Jacques-Timothée Boucher, Sieur de Montbrun (; 23 March 1731 – October 1826), anglicized as Timothy Demonbreun, was a French-Canadian

fur trade The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the mos ...

r, a Lieutenant in the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

, and Lieutenant-Governor of the

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

Territory. He is known as the "first citizen" of

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...

Hunter and entrepreneur

Demonbreun's great-grandfather,

Pierre Boucher Pierre Boucher de Boucherville (born Pierre Boucher; 1 August 162219 April 1717) was a French settler, soldier, officer, naturalist, official, governor, and ennobled aristocrat in Nouvelle-France or New France (in what is now Canada). Early life P ...

, was the first Canadian to be raised to the rank of

nobility Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy (class), aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below Royal family, royalty. Nobility has often been an Estates of the realm, estate of the realm with many e ...

. His father, Etienne, served in the French army in Canada during the

French and Indian War The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the ...

, the North American front of the

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (1754� ...

. After his country, France, was beaten in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Canada in 1759, Jacques-Timothee Boucher at the age of 28 migrated south to the British colonies, what became the United States, and got into the

. Preferring the simple life of a trapper and hunter, he dropped the noble title, adapting it in an anglicization as his new surname, Demonbreun. He had begun traveling to the Middle Tennessee area in the 1760s while in his 30s. In 1766, while hunting near the muddy water at the mouth of a small creek entering the

Cumberland River The Cumberland River is a major waterway of the Southern United States. The U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 8, 2011 river drains almost of southern Kentucky and ...

in the region called ''French Lick,'' Demonbreun noticed a large number of buffalo and

deer Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...

using a

salt lick A mineral lick (also known as a salt lick) is a place where animals can go to lick essential mineral nutrients from a deposit of salts and other minerals. Mineral licks can be naturally occurring or artificial (such as blocks of salt that farm ...

. The spring is a natural source of

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

ated water, and eventually became known as

Sulphur Dell Sulphur Dell, formerly known as Sulphur Spring Park and Athletic Park, was a baseball park in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. It was located just north of the Tennessee State Capitol building in the block bounded by modern-day Jackson Street, ...

. He lived in a

cave A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...

there for several months until he could build a cabin near the river to use as his home base for fur trapping. Demonbreun made frequent trips to the early Nashville settlement to engage in fur trading with local Native Americans. When James Robertson and the

Watauga Watauga can refer to: ;Places *Watauga, Kentucky * Watauga County, North Carolina * Watauga, South Dakota * Watauga, Tennessee * Watauga, Texas ;Bodies of Water * Watauga Lake in Tennessee * The Watauga River in North Carolina and Tennessee ;Shi ...

settlers established Fort Nashborough in 1778, they were surprised and relieved to find that Demonbreun, a white man, was thriving there. The cave that he lived in is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Davidson County, Tennessee in July of 1979. It was first explored between 1750-1799. The cave has been named after him: "

Demonbreun's Cave Demonbreun's Cave is a cave in Nashville which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Davidson County, Tennessee (NRHP) in 1979. The cave was named after a fur trapper named Timothy Demonbreun. History There is a large ...

Military service

Demonbreun joined the

George Rogers Clark George Rogers Clark (November 19, 1752 – February 13, 1818) was an American surveyor, soldier, and militia officer from Virginia who became the highest-ranking American patriot military officer on the northwestern frontier during the Ame ...

expedition and received an appointment as lieutenant governor in command of the

Northwest Territory The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolutionary War. Established in 1 ...

. He settled at

Fort Kaskaskia Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site is a 200-acre (0.8 km²) park near Chester, Illinois, on a blufftop overlooking the Mississippi River. It commemorates the vanished frontier town of '' Old Kaskaskia'' and the support it gave to George ...

in the Illinois Country, where he served as lieutenant governor from 1783 to 1786. In 1786 he resigned from military service and soon thereafter moved permanently to Nashville.

Family

Demonbreun traveled extensively, and managed two careers and two families. He fulfilled his duties as lieutenant governor of the Illinois Territory and maintained a family in Kaskaskia. Demonbreun had five children by his wife, Therese Archange Gibault, in Illinois. During his time in Nashville, he took a mistress named Elizabeth Bennett and had three children by her: Polly (Cagle); William; and John Baptiste Demonbreun. . In his will, he mentions three of his legal children by name: Agnes Doza, Julia Johnson, and Timothy DeMonbreun. He specifically lists children William, John, and Polly as illegitimate (or natural). He does not mention the mother of either family of children, nor his son Felix, though Felix Demonbreun is well documented through census and other records. According to Felix's grandson, Samuel, Felix was removed from Timothy's will because he elected to become a Baptist minister against the wishes of his father who was French Catholic.

Later life

Eventually, Demonbreun developed a thriving mercantile and fur trading business in the Nashville area with seventeen employees. By 1800 his mercantile business on Nashville's Public Square advertised such items as window

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed ...

, cured deer hides, and buffalo tongues. An 1809 newspaper advertisement announced that he was opening a tavern, also on the Public Square. The Revolutionary French hero, Marquis de Lafayette, visited Nashville on May 4, 1825, during his farewell tour of the United States.

Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...

presided over a banquet in his honor at the Nashville Inn. Jacques-Timothée, or Timothy Demonbreun, by then very elderly, conversed with the Marquis in their native French. When he died in 1826, Demonbreun divided his substantial fortune among his children.

Historical records and memorials

No record of the burial site of Nashville's "First Citizen" survived. He was most likely buried at Nashville City Cemetery but early records no longer exist. A historical marker at the northwest corner of Third Avenue North and Broadway, in the city, marks the site of his home. In 1996 a monument sculpted by

Alan LeQuire Alan LeQuire (born 1955) is an American sculptor from Nashville, Tennessee. Many of his sculptures are installed in the city. Early life Alan LeQuire was born in 1955. His father, Virgil, was a physician and researcher on the faculty of Vanderbi ...

to honor Demonbreun was erected near Fort Nashborough, overlooking the Cumberland River in downtown Nashville. Demonbreun Street, named for him, crosses Interstate 40 in downtown Nashville. A monument has been erected in honor of Timothy Demonbreun at Carney Cemetery in Ashland City, Tennessee, but historians do not believe he was buried there. At the time of his death, this was the farm of his past mistress Elizabeth Bennett, and her husband Joseph Duratt.

Name

Because French orthography was so fluid at the time, and because of widespread variations in

English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and p ...

, the spelling and version of Demonbreun's name is of some debate. The preferred use today is Timothy Demonbreun, though the first name is sometimes rendered in the French as ''Timothé'', ''Timothée'' or ''Timothe''. As for the last name, it derives from the French words, de (of) mont (mount) bruen (brown) for ''of mount brown'', and is also rendered variously as ''Demontbrun'', ''de Montbrun'', ''Demontbreun'', ''de Montbreun'', ''De Mont-Breun'', ''De Monbrun'', and others. Descendants of Demonbreun (it is a very common

surname In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...

Middle Tennessee Middle Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of the U.S. state of Tennessee that composes roughly the central portion of the state. It is delineated according to state law as 41 of the state's 95 counties. Middle Tennessee contains the s ...

) spell the name with and without the middle "T," as one word or two, with a "U" in place of the "O," with and without the "E," and with an "N" or an "M" at the end. In addition, other variations such as ''Demumbrine'' and "Demombrum" also exist. Demonbreun Street in Nashville shows the preferred spelling. A popular local pronunciation is , and rhymes with "Northumbrian."