52 Ancestors #11: François Brunet, The Blacksmith Who Changed Colonial Medical Law

I'm writing about my ancestors for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.  Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate some of the people who helped me be here today!

When a New Orleans blacksmith died in 1743, no one could have anticipated that it would cause the colonial government of Louisiana to set a precedent in medical law that we take for granted today.  Prior to the death of François Brunet, it was perfectly legal (and common!) to practice medicine without any regulation or license.  Brunet's death would change that in a matter of weeks.

Register entry for Francois Brunet's baptism, Parish of St. Sauveur, Plancöet

François Brunet was born in Plancöet, Brittany to Floriant Brunet and Jeanne Groisel, probably in 1695; his baptism was recorded as taking place on 15 November of that year.¹  By 1727 he had left France and was carrying out his trade in New Orleans on Rue Toulouse.²  The New Orleans parish records record him on 13 November 1731 marrying the widow of a man who died at Natchez, Marie Eleque.³  The stepdaughter he gained from this marriage, Marie Jeanne St. Jean (my 8th great-grandmother) was evidently quite close to the Brunets, so that when her own daughters were born her stepsister Marie Louise Brunet was godmother to both and the namesake of one.⁴  Later church records from Natchitoches regarding these daughters record Marie Jeanne's surname as Brunet rather than St. Jean.⁵  In 1737 Marie Eleque died and François contracted to marry again; he filed an inventory of Marie's succession to account for any property due to her children prior to his remarriage.⁶  This was evidently his third marriage, and records of the council show that his third wife survived him.⁷

The parish entries and records of the council tell us how Brunet lived, and perhaps more importantly to the course of the law itself, they also tell us how he died. On 5 January 1743, Brunet got into an altercation with a farmer named Marin LeNormant and apparently suffered a sword wound to his leg.  He sought treatment from a young naval surgeon, but within a few days was dead.  The authorities in New Orleans evidently concluded that Brunet's wound itself had not been life threatening, and that malpractice on the part of the surgeon was to blame.  As a result, they decreed that in future anyone wishing to practice medicine anywhere in the entire colony of Louisiana must first obtain a license from the government in New Orleans.⁸  The council issued their decree regarding licenses on 19 January, less than two weeks after he died, and additional correspondence between New Orleans and Paris would result in Versailles issuing a pardon for Le Normant on 27 February.⁹

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1 Parish register of St. Sauveur, Plancöet. Departmental Archives of the Côtes-d'Armor^↩

2 Huber, Leonard V. New Orleans Architecture Volume III: The Cemeteries. (Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing, 1974), 140^↩

3 Earl C. Woods and Charles E. Nolan, eds. Sacramental records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans: volume 1, 1718-1750. (New Orleans: Archdiocese of New Orleans, 1984), 97.^↩

4 Woods and Nolan, 44. See entries for "Cave".^↩

5 Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Natchitoches, 1729-1803: abstracts of the Catholic Church registers of the French and Spanish post of St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches in Louisiana. (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007) See entries referencing the younger daughter Marie Louise Cavé (Mme Remy Poissot, Jr) at the births of several of her children. Her parents' names are given in these records as François Cavé and Marie Jeanne Brunet. The New Orleans records show that Marie Jeanne went by St. Jean (her birth father's dit name), not Brunet.^↩

6 "Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana", Louisiana Historical Quarterly 9 (1926): 132. François is listed as tutor (guardian) to children from his marriage to Marie as well as to the children of Marie by her first husband, St. Jean.^↩

7 "Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana", LHQ 21 (1938): 315-6. These abstracts concern a suit filed against Brunet's estate and against the Widow Brunet (Jeanne Hubert) by Brunet's son-in-law Claude Chenier on behalf of his wife, the same Marie Louise Brunet mentioned above who was the godmother of her stepsister's daughters.^↩

8 Stange, Marion. Vital Negotiations: Protecting Settlers' Health in Colonial Louisiana and South Carolina. (Göttingen, Germany: V&R unipress GmbH, 2012), 110-11.^↩

9 Surrey, Nancy Maria Miller. Calendar of manuscripts in Paris archives and libraries relating to the history of the Mississippi Valley to 1803, Volume 2. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dept. of Historical Research, 1926-28), 1001, 1024. The documents here regarding what they term the "Brunet-Marin le Normant affair" date from February 1743.^↩