Fran\u03c2ois Drouillard was born in Rivi\u00e8re-des-Prairies, New France, near Montreal, on April 11, 1741. His father, Jean Baptiste Drouillard, was a voyageur. In 1749, the family moved to Detroit where they received a land grant of three arpents on the south shore of the Detroit River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At various times over the course of his life, Fran\u03c2ois was a voyageur, farmer, and served in the militia during and after the French-Indian War (1754-1763) from 1763 to 1765. In 1777, Governor Hamilton appointed him a Lieutenant of the South Coast Militia. Col. McKee, Mr. Baby, and several other regional notables vouched for Drouillard\u2019s character and loyal service, so he was awarded 1200 acres in his land petition of 1796.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1766 Fran\u03c2ois married Marie-Anne Villiers, daughter of Louis Villiers, their immediate neighbour on the shores of the Detroit River. The wedding took place in the dead of winter on January 14th, and in a highly unusual move for the time, the ceremony was held in the Huron Church mission on the south shore, rather than in St. Anne\u2019s church in Fort Detroit, owing to the difficulty of crossing the river due to ice. Their family eventually included twelve children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Drouillard was a staunch supporter of his local Catholic community, and donated land for the construction of what would be named Our Lady of the Rosary Church. Over the course of his 71 years, Fran\u03c2ois lived a remarkable life on Canada\u2019s frontier during our country\u2019s earliest days. Drouillard Road, which now includes the city sector known as \u201cFord City\u201d is named in his honour. He died on September 23, 1812 and is buried in Assumption Cemetery in Windsor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Assumption Cemetery 42.303174″N 83.066995″W (2585 Wyandotte St W, Windsor, ON) photo courtesy of essex.ogs.on.ca<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uelac.org\/Bicentennial-UEL\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}