Notes for William Demonbreun: THE TENNESSEAN Sunday, January 5, 1986 DeMonbreun Burial Spot Still A Mystery Trio Of Theories Offers Ideas On Settlers Grave By Louise Davis Staff Writer
Where Timothy DeMonbreun French Canadian fur trader and patriot, and first white man to spend a winter in Nashville is buried remains a mystery. But there are three theories about the matter, including one about a tombstone that purports to mark his grave in a remote hillside cemetery, near, Ashland City, in Cheatham County. It is a fact that the five year-old monument stands next to that of DeMonbreuns common-law wife, Elizabeth Durard, and near the grave of their son, Jean Baptiste DeMonbreun. The younger DeMonbreun (J.B.), 68 years old when his mother died, states on her monument that he had it erected in her memory. But there are stories indicating that Timothy DeMonbreun was never buried there. And there is strong evidence that his remains today lie deep under a weed patch behind a 101-year-old blacksmith shop at 311 Jefferson St. in downtown Nashville. There is no official record of where DeMonbreun was buried. Much of his personal life and that of his legal wife and children is recorded in Catholic church records, both in his hometown in Canada and in Kaskaskia, Ill., then the capital of the Illinois territory, where he served as acting governor before settling In Nashville. Military records indicate his bravery during the Revolutionary. Official correspondence attests to his skill as acting governor of Illinois before it became a state. Court records also tell of his business achievements in Nashville and his near-fatal adventures as a fur trader up and down the Mississippi. But it is only in the matter of his burial site that all written records fail. The Catholic church of Tennessee would like to know about it, since DeMonbreun tried to organize the first Catholic church in Nashville, and even gave land for a church. The first Catholic Mass in Nashville was at his commodious home. Amateur historians, including many who search Tennessee tombstones for clues find descendants of Timothy DeMonbreun buried in numerous country cemeteries in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky. And Catholic records make it clear that DeMonbreun himself was born into a distinguished French family on March 23, 1747, at Boucherville, in the province of Quebec, Canada, in the town named for his titled great-grandfather, Pierre Boucher. Court records show that Boucher was given the title Seigneur (or Lord) by King Louis XIV in 1661 in recognition of his work in inducing Frenchmen to settle in Canada. That title added to his name de Montbreun, which is retained by the family to this day. Church records show the date of Timothy DeMonbreuns marriage on Nov. 26, 1766, when he was only 19, to Marguerite Therese-Archange Gibault, daughter of a Boucherville merchant. Catholic records also show the date of birth and baptism of their five children, all born in Kaskaskia. That included Therese, born August 18, 1768, shortly before the young parents arrived by hazardous canoe trip from Canada to Kaskaskia; Felix Timothy, born Feb. 12, 1770; Julienne, born March 12, 1770; Jacques Timothy, Jr., born April 7, 1788; and Marie Louise, born Jan. 28, 1789. Church and court records show when DeMonbreuns children married and where they lived. The oldest, Therese, married, in 1784, Jacques Chenier of New Orleans and in 1788, DeMonbreun sold to the young couple a 1,000 acre tract of land in Cheatham County. After Chenier's death in 1792 Therese remarried, and she and her second husband Alexis Doza of Kaskaskia, settled in Tennessee. Wirt Armistead Cate, in the September 1957 Tennessee Historical Quarterly, states that Therese had at least five children by Doza, but that the many descendants in Cheatham County and Middle Tennessee apparently spell it Dozier. Timothy DeMonbreuns oldest son, Felix Timothy, married a Nashville girl, Mary Cagle, in 1809. Four years later, Felix, who had been brought up by devout Catholic parents, moved to Monroe County, Ky., and became a Baptist minister. In 1865, at age 98, Felix, the father of nine children, died in Edmonson County, Ky., and left many descendants, The transition from Catholic to Baptist by several members of the DeMonbreun family came, probably, from the fact that there was no Catholic church in Nashville until 1820, some 39 years after the DeMonbreun children moved here. DeMonbreuns third child, Julienne married a Mr. Johnson here, and they had many children. DeMonbreuns fourth legitimate child, Jacques Timothy, married Christina Rains, daughter of Nashvilles famous Indian fighter, John Rains. After Christinasdeath in 1850, Timothy Jr. married Mary Ann Walker of Nashville, and they moved to Robertson County, where he died in 1872 and was buried in Battle Creek Baptist Church Cemetery. Marie Louise, youngest legitimate child of Timothy DeMonbreun, supposedly died in infancy, but there is no record of where or when she and DeMonbreuns wife, Therese, died. Not only was there no Catholic church here to record those burials, but there were no death certificates issued here at the time. The only record of DeMonbreuns death was published in the Nashville Banner & Nashville