Jean-Baptiste Dulignon dit Lamirande

Biography

A baptism at Michilimackinac, in the Straits of Mackinac region of present-day Michigan, in July 1743 identifies Jean-Baptiste Dulignon’s work directly: the priest called the child’s father a voyageur. His son Paul had been born at Sault Ste. Marie, on the waterway between Lakes Superior and Huron along today’s Michigan–Ontario border, the previous October. The entry places this family across two Great Lakes communities and records Jean-Baptiste’s signature as Dulignon. A later note says that Paul died at the Sault that autumn.

Jean-Baptiste had begun life at Montréal. Baptized there as Jean on June 14, 1686, he was the son of Jean Dulignon and Marie Testard. His father died during his childhood, and his mother subsequently married Antoine Duquet dit Madry.

At Michilimackinac he formed a family with Josephte-Angélique Lemaire, also called Fafard, an Odawa woman. Their church marriage is generally placed in September 1737, although published genealogies disagree about the day. The mission’s baptismal summary records their son Louis-Josué in November 1736, already about two years old, and marks him as subsequently legitimized. The family therefore existed before the church marriage.

Other entries distinguish birth from baptism: Thérèse, born in November 1738, was baptized the following July; Angélique, born in April 1740, was baptized in May. Josephte-Angélique died at Michilimackinac in September 1748. Jean-Baptiste later returned to Montréal, where he died on May 18, 1757; his burial was recorded at the Hôpital général the next day.