Louison DEMARIE
Biography

"History of Northern Wisconsin, Volume I." Chicago, IL: The Western Historical Society, 1881.

"Among the number whose names are preserved as the first settlers was Louis DeMarie, a Canadian of French extraction, with some Indian blood, and his wife, who was born in Detroit of a French father and Chippewa mother, and who, with a number of other families, came from the Red River of the North, where they had settled, to Prairie de Chien.

They had five sons and three daughters, the elder of whom were blooming into maidenly womanhood before leaving Prairie du Chien and were regarded with great interest by all who then lived in that outlying suburb of civilization. It is well authenticated that Louis DeMarie, with his family, came up the Chippewa River in 1832 and remained through the Winter at what is now West Eau Claire, as an Indian trader. Near the mouth of the river he was stopped by the terrible Sioux, who exacted $300 worth of goods to allow him to pass and refrain from molesting him after he was stationed. He built a log house there, and left it in the spring, returning to Prairie du Chien. The next two winters he spent higher up the river at the Blue Mills, returning loaded with furs each season. The winter of 1836-7 found his trading post at the Falls.

Angline, the wife of Louis DeMarie, was a very capable woman, and seemed to be an almost intuitive doctor, and her skill was often called into requisition in those rude times, and her remedies, though simple, were remarkably efficacious. her work in this direction was always gratuitous, and she is entitled to great credit for bringing up her family in habits of industry, and for doing what she could in the interest of the community. She still lives at the ripe age of 85, about two miles from town, with her daughter Rosalie, Mrs. George P. Warren. She speaks French and "Odjibwa" as she calls the Chippewa, and is an interesting connecting link between the past and the present, as she has lived while civilization was marching from Lake Huron to the Pacific.

The daughters of DeMarie, who still live, are positive as to the time of their first coming up the river, as being early in August 1832, because they saw at the mouth of the Bad Axe, the bodies of the Indians who had been slain in that last battle of the Black Hawk War, still unburied.

This then makes DeMarie the first white man with a family to spend a season in Eau Claire.

In this connection it may be well to state that Mary, who afterwards married H.S. Allen, was a daughter of Mrs. DeMarie by a former husband, an Englishman, and therefore a half-sister to the other children. Their cabin at the Falls was on the south side of the river." (page 193)



Information from the Eau Claire Leader Jan. 17, 1923
W.W. Bartlett delivered remarks at the Women's Club Pioneer Program:
"The first white person to actually build a house within the limits of what is now the city of Eau Claire was Luisan (Louis) DeMarie, a French fur trader, who with his wife, of part French and part Chippewa blood, came up the Chippewa in 1832 intending to go on to its headwaters to trade with the Indians…Demarie is described as a big, powerful man and an interesting character. Mrs. Demarie was a remarkable woman, a very skilled nurse and in great demand in the early days. They had a large family. The oldest daughter married H.S. Allen, pioneer lumberman of Menomonie and later of Chippewa Falls…A few years ago I learned that the only surviving member of the Demarie family, a son, was living on the Court De Orielles Indian reservation. A lumberman friend obtained for me a picture of him, sitting beside his wigwam. He died a few months after. In his younger days he had lived with the white people, was a skillful river man, and served as a soldier in the Civil War."

Eau Claire Leader May 10, 1902, Louis DeMarie had five sons and three daughters. He landed on the west bank of the Chippewa River in August 1868, at a point opposite Eau Claire.

Eau Claire Daily Free Press Nov. 8, 1883: "Louis Demarie, an emigrant from Montreal, was conspicuous among his compeers, because he had five blooming daughters--a kind of wealth valued more highly in the Chippewa forests at that early day than the abounding pines that the newcomers hoped to convert into lumber."
(Children of Louis from census and newspaper articles: Daughter Susan Margaret married Samuel Lamb and William Holman, Rosalie married Mr. Truckey, Arthur McCann & George Warren; Mary married HS Allen; Margaret Angeline married Joseph Trepania/ Trepanier; Mary Louise married Joseph Belanger and Peter Rousseau; Sons of Louis were Isadore, Louis, Antoine, Francois, Jean Baptiste, and Baptiste.)

1850 census in Chippewa, Chippewa County, WI (Denrarrias on Ancestry index) Louis, Angelic, Antoine, Isadore, and Baptiste.

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