Whig newspaper on Nov. 4, 1826, stating that there had died in this town, on Monday evening last, Capt. Timothy DeMumbrane, a venerable citizen of Nashville, and the first white man that ever emigrated to this vicinity. Newspapers of that day did not ordinarily state the place of burial, but there is evidence that DeMonbreun was interred at the little cemetery north of the public square, on a knoll near the sulphur spring where the first settlers had followed herds of buffalo. An 1831 map in the State Archives shows the intersection of Cherry Street (now Fourth Avenue North) and a bend in Lick Branch where the cemetery stood, and it is plausible that DeMonbreun would have chosen that familiar spot, so near the scene of his long business and civic life in Nashville. But by the time he died there was another cemetery in Nashville, the one now called the old City Cemetery in South Nashville (on Fourth Avenue South). It was established in 1822, four years before DeMonbreuns death, and it is possible that DeMonbreun was buried there. In fact, one account states that he was originally buried at the earlier, North Nashville site, and then removed years later to the old City Cemetery in South Nashville (at the same time that remains of other early settlers were removed to the South Nashville cemetery).There is no way of proving whether DeMonbreuns remains were removed to the South Nashville cemetery, because all records there for the years 1822 to 1846 were destroyed when Union soldiers occupied the area during the Civil War. And the evidence is further confused by the fact that Timothy DeMonbreun had three children by his common-law wife, \ldblquote commonly called Elizabeth Bennett or Hensley. Elizabeth married a man who was variously referred to in deeds as Joseph Darrett, Durratt or Durard, and she outlived DeMonbreun by some 30 years. DeMonbreun did not mention Elizabeth in his will but he did list his illegitimate children, carefully distinguishing between them and his legitimate children. Oldest of his three illegitimate children was Jean Baptiste, or J.B., who was born in 1788, began buying land In Cheatham County In 1824, and eventually owned an extensive tract extending beyond the confluence of Little and Big Marrowbone, where he built a residence on a commanding eminence in the wildly beautiful hills, Cate wrote "The residence afforded a splendid view up the valley of Big Marrowbone, and so many of J.B.s descendants lived in the broad valley below that it came to be known as DeMonbreun Valley. When his mother, Elizabeth. died at age 116 in 1856, J.B had her buried in the family cemetery nearby, and he had a monument erected In her honor. And then, according to some descendants, J.B. went a step further. He decided that the remains of his father (who had died 30 years earlier) should be removed from the Nashville cemetery to be buried alongside his common-law wife. According to some descendants a small stone with a sort of crown on top was the original marker placed there in DeMonbreuns One story is that J.B. himself drove a wagon to Nashville, dug up the remains from the old City Cemetery in South Nashville and buried them in the little Cheatham County cemetery. Another story is that Timothy DeMonbreun's remains had never been moved from the old North Nashville cemetery, and that J.B. removed, them from there to the cemetery near Ashland City. But there are many discrepancies in that story. Timothy DeMonbreuns other two children by Elizabeth Durard were Polly, who married Charles Cagle of Nashville in 1810, and William (born in 1794 and died in 1870) who became a man of wealth and position in College Grove community of Williamson County. He too left many descendants. But they left no clues to Timothy's burial site. The most convincing evidence indicates that Timothy DeMonbreun was never removed from the old North Nashville cemetery where the founding fathers of the city were buried. Even in 1957, when Cate published his article in The Historical Quarterly, he concluded with considerable conviction,that here was his (DeMonbreuns) natural resting place near the French Lick, on familiar ground and by the side of his earliest pioneer associates. One of those pioneer heroes was a 37-year-old soldier, First Lt. Richard Chandler, who was so revered by sundry brother officers & citizens that they erected in his memory an impressive box tomb after his death, on Dec. 20, 1801, and inscribed on it a tribute to him, an honest man and brave Soldier. Exalted in truth & manly firmness shone, conspicuous in him, beneath this stone. But the town was growing up around the little North Nashville cemetery by 1859, 58 years after Chandler was buried there and leading citizens who remembered him made quite a patriotic and religious ceremony of it when they had his remains removed to the Mt. Olivet Cemetery. John Meigs, then 25, was so impressed by the removal of that last legible tomb from the old cemetery in North Nashville that he drew a rough sketch showing its exact location and giving its exact proportions. Meigs father, Return J. Meigs , was a distinguished lawyer and head of the state library, and the two apparently considered that last legible inscription and the location of the tomb