Note 26 — Front matter

(page page 27).—Charles Réaume was born of good family about 1752, at La Prairie, opposite Montreal. In 1778 we find him at Detroit as a captain in the British Indian department, in which capacity he accompanied Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton in the expedition against Vincennes in December of that year. When George Rogers Clark captured Vincennes in the following February, Réaume was among the prisoners, but was allowed to return to Detroit upon parole. He appears to have settled at Green Bay about 1790, and it is thought received his first commission as justice of the peace from the British authorities at Detroit. About 1801 he received a similar appointment from William Henry Harrison, then governor of Indiana Territory, of which what is now Wisconsin was then a part. In 1818, Governor Cass, of Michigan Territory, appointed him one of the associate justices for Brown County, of which Green Bay was the seat. In the same year he removed to Little Kaukaulin, ten miles up Fox River from Green Bay, and there engaged in trade with the Indians, in the course of which he fell into drunken habits. In the spring of 1822 he was found dead in his lonely cabin. He was unmarried. Réaume, as stated by Mrs. Kinzie, administered justice in a primitive fashion. During much of his career as a petty magistrate, he was the only civil officer west of Lake Michigan. Ungoverned by statutes or by supervision, he married, divorced, even baptized, his people at will, and was notary and general clerical functionary for the entire population, white and red. He is one of the picturesque characters in Wisconsin history.