Gamelin Family And The Detroit Obligations

The Gamelins from John Askin's Letters And Papers:


"On the petition presented to us by Eustache Gamelin, an inhabitant of the Straits of Lake Erie, praying that we would grant and concede to him a tract of land situated on the said Straits...suburbs of Fort Pontchartrain... ."

"That the said Eustache Gamelin...shall be held to carry their grain to be ground at the common mill, when one shall have been erected...that he shall keep, or cause to be kept thereon house and home within one year at the latest; that he shall open the clearings of his neighbors as they may require it...that he shall pay each and every year to the receiver of His Majesty's domain in this country, or to the clerk of the said receiver residing at Detroit... ."  "...half a bushel of wheat for the...whole payable every year on the festival day of St. Martin, the first year whereof shall become due on the eleventh day of November, 1748...".  Done at Quebec, May 1, 1747.

The Gamelin family was both prominent and numerously represented in eighteenth-century Detroit. Its American founder was Michael Gamelin dit Lafontaine, a native of St. Aubin, diocese of Blois, France, who became a surgeon and migrated to Canada, where in 1663 he married Margaret Crevier, a native of the diocese of La Rochelle and widow of James Fournier. Their grandson, Laurence Eustache Gamelin, born in 1704, married in 1740 Mary Joseph Dudevoir dit Lachine, born in 1721, daughter of Claude Dudevoir dit Lachine and Barbara Cardinal. Laurence Gamelin engaged in the Indian trade and was living at Detroit as early as 1741. In 1755 he was captain of militia; he was buried at Detroit, March 7, 1771. Mary Joseph Dudevoir was buried, Jan. 10, 1803.