worth recording. Being on the Bluff immediately above the Sulphur Springs this afternoon, which was formerly a place of burial for our city, I observed that there is but one stone left with an inscription on it to tell who lies beneath. A young Meigs wrote with his goose quill pen on July 6, 1859. He said the horizontal slab already considerably defaced and otherwise impaired will probably soon be broken by rude hands, as the others have been, and disappear from the Bluff, and thus no monument be left to attest the place, where rest the bones of a considerable number of the earliest population of Nashville. He thus thought it important to copy this sole remaining inscription and deposit it among the archives of the Tennessee Historical Society. And there his description, maps and sketches of the tomb remain today. One sketch shows where the tomb stood in a bend of Salt Lick Creek, at a spot back of what is now the Geist Lawnmower Shop at 311 Jefferson St. There was already an ice house near the cemetery In 1859, and other commercial property nearby. But when John Geist, grandfather of the present owner, opened his blacksmith shop there in 1884 there were some graves still left in the old cemetery. When Geist bought the property in 1886, a narrow strip of the 83-foot-long cemetery was set aside as the remaining part of the cemetery. Presumably the remains from the rest of the cemetery had been removed. But according to Geist, DeMonbreuns grave was still there. Presumably his monument was one of those whose inscription was no longer legible when Meigs visited the cemetery in 1859. But fellow Catholics would have doubtless told Geist about the grave of Timothy Demonbreun, who was buried there 58 years before Geist arrived. Moreover. in the late 1950s Cate sought out one of the oldest of the DeMonbreun family living then, a man called Uncle Mellie, who lived at the old DeMonbreun house up on Marrowbone Creek in Cheatham County. Uncle Mellie, who was born and lived most of his life on Marrowbone Creek, told Cate that as a young man he had planned to be a teacher, and attended Peabody College when it was located on the old South Nashville campus. (before 1914)."I rode into Nashville with someone who dropped me off at the blacksmith shop on Jefferson Street, near the Jefferson Street bridge, from which point I walked back and forth to school, and was then picked up for the ride home every day," he told Cate. One day the old blacksmith who owned the smithy told me that my ancestor, Timothy DeMonbreun, was buried a short distance behind his place, though the exact spot was no longer marked. Uncle Mellie accepted this as fact, Cate wrote. Apparently Uncle Mellie had never heard of his ancestor being buried at the cemetery above Marrowbone Creek an area where Timothy DeMonbreun never lived. Soon after Cate s interview, Uncle Mellie died. Later Cate went to the blacksmith shop to ask owner John Geist, Jr. about the DeMonbreun grave. Geist, who died in 1976, said his father, John Geist Sr., had told him many times about the Timothy DeMonbreun grave back of the blacksmith shop. A search through deeds in the Metro registers office shows that the early North Nashville cemetery was indeed on the property later owned by Geist. And John Meigs, the Nashville youth with an insatiable curiosity about what was going on around town in the 1850s, pin-pointed the spot where the crumbling monuments stood. He made it clear that there were still many graves of the citys pioneers there as late as 1859.George Geist, grandson of the Geist who founded the blacksmith shop repairs lawnmowers there today, and he knows precisely where the cemetery back of the shop was. The land where the historic cemetery stood was covered under 15 or 20 feet of soil and junk years ago, and the back end of the cemetery is bordered by one wall of the Auto Bumper Company. Now tangled weeds smother the spot that is almost as wild as it must have been when DeMonbreun got his first glimpse of buffaloes watering at the sulphur spring nearby, around 1769. And Cate wrote in a letter to one of the DeMonbreun descendents on Jan. 13 1977, that he felt sure that I am able to near pin-point the spot of Timothy DeMonbreuns grave behind the Geist blacksmith shop. Nevertheless DeMonbreun descendants living today erected a new monument to their ancestor in 1980, in the poetic, cedar-shaded cemetery on the high ridge overlooking Marrowbone Creek, in Cheatham County. At least they are sure that some of the people he loved dearly lie there.
More About Elizabeth Hensler Bennett and Jacques Timothe Boucher DeMontbrun: Common Law: Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee. Other-Begin: February 1784, Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee.
Children of Elizabeth Hensler Bennett and Jacques Timothe Boucher DeMontbrun are: +Jean Baptiste DeMontbreun, b. January 24, 1788, d. May 25, 1872. +Mary Polly DeMontbreun, b. Abt. 1792, d. date unknown. William DeMontbreun, b. Abt. 1794, d. January 11, 1870, Williamson County, Tennessee.
More About William Demonbreun and Mary Adline Patton: Marriage: 1817
Children of William Demonbreun and Mary Adline Patton are:
William Demonbreun (b. 1794, d. 11 Jan 1870)
Notes for William Demonbreun: