Eulalia Marie Lafitte (Desoto)

Biography

In 1782 Laffitte married nineteen-year-old Marie Anne
(Marianne) de Soto, the daughter of Antonio Manuel de Soto y Bermudes and Marie des Nieges Juchereau de St. Denis. Over the next twenty-eight years Marianne gave birth to nine children, three sons, and six daughters.

Among the De Soto and St. Denis clans, Laffitte's kin were members of the colonial elite who controlled trading posts, plantations, and ranches that stretched from the headwaters of the Sabine to the prairies of Opelousas. Marianne's mother was a daughter of Louis-Antoine Juchereau, sieur de Saint-Denis, the famous cavalier who founded the Natchitoches Post in 1713, and his Spanish bride, Manuela Sanchez. Her paternal grandfather, Don Manuel Antonio de Soto y Bermúdez, was a pioneer at Los. Adaes and one of the dominant figures in the Texas Indian trade from the 1740s through the 1770s.

Other prominent members of the extended St. Denis family included Louis de Blanc and Athanase de Mezieres, Indian traders and commandants at Natchitoches Post under the Spanish regime. Laffitte's brother-in-law, Marcelo de Soto. was also active in the Indian trade. He served stints as a local government official under both the Spanish and the Americans and inherited from Don Manuel Antonio de Soto y Bermúdez the strategic crossroads at Bayou Pierre, where the contraband trace to Texas intersected the ancient trading path between Natchitoches and the upper Red River.[ https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2377&con...]

References

[https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2377&con...] Heritage Society

[https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/DeSoto-11]

• [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Juchereau_de_St._Denis]

Louis Juchereau_de_St._Denis her grandfather

[https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/M1TT-LG1/eulalia-maria-anne-d...]

[http://www.claitors.com/veach/cajunsv4n19.htm]

[https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Eulalia_DeSoto_(1)]

[https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000169678378860] The complete lineage of The Lafitte Family

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jan 6 2021, 0:34:18 UTC