Jean François Chevalier
Jean François Chevalier was born in April 1819 at Neuvelle-lès-la-Charité, a farming village in the Haute-Saône, in eastern France between Vesoul and Gray. His birth was entered in the village register on 9 April 1819. His father, also Jean François Chevalier, was a cultivator there, and his mother was Claudinette Duffourg. His father died in 1832, when the boy was thirteen, and he went on living with his widowed mother at Neuvelle.
On 16 May 1837, at the town hall of Grandvelle, a few miles away, he married Jeanne Françoise Simon. He was eighteen years and one month old and gave his occupation as propriétaire, a man who owned some land. She was seventeen and a half, the daughter of the late Pierre Simon and of Françoise Vienney, and lived with her mother at Perrenot, the hamlet joined to Grandvelle. Both were minors under French law, so his mother and her mother stood beside them and gave their consent. The banns had been read at Neuvelle and at Grandvelle on the Sundays of 30 April and 7 May.
Their first child was born a year later, on 10 May 1838, at Françoise Vienney's house in Perrenot. The next day Jean François carried the boy before the mayor of Grandvelle and named him Pierre Jean Baptiste, and he signed the register in a clear hand. In Kansas the boy was called Peter. At least three more children followed: Justin Laurent, Annette and Claude François Jean Baptiste.
Jeanne Françoise died at Neuvelle on 16 February 1847, aged about 27. Their children did not fare well. Claude François Jean Baptiste, born on 5 February 1843, and Annette both died in July 1843, eleven days apart. Justin Laurent, born on 27 October 1845, died in October 1851. Two sons grew up: Peter, and Crépin Adolphe, born on 26 October 1844.
His mother Claudine died at Neuvelle on 10 January 1850. On 19 June 1850 he married again at the town hall of Neuvelle. He was thirty-one, a propriétaire and cultivator. The bride was Mélanie Rollot, twenty, born at Lieffrans on 11 July 1830, who lived at Neuvelle with her parents, Jean Rollot and Marie Curlin. Both parents stood by her and consented. His uncle François Duffourg, 53, and his first cousin Antoine Coudry, 28, the village schoolmaster, were his witnesses. Hers were her uncle François Moussard and her brother Jean Rollot, a wheelwright. In Kansas she was called Malvina. Their son Jean Baptiste was born on 15 August 1851, Ernest on 28 September 1852 and Eugénie on 19 November 1853.
In April 1854 he took out a passport at the prefecture for the United States, by way of New York, for himself and one son under age. Peter, fifteen, was very probably that son. Two men of Grandvelle took passports for the same crossing that month, among them Jacques Dessery with his wife and seven children. Mélanie stayed at Neuvelle with the little ones, expecting another child. Félix Amédée was born on 14 September 1854 and died ten days later. In January 1856 her father Jean Rollot was given a free passport for New Orleans, travelling with his daughter, her three small children and a boy of eleven, which was very probably Mélanie and the children going to join Jean François, with Adolphe.
A Lawrence newspaper later put his coming to Kansas at 1856 or 1857. In August 1860 he was farming in Delaware Township, Leavenworth County, aged 43, with Malvina and their children. His son Peter, now married, farmed on the next place. His sister Jeanne Baptiste, the widow of Jacques Dessery, later settled near Tonganoxie in the same county.
By 1870 he had moved to Wakarusa Township in Douglas County, southeast of Lawrence. His farm lay by Blue Mound, a lone hill above the Wakarusa River, and an atlas of 1887 shows it as 114 acres under the name J. F. Chevalier. The family grew large. In 1880 the house held Malvina and the children Rosa, Mary, Justin, Lucy, Flora, Paulina and Leona. He and Malvina later parted. About 1888 he married a widow, Alabama Brown, and a son, Percy, was born to them about 1889.
About 1889 he traded the Blue Mound farm to a man named Pavey for land in Marion County, Kansas, and in Illinois. He claimed he had been cheated, went to law, won in a justice's court, and in June 1891 the district court upheld a judgment of $800 in his favor.
That same week he was dead. On the morning of Monday 15 June 1891 he was working for J. D. Bowersock, hauling scrap wire to sink above the Kansas River dam at the foot of New Hampshire Street in Lawrence. He was somewhat hard of hearing. He crossed the Santa Fe tracks to look at the wire, saw the eastbound train coming, remembered that his horses stood unhitched, and ran for them down the track. The engine caught him at the plank crossing. He was carried into the paper mill and died there. He was 72, and he is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery at Lawrence, in an unmarked grave beside his daughter Flora.
Sources
If Jean François Chevalier is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Jean François Chevalier (1819-1891)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jean-francois-chevalier-1819-1891-ad4cb5.