Good morning to all. I’m trying to get the Jude W. Bourassa family information finished before I leave for a month’s study trip in France. I will provide the information and photographs that I have available but it will certainly have gaps and holes since information is sketchy at best.
You’ll remember that Jude W. Bourassa and his brother Joseph Napoleon were mixed bloods of French Canadian and Native American ancestry. They were among the very earliest settlers in Uniontown, Shawnee County, Kansas (on the Shawnee/Wabaunsee County line near the Kansas River) and Jude W. Bourassa and his family removed about 2 miles west of Uniontown, building a house/inn and mill on what became known as Mill Creek. They had to be among the first settlers in what is today Maple Hill Township, arriving in the mid-1840s. Their log house and stone water-powered mill were finished by 1848.
Jude W. Bourassa was married to Marie Catherine Sharrai on June 21, 1833 at Bertrand, Michigan. Bertrand, Michigan is located in the very southwest corner of Michigan near the Indiana and Illinois state lines intersect with Michigan. Bertrand was at the center of the Potawatomi homeland and was also a major fur trading post on the St. Joseph River. I have visited there many times and have agreed with this choice of settlement as the area is very beautiful. Today, the headquarters of the federally re-recognized Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians is nearby.
Bertrand is also near Niles, Michigan where Rev. Isaac McCoy established the Carey Mission School for Native Americans. The school included Joseph Napoleon and Jude W. Bourassa, Marie Catherine Sharrai and many other Sharrai and Bourassa relatives. Although lists of students exist it is often difficult to discern identities because students were sometimes listed by their Christian European names and at other times by their Native American names. Jude W. Bourassa may have known Marie Catherine Sharrai before they attended the Carey Mission boarding school, but they certainly knew each other there.
It would appear that after their marriage, Jude and Catherine Bourassa lived with Jude’s father, Daniel Bourassa, an important French-Canadian fur trader. Daniel Bourassa and his large extended family lived both in southwest Michigan and also in Northern Indiana around present-day Rochester, Indiana and the Yellow River/Lake Manitou area. It was not uncommon for the fur traders and Native Americans to move from winter to summer camps/homes. Daniel, Jude and Joseph Napoleon Bourassa were all given 160-acre parcels of land under the terms of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. These they retained until after being removed tp the Sugar Creek Mission and Reserve in Kansas with the Potawatomi people on the Trail of Death in 1838.
With that background, I will end this section with a map of the Trail of Death which has been a focus of the Fulton County Historical Society and its former director, Shirley Willard. Every five years a commerative journey from Rochester to the Sugar Creek Mission and Reserve near Ossawatomi, Kansas is held. Many members of the Pearl Family from St. Marys and the Wamego Family from Wamego, and many others have participated.
