Jean Babtiste Mirandeau

Jean Babtiste Mieandeau ( — 1819) was the first permanent white settler in Milwaukee. He arrived in the year of 1795, at the same time as Jacques Vieau.

Mirandeau brought his Indian wife here, built a permanent home, raised a large family (10 children, by some accounts; 21 by others), died and was buried here in 1819, about where the Wells building, 324 E. Wisconsin av. now stands. That should qualify him as a Milwaukeean.

Mirandeau was a blacksmith, but no ordinary artisan. Most sources agree that he was a gentleman of great refinement," of high social and family ties, and of good education.

On the reasons for his coming to such a backwoods place as Milwaukee, the sources are more sharply at difference. One version had it that he had studied for the priesthood, but had absorbed heretical ideas from reading Rousseau and Voltaire, and had run away on the very eve of taking orders.

Another writer held than an unhappy love affair had sent him into the wilderness to forget. At Mackinac he married a woman of the Ottawa tribe, which furnished spouses for many of the traders.

Mirandeau is said to have had an extensive library in his cabin home here, but on this point, too, there is disagreement.

We do know that he set up his forge and built his home on the east bank of the Milwaukee river, near the present Juneau Avenue bridge, and that he made axes, knives, spearheads, fishing tackle, hoes, horseshoes and a kind of sleigh known as a "carry-all," which became very popular with his fellow traders. These one horse conveyances he later changed to a type of wheel wagon, the first made in Milwaukee.

In winter, races were held on the frozen marshes, Mirandeau's sleighs being drawn by fleet Indian ponies.

The gentleman blacksmith was also clever at repairing guns, and from 1812 to 1814 was at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) fixing guns for the United States army. When he came back to Milwaukee he brought with him the first two cows ever seen here, much to the panic of the Indians, who considered them strange and fearsome beasts.

Mirandeau was a farmer of sorts, raising wheat, corn, potatoes and beans on an extensive tract near the river mouth. He made his own charcoal from the hardwood in the forest.

His versatility did not extend to smelting his own iron, however; that was carried from the east on the infrequent lake vessels stopping here.

To Mirandeau's other capacities we must add a large one for liquor. One of his daughters, Josette, confessed blushingly that her father was intemperate, and that his death, in 1819, came when he tried to lift a heavy backlog for the fireplace while he was drunk. A more charitable account attributes his death to pneumonia, caught when he waded chest deep through an icy river on a hunting trip.

Mirandeau seems to have been popular with the Indians, for they gave him 1,000 acres of land between the Milwaukee river and the lake. Mirandeau died, however, before the treaty perpetuating title to these lands was made, and his heirs lost most of them to Solomon Juneau. It is said that they relied upon a supposed friend to inform them of the date of the government land sale at Green Bay in 1835, and because he did not tell them, Juneau was able to buy most of their claims.