270 years ago today, on June 2, 1754, Manuel de Soto and Marie Juchereau de St. Denis were married.
These are my 7th great-grandparents, ancestors of my maternal grandfather, Elroy Chapman.
Manual Antonio de Soto y Bermudez was born in 1720 in Pontevedra in the Kingdom of Galicia in Spain. In adulthood he sailed to the New World and served as an assistant to the governor of Spanish Texas. He lived at the Mission San Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas in what is now Milam County, Texas until July of 1751, when he had to flee to French Louisiana after being accused of subversive activities against the government.
Marie des Neiges Juchereau de St. Denis was born in 1734 at Natchitoches Post in Louisiana; her father, the Canadien Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, had founded that settlement just twenty years before.
When Manuel and Marie decided to marry, they first had to apply for permission from her brother-in-law, the Natchitoches Post Commandant César de Blanc in May of 1754.
Manuel and Marie would have at least five, possibly up to seven children together over the next decade and a half.
The Spanish requested the return of the deserter Don de Soto, but his new French friends ignored them. Unfortunately, this happy asylum could not last; France ceded the territory to Spain at the end of the French and Indian War in 1762. By 1769, Manuel was in a prison for political offenders in Mexico. He would remain there for ten years.
While her husband was imprisoned well over 1,000 miles away, Madame de Soto made waves in her local community by butting heads with a priest from Spain, Luis de Quintanilla, over a complicated scandal involving claims of miscegenation and financial exploitation.
The couple were finally reunited and spent their remaining time together in a rural community that would eventually become Pine Prairie, near Opelousas Post there in Louisiana.
Even though we actually have a wealth of information about Manuel and Marie, especially considering how long ago they lived and compared to most other ancestors of that time period, we just can’t get a whole lot of detail about their personal lives from extant records. We can only hope that they had happy times together and felt fulfilled in this partnership.
Happy 270th, Manuel and Marie.