Antoine Tonish Aubuchon

AUBUCHON, Antoine.
A common name among the French Aubuchons of Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis, who originated across the river in and around Kaskaskia, Illinois. One Antoine Aubuchon was a wealthy planter at Ste. Genevieve who had one family with his French wife and another with his mistress, Elizabeth Datchurut, described in records as a free negro woman or a free mulatto. When he died in 1798, she sued his white family for a share of the estate and for acknowledgment of the paternity of her ten children. She won a small settlement and the right of her children to use his name, as shown in a lengthy transcript (in French) in the Ste. Genevieve Archives, "Litigation," 1798, No. 80 (microfilm in Missouri Hist. Soc. Library). The "colored" Aubuchons who appeared in St. Louis in the early 1800's were most likely the children of this relationship.