Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Vitaline Lebeau was born on November 2, 1836, in Montréal, Canada. The city was called by Iroquois, Tiohtià:ke. Other First Nations languages, such as Algonquin, refer to it as Moniang. In 1642 the place, a mission, was called Ville-Marie. And by 1705, Ville-Marie was called Montréal, which it is still called today.

When Vitaline was a young adult, she was married and recently widowed. She moved from Montréal and settled south of Shakopee with a relative, either brother or cousin, by the name of Jean-Baptiste Lebeau.

Jean-Baptiste Lebeau was one of the Canadian voyagers that came up the Rivière Saint-Pierre (St. Peter’s River) with Thomas Holmes and William Quinn. Holmes wanted to establish townsites with an eye to the profit they represented. He asked for carte blanche trading rights but was denied. He was then allowed to be licensed for two sites.

Thomas Holmes was a townsite promoter. By getting a license to trade in 1851, Holmes was a squatter on Indian land. It gave him a toehold on townsites before claims could be legally settled. Holmes “improved” the land with dwellings, warehouses, and stores, and thus were less liable to be taken over by settlers and promoters who came along later. “In other words, fur trading was not an end in itself with these men as it had been with some of the earlier traders in the valley. Rather, it was a means of obtaining a legal or quasi-legal claim on the land they staked out before they could actually file their preemptions with the government,” said Dr. Norene Roberts and Dr. Clark Dobbs in A Lower Minnesota River Valley Cultural Resource Study and Interpretive Plan for the Minnesota Valley State Park & Trail(June 1993).

So, Thomas Holmes, William Quinn, Jean Baptiste Lebeau, and others headed up the Rivière Saint-Pierre. The river became the Minnesota River on June 19, 1852. “Bringing logs and his stock of goods on the flat-boat Wild Paddy, Tom Holmes soon had a log trading house built on the brow of the river bank. This was the first building in the original town site of Shakopee,” said Julius Coller II in The Shakopee Story, pp. 25-26.

By February 11, 1861 Vitaline Lebeau married François-Xavier Beaxine Boan at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, with Father Cornelius Willman, OSB officiating. The wedding was witnessed by Peter Shumbeau and Louis Lebeau.

François- was born on December 24, 1831 at Ste-Therese, Thérèse-de-Blainville, Quebec, Canada. His parents were Christophe Beaxine Boan, who was born in 1780, and Marie Louise Louéraud, who was born in 1787 in Québec, Canada.

Xavier was a clock and watch maker and a ticker, and a jeweler in downtown Shakopee.

Vitaline and Xavier lived in Lots 4 and 5, Block 51 in Shakopee. They had eight children: Mary (1860-1888); Uxilda (1862-1870); Francis (1862-1869); Celia (1864-1939); Rose (1867); Emma (1868-1949); Vitaline (1872-1873); and Leo (1873-1873).

François- was also an alcoholic, according to The DeMers Family of Normandy, New France, Minnesota & Beyondby Father William J. Paron in 2011. Father Paron’s mother, Corinne Ann Dellwo Paron, remembered being told by Celia, her grandmother, that the family lived in fear continually, never knowing when her father would come home and beat his wife (Vitaline) and children.

With the passing of time, life became increasingly intolerable with Xavier, and so, with the permission of St. Mary’s pastor, Vitaline kicked François out of the house. This happened prior to the 1885 Minnesota Census.

François- moved to Duluth, and he died on March 23, 1900, and was buried there.

Vitaline Lebeau Boan, after some peaceful years, died on March 25, 1916, and was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Eagle Creek. Her children, Mary, Francis, Rose, Vitaline, and Leo were also buried there.

Bibliography

Roberts, Dr. Norene and Dr. Clark Dobbs. A Lower Minnesota River Valley Cultural Resource Study and Interpretive Plan for the Minnesota Valley State Park & Trail. June 1993.

Coller, Julius II. The Shakopee Story, pp. 25-26.

Paron, Father William J. The DeMers Family of Normandy, New France, Minnesota & Beyond. 2011.