.

Andrew Lacroix was born in Normandy, France, in 1766 and came to the United States at the age of 25 in 1790 or 1791. Quite likely he was one of the Frenchmen who were misled in the Scioto affair, as he settled in Gallipolis, Ohio. There he became a whip sawyer for Monsieur Bertrand and carried on a horse mill (a mill that operated on horse power). On February 17, 1797 he married Madame Serot (one of a family of 23 children), widow of Peter Serot. She brought four young children into the marriage, the oldest being only four and one half years old.

Lacroix went to the French Grant in March 1797 shortly after his marriage. Coming at the same time were Jean Baptist Bertrand, Jean G. Gervais, Charles F. Duteil and William Duduit. He had drawn lot number 15 and he cleared his land and grew peaches. He distilled the peaches and as his business grew, he sent boats to New Orleans. He also grew apple trees and from September to March, he made apple or peach brandy. His life was challenging as he once fought a bear and survived, and at another time he fell into a 36 foot deep well and managed to climb out unaided. His wife died December 16, 1824 leaving seven children of his. Lacroix died September 29, 1844.

Document signed by Jefferson as President and Madison as Secretary of State, Washington, October 29, 1801, granting land in the French Grant to Lacroix. “That in pursuance of an Act of Congress…passed on the 3rd day March 1795, entitled ‘An Act to authorize a grant of lands to the French inhabitants of Gallipolis…’ there is granted to Andrew Lacroix a certain lot or piece of land containing two hundred seventeen acres and thirty nine hundredths of an acre, numbered fifteen in a plat in the tract of twenty four thousand acres of land directed directed by the said Act to be surveyed in the Territory…” Some wearing to top of T in Thomas.

A rarity, this being the first grant of land in the French Grant we have ever seen.

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