Note 1506 — Chapter IX

Of M. Rocheblave very little is known. His full name, Philippe François de Rastel, Chevalier de Rocheblave, with his nativity, appears in the parish records of Kaskaskia for April 11, 1763, in the third publication of the banns of his marriage to Michel Marie Dufresne (E. G. Mason's Kaskaskia, p. 17). He is mentioned in 1756 (N. Y. Col. Doc., x. 435) as a cadet at Fort Duquesne; in July, 1757, on the Potomac (Ibid. 581); and in July, 1759, at Niagara (Ibid. 992). Many of his letters [in French] are in the Canadian Archives. Several of them which I have, show him to have been a man of sensibility and refinement. He said he was a British subject because he had been abandoned by France at the peace. One of them is a long and interesting letter dated at "Fort Gage, July 4, 1778", which was probably sent off by boat a few hours before he was captured by Col. Clark. He was a prisoner in Virginia until the autumn of 1780, when he broke his parole and went to New York (Jefferson's Writings, i. 258). His family were left at Kaskaskia; and Gov. Henry of Virginia, in his instructions to Col. John Todd, Dec. 12, 1778, says: "Mr. Rocheblave's wife and family must not suffer for want of that property of which they were bereft by our troops. It is to be restored to them, if possible. If this cannot be done, the public must support them." (Calendar of Va. Papers, i. 314). His wife, signing her name "Marie Michel de Rocheblave", wrote from Kaskaskia, March 27, 1780, to Gen. Haldimand, appealing to his humanity for pecuniary help, as the rebels had taken everything from her but her debts. (MS. letter furnished to me by Mr. B. F. Stevens.)