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Antoine Laumet
(
aka Antoine
De Lamothe-Cadillac )
and
the Cadillac "Family
Crest"
The
[not quite
true] Story of
Antoine "de la Mothe Cadillac"
[ as told by the company in its 25th anniversary brochure in 1927 ]
[
my comments in square brackets, not italicized, blue font ]
Antoine de la Mothe
Cadillac after whom the Cadillac car was named, possessed a
pioneering, roving spirit.
He was born at Toulouse
in 1657 [in
fact, he was born Antoine Laumet on March 5, 1658 at St.
Nicolas-de-la-Grave, a small market town just a few miles west of
Castelsarrasin, about 40 miles from Toulouse, in France's Tarn &
Garonne Department].
At the age of sixteen he entered the army, and saw several years of
service in France [guesswork
- in fact, little is known about Laumet's childhood, his adolescence
or his means of existence up to 1687].
Stories he heard of the New World appealed to his adventurous nature
and eventually drew him to these shores.
He
came over in 1683 and settled at Port Royal in Nova Scotia. In 1684
the King granted him six square miles of land at what is now Bar
Harbor, Maine, and also Mount Desert Island off the Maine coast
[Laumet-Cadillac
had requested a concession in 1687; it was granted in 1688].
As commandant of Michilimackinac, a post he obtained in 1694, he
distinguished himself.
But
the event for which he is chiefly noted was the founding of the city
of Detroit. This occurred in July, 1701, exactly 225 years ago [remember,
this was written in 1927 - also, it was
not until 1706 and 1707 that the French crown acknowledged that a
colony had indeed developed in Detroit]
Canoeing
down the Detroit river as far as Grosse Isle, he turned
upstream and carefully surveying the shore, selected a point near
what is now the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Shelby Street, for
the erection of Fort Ponchartrain.
Little
did the French pioneer think that he was founding a settlement that
two and a quarter centuries later would have grown not only to be
the fourth largest city in the United States with a million and a
half population [again,
in 1927],
but also the greatest and largest automobile manufacturing city in
the whole world.
Still
more impossible would it have been to vision that the name of
Cadillac, by reason of its adoption by the Cadillac Motor
Car Company of Detroit, should have become a name known throughout
the world as emblematic of all that is highest in automobile design
and construction.
The
name of Cadillac, the man, outside the United States and France
would probably have been confined alone to students of history, but
the motor car bearing his crest has carried the name to all four
corners of the Globe.
With
a keen eye to business, Cadillac attracted to him during the first
winter in Detroit 6000 Indians and established trade with them.
Cadillac was recalled to France in 1710 [in
fact, he was asked to report to Louisiana but refused and instead
set sail for France in 1711, of his own free will, with his wife and
children; he returned to the American continent (Louisiana) only in
June 1713] and
was subsequently made Governor of Louisiana, the largest amount of
land ever ruled by any governor in America.
In
1716 political troubles beset him. He was deposed, tried, and
sentenced to the Bastile
[read "the Bastille"] whence
he emerged in 1718 [reading
this, you might think that Laumet-Cadillac spent up to to two years
in Paris' infamous Bastille prison; in fact, he was there
only from October 1717 to early February 1718, i.e. about five
months].
His last years were spent as Governor of Castelsarrasin, in
Southern France [he
was appointed to that office in 1722],
and there he died on October 15, 1730,
in his home at Place du
Chateau.
Just
as the history of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac stands for all that
is significant in pioneering, so does the Cadillac car symbolize
actual pioneering effort in the motor world.
The
Cadillac car was also a pioneer in many respects, for in its
inception it was built but a single cylinder car - though even then
it was preeminent in its field. But slowly the craftsman's
instinct of Cadillac effected improvement after improvement in
engineering design until ultimately the first V-type eight-cylinder
engine in America was evolved [too
early (1927) for any reference to the later sixteen and
twelve-cylinder engines of 1930].
There
follows an explanation of the Cadillac crest which the copy writer
affirms was designed four centuries before Columbus discovered
America and that Laumet-Cadillac was descended from the old
counts of Toulouse, who were affiliated with the Royal French stock.
Well,
it does make for a good story! But history tells another tale. In
fact, many sources agree that Laumet-Cadillac probably
designed the crest himself,
around the time of his marriage in 1687, borrowing heavily on the
authentic coat of arms of an old
neighbopr of his, Baron Sylvester of Esparbes [or Esparbès]
de Lussan, lord of
Lamothe-Bardigues, a small township near Toulouse, France.
More on that topic later.
The
[true]
Story of Antoine Laumet
[ alias Antoine de Lamothe-Cadillac ]
Much of
the factual information herein comes from translations of historical
documents in the Burton Collection, Detroit, others from the
archives of the French navy in Paris and of those of Quebec Province.
The are consistent with the stories told in a number of historic
novels about the man, including Karen Elizabeth Bush's First Lady
of Detroit, published by Wayne State University Press in 2001.
With
only a few gray areas, historians have been able to piece together the
saga of le Sieur Antoine de Lamothe-Cadillac, founder, in
1701, of a small trading settlement on the site where now towers
mighty Detroit, motor capital of the world and home to the aptly named
Cadillac automobile. But history reveals that he was, nonetheless, a
bit of a scoundrel who had but his own interests at heart!
Born
Antoine Laumet on March 5, 1658 at St. Nicolas-de-la-Grave, a
small market town just a few miles west of Castelsarrasin in France's
Tarn & Garonne Department, the self-styled Lamothe-Cadillac
was in fact the son of one Jean Laumet, an assistant
magistrate in the local court. His mother, a modest home-maker,
was born Jeanne Pechagut.
French nobility
were not usually housed in the smallest dwelling in the village. They
had large estates and châteaux.
What Antoine had
not counted on was that one day he would sail to the New World, in
search of adventure, and found a tiny settlement there that would
become Detroit, the automobile capital of the world. It was
natural that the future residents of that huge metropolis would, one
day, want to find out the origins of their founder. When you start
digging, you never know what you are going to unearth!
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