Excerpted from "Colonial Mobile", Peter Hamilton (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1897) Chapter XVI: Some Old Families Part 2 of 3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The De Lussers, at the close of the French period, certainly lived at the north end of the delta. Where the Tensaw leaves the Mobilians and Apalaches, one plan shows the Parenta, and not far away was Favre. Eleven leagues from Mobile, and therefore near what is now called Chastang's, the Le Sueurs at one time had a plantation at a bluff on the west side of the river. It was afterwards the property of Narbonne. The description, owing to court proceedings, has survived in some detail. In 1756 the house was new, thirty feet long by twenty wide, a filled-in frame of posts, and roofed with bark. It had six windows and two doors and a clay chimney, with a gallery at one gable; there was also a lean-to (appentif) kitchen with chimney. To one side was a chicken house, and to the right of the yard (cour) a large structure sixty by thirteen feet, surrounded by posts and piling, covered with bark, used as a lodging for slaves. On the other side was a barn, twenty-five toises square. The place faced on the river fifteen arpens by two deep, and across the river there was another field (desert) ten arpens across front by two deep. To this time we must assign the adjacent Chastang settlement near Chastang's Bluff, still represented by the large and interesting colored Creole colony who live in the vicinity. They claim descent from Dr. John Chastang of Spanish times but really go back to the French period, of which their patois is an interesting reminder.The church registers give the history of some families quite in detail, and of these it will be interesting to select for fuller notice the Le Sueurs and De Lussers, whose out-of-town houses we have just noted. In the fascinating pages of Penicaut we learn of one La Sueur who in 1700, went from Biloxi in charge of an expedition up the Mississippi to the Falls of St. Anthony and to the Sioux west of our Lake Michigan in order to find a copper mine on Green River, of which he had known in previous years. He had had a post on the upper Mississippi in 1695, and discovered the Minnesota, which he named St. Peter River. These former expeditions must of course have been by way of Canada. He had come to Louisiana on the voyage of 1699, but had spent several years among the Sioux, and it was on account of his knowledge thus acquired of the Indians that Bienville so highly recommended him as suited to induce the vast resettlement of nations which this leader planned. The Canadians slyly intimate that the partiality was due mainly to their connection by marriage, Le Sueur having married the other's cousin-german. We do not know much more of Le Sueur , except that he spent the winter at the north in his Fort D'Huillier, where his name is perpetuated by a county in Minnesota, and in 1701 came back with thirteen hundred pounds of green earth, which he sent to France. The result of the assay Penicaut does not know. The church registers throw light upon the subsequent family history, for it must be his widow, Bienville's cousin-german, whom we find in 1708 as the mother of Jean and Marguerite, who act as sponsors for a Barrand child. Next year the son's name is given as Jean Paul, and a sister Marie is mentioned, who, by the way, cannot write her name. Marguerite we find still mademoiselle in 1722, but Marie was two years before wife of Sieur La Tour, captain of a company, probably the commandant of Fort Toulouse. La Tours were later to have their residence on a plantation up in the Mobile delta, although this one is mentioned, in 1727, as then major at New Orleans. Six years before this, we find a Mr. Pierre La Sueur named as officer of the garrison at Mobile, and then, years later, mention of a Captain La Sueur whose full name is not given, and J. P. Le Sueur seems to have been, perhaps casually, at Fort Toulouse in 1736, when Pechon died. Whether the commandant at Tombechbé was Jean Paul or Pierre must therefore remain uncertain, but the dates well admit of Jean Paul's commanding in the twenties at Dauphine Island, and in the thirties and later up the Tombigbee. We know that before his death at Mobile, in 1751, he was a major as well as chevalier of the order of St. Louis. He must, therefore, have been a man of experience in the service. Another family worthy of study is that of the De Lussers. It has been the romantic dream of antiquarians that the land owning Mme. De Lusser was the widow of the gallant victims of Akia, and that town-lots and, later, more extensive lands were grants in the nature of a pension by a grateful sovereign. But the recitals of his heirs seem to point to the husband surviving his wife, and enjoying what he (like others of a more commercial epoch) put in his wife's name. Part 3 to come