Joseph Jourdain was an early french settler in Wisconsin. He married into the Minominee Tribe.
Close to the river's brink stood the low log house belonging to Joseph Jourdain (a blacksmith of repute), the father of Mrs. Eleazer Williams, and where she stayed much of the time during the visits of her somewhat erratic husband to the east. A long low log building occupied the spot where the water works plant stands today, and just south of this the first church in the future city of Green Bay was built a few years earlier, by the Roman Catholic congregation of St. John's. "To the northward a little farther down the river Judge Arndt kept a small inn, its latch string invitingly out and just beside it a store, where the varied wants of the rural population were supplied." The home of the Jourdains was still standing in 1880, a low log structure picturesque in its odd proportions, and occupying lots 4, 5 and 6 on block 6. The Joseph Jourdain tract confirmed by Commissioner Lee in 1821, contained about two acres and fronted on Fox river.

Diagonally across the river lived Judge Jacques Porlier, and from this house the magistrate was summoned on an evening in March, 1823, to perform the marriage ceremony for Eleazer Williams and Madeline Jourdain. The little bride was only fourteen, and it was said in the gossip of the time, not a willing party to the contract. Judge Porlier had known the Williams family long before in Canada, when Williams was a child and living at St. Regis with his father and mother.

Not long after the marriage of Madeline Jourdain the Menominee nation to which she belonged deeded to the handsome girl as a wedding dower a large tract of land on Fox river, including the first camping place of the Oneidas at Little Rapids. Here Williams built a comfortable log house and lived for many years.

SOURCE: "History of Brown County, Wisconsin, past and present" by Martin, Deborah Beaumont; S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, Published 1913

Pipe tomahawk made by Joseph Jourdain

Section AA North
Interred next to wife, Margaret

Section AA North
Joseph Jourdain - Cross on left
Margaret Jourdain - Cross on right