My Genealogy Hound

LOUIS C. GENDRON. Among those who cultivated a portion of the soil of Old Kaskaskia Commons, Randolph County, to good advantage, may be mentioned the subject of this sketch, who departed this life January 6, 1893. He was born in Old Kaskaskia March 4, 1833, and was a son of Luke and Mary (Toulier) Gendron, also natives of Kaskaskia. They were members of old French families and came originally from Canada.

Our subject spent his early life in the village of Kaskaskia, and acquired the most of his knowledge after reaching mature years, and even attended school after his marriage. His early years were spent in farming in connection with his brother, but on attaining his majority our subject departed for Minnesota, where he rafted on the Mississippi River for fourteen years.

April 22, 1861, Louis C. Gendron and Miss Harriet, daughter of Anton and Mary Eugenia (Lasourse) Lonvall, were united in marriage. The parents of Mrs. Gendron were also natives of Kaskaskia, and the father was of Spanish descent. The mother was the daughter of Paschal and Harriet (Dennis) Lasourse and reared a family of six children, of whom Harriet was the third in order of birth. She was born February 18, 1843, in Old Kaskaskia, where her girlhood was spent and where her marriage in the old French Church was celebrated. For the first four years after establishing a home of his own our subject operated a farm in what is known as the Big Fields, a tract of land that has since been swept away by the river. At the expiration of that time, desiring to visit his brother who lived in California, and with a view to bettering his own condition financially, Mr. Gendron started overland in April, 1865, for the Golden State. On reaching Salt Lake City he was induced to join a party going to Montana, where rich discoveries had been made in gold and silver near Helena and Virginia. Not succeeding as he had desired, and longing for his home and family, he in the fall of the above year, in company with other men similarly inclined, started down the Yellow Stone River in flat-boats, which had to be covered thickly with hides of deer and buffaloes in order to protect them from the assaults of Indians.

The two years succeeding his return home, our subject was engaged in rafting on the Upper Mississippi, and in the spring of 1868 he took a fifty-years’ lease of forty acres of land on Kaskaskia Commons. There he continued to reside until his decease, which occurred January 6, 1893. His wife has since added sixty acres to the estate and is conducting affairs in a very profitable manner. To Mr. and Mrs. Gendron have been born the following children: Annie, Eugenia Adelia, Jacob Perry, Jacob and John (twins), Ellen, Francis, Elmer E., Virgil A. and Lillian L.

Like most of the old settlers of Kaskaskia, Mrs. Gendron and her family are of the Catholic faith, and worship in the church where hangs the old bell sent here by King Louis of France in 1742. It was exhibited in the Convent of La Rabida at the World’s Fair in Chicago, and as a curiosity is to be taken on a tour through the United States. The congregation in Kaskaskia, which is presided over by Father Goosen, is the oldest in the Mississippi Valley, dating back over two hundred years.