A One-Name Study for the BARNUM/BARNHAM Surname
Lambert McAbee appears to be the first member of the family to use that spelling for his surname. He was born on 22 Dec 1762 in La Chine, Isle de Montréal, Québec, New France and died in 1810 in Green Bay, Brown, Wisconsin, at the age of 48 years. La Chine (today Lachine), where Lambert McAbee was born, was first settled as the estate of Robert La Salle in 1668 and named (French La Chine = China) in mockery of his dream that it was a westward passage to China. It was settled as a town in 1675. In 1689 the town was destroyed by the Iroquois Indians and nearly all its inhabitants were massacred. A note which appears in the Programme de Recherche en Démographie Historique (PRDH), of the Université de Montréal states that "S'est etabli au Wisconsin." Notes for Lambert McAbee from The Wisconsin Creoles, by Les and Jeanne Rentmeester, copyright 1987: Early land-grants were made over to the white settlers on the West bank of the Fox River by the Menominee tribe, and on the East side were based mainly on the Langlade-grant arranged in the 1781 British-Indian Treaty. Based on the names appearing in those land-titles, inhabitants at Green Bay then were Baptiste Brunette, Amable Roy, Joseph Roy, Macabez (sic), Fortier, La Rose, Lawe, Porlier, the Grignons, Franks, Ducharmes and Langevins. In the summer of 1816, American soldiers arrived at Mackinac in three sailing schooners, preparing to sail to Green Bay (formerly La Baye) to establish a fort ? taking possession of territory won by the nation during the recently-ended War of 1812. Tomah, a Menominee chief and the half-brother of Lambert McAbee's wife Kaddish (Carron) McAbee, gave the Americans the land on which to build the fort, which was located on the approximate site of the British Fort Edward Augustus and the French Fort Saint Francis. He asked only that his French "brothers" not be molested. The Fox River underwent several name changes during the subsequent years. For instance, Charles de Langlade called it the Ohio River in a 1799 Mackinac land contract which transferred his property to François Boisvert. The language generally used in that area was French, although if a father left a child with the Tribe the Indian language was spoken. The seven McAbee children, whose father Lambert McAbee died when they were young, spoke Menominee most of the time. On one occasion, a legal document had to be translated into Chippewa so that Michael (Missal) McAbee could understand it. Chippewa was the court language of the Algonquin tribes that populated Wisconsin and was understood by all of them. The Menominee language is unusual in that it has no sounds for the letters f, l, and r. What is particularly interesting about the Wisconsin Creole period is the form of self-government that was instituted to cope with their environment and their condition as a dependency of Mackinac. Property transactions were taken care of in informal arrangements, which appeared to be of general knowledge within the community. For instance, in regard to a section of land in West Green Bay which was claimed by Kaddish McAbee (daughter of Lambert McAbee) in 1821, Joseph Roy stated that the Canadian blacksmith Charles La Fond had occupied that land first; that the next claimant was Charles de Langlade in 1778; and the third was Francis Boisvert, who sold it in 1804 to Lambert McAbee, the father of Kaddish and her six siblings. It then became known as Lot #7 on the West side of the Fox River. The following Fur-Traders and Voyageurs were active in the area between 1761 and 1834:
François Macabe of La Chine, employed in 1782 by Angus McIntosh Lambert Maccabe employed in 1794 by Dominic Ducharme and in 1797 by Charles de Langlade Antoine Macabee employed in 1831 by Amable Grignon (Fond du Lac) Jean Baptiste Macabee employed 1822-1828 by Jean Baptiste Grignon Lambert Macabee, Sr. employed 1793-1818 by Dominic & Paul Ducharme (Cacaline) Lambert Macabee, Jr. employed 1816-1829 by Jean Baptiste Grignon (Wisconsin River) Michael Macabee employed in 1824 by Jean Baptiste Grignon and in 1834 by Jean Baptiste Langevin.
Lambert MacAbee's name appears as a witness on a land purchase by Dominic Ducharme in Kaukauna in 1793. At about the same time, Lambert bought Lot #9 on the West Bank of the Fox River from François Boisvert, who had bought it from Charles de Langlade. The original owner had been a blacksmith named La Fond, who had sold it to de Langlade in 1778 along with Lot #7. Many of Lambert's children retained their Indian speech and customs, because their father died when they were young (the oldest of his 7 children was just 10 years old when Lambert died). The family also had the Indian susceptibility to disease and many died in a smallpox epidemic in 1838. For example, three children and one grandchild of Lambert and Kaddish (Carron) McAbee died of smallpox between April 13 and May 12 of that year. Lambert McAbee married Kaddish Carron about 17951 Kaddish Carron was the daughter of Claude Vieux Carron and a Menominee Indian woman whose name is not known. She was born about 1780. Her given name is shown in some sources as Caddish or Kattish. Her father was half French and half Abenaki Indian and her mother was a full-blood Menominee Indian.
Present at his baptism were his father, his mother Lambert Blondeau, Marie-Josèphe Simon and the priest Pertuis.
Lambert died at the age of about 48 years. France transferred the Wisconsin Territory to Britain in 1763. The United States acquired the territory after the Revolution in 1783, but it remained under de facto British control until after the War of 1812.
A Research Guide to the Genealogy of the Barnum/Barnam/Barnham Family Worldwide
AncientFaces - Family History Photos
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