Dominique Ducharme

Who was Dominique Ducharme?

Dominique Ducharme, from Lachine, Quebec, was a French Canadian fur trader, settler, militia officer, and public servant.

He was named François Ducharme at birth, the son of Jean-Marie Ducharme. In 1793 Ducharme was the first white European to settle in the Fox Valley. He paid two barrels of rum to two Indians for land on both sides of the Fox River near the Kaukauna rapids, this gave him control of the portage around and of the lower Fox. The Ducharme deed was Wisconsin's first recorded deed. He built a house on the land and settled there. He began trading with the Menomini and Chippewa Indians. At the time, 1,500 Indians lived in the village of Kaukauna.

The following year, he and another trader, Jacob Franks, obtained from the Menominee Indians “for value received,” a 999-year lease on a total of 1,200 acres on both sides of the Fox at La Baye; at the time Ducharme already possessed a concession on one side of the river beside one of the leased lots. He is presumed to have continued to engage in fur trading in the west for the next 15 years; certainly he acquired a working knowledge of several native dialects.

Ducharme eventually returned to the Montreal district, settling at Lac des Deux Montagnes. On 26 June 1810, he married Agathe de Lorimier, a Métis daughter of Claude-Nicolas-Guillaume de Lorimier, resident Indian agent at Caughnawaga. On 21 July 1812, after the US invaded Canada, Ducharme was commissioned a lieutenant in the Pointe-Claire Battalion of Militia. In May 1813 Ducharme was ordered to the Niagara frontier, Upper Canada, in command of a party of Six Nations Indians from Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes and Saint-Régis.