Marinette, WI

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The site of Marinette was first settled by a small Algonquin band of Menominee people, known to the neighboring Ojibwe as “the wild rice people” for their staple crop. It consisted of 40 to 80 men and their families. They lived at the mouth of the Menominee River in the 17th and 18th centuries, which, according to their creation story, was the tribe’s place of origin.

The town and county were named Marinette after Marie Antoinette Chevalier (1793, Langlade County, Wisconsin – 1865, Green Bay, Wisconsin), an influential Métis woman who ran a trading post near the mouth of the Menominee River. She came to be known as “Queen Marinette.” Her father was Bertrand Chevalier, a British trader of French Canadian ancestry, who was involved with an early trading post at Green Bay. Her mother was Lucy, the daughter of a Menominee chief, Wauba-Shish.

Marie Antoinette Chevalier’s family moved with her father to Green Bay. He took a young trading partner, John Jacobs, whom Marie Antoinette later married. They had three children together. In 1823 John and Marie Antoinette came to the settlement that became known as Marinette. Their son John B. Jacobs later plotted the town. Chevalier’s husband disappeared during a trading trip. She later married his partner William Farnsworth of the American Fur Company. They also had three children together. Marie Antoinette Chevalier Farnsworth continued with the trading post after Farnsworth left the area for the next frontier at Sheboygan. She was known for her business sense, fairness, and influence in the region, with ties to both the Menominee and European communities.

After her death, Chevalier was buried in Allouez. In 1987 her descendants had Chevalier reinterred in a sarcophagus at the Forest Home Mausoleum in Marinette. Her original tombstone is on display at the museum on Stephenson Island in Marinette.