New World history -- and especially that of the Susquehanna Valley -- is filled with tales but few are more interesting is Madam Montour.
Her life is sketchy, but mythic in proportion. Historians have proposed that Elizabeth "Madam" Catherine Montour led an adventurous life on the French and English frontiers.
She was born in 1667 at Three Rivers, Canada, the daughter of Frenchman Pierre Couc and his Algonkin wife (name unknown).
According to Dr. Paul Wallace, historian and consultant to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission from 1951-57, Madam Montour spent several years in the early 1700s at Forts Mackinac and Detroit where her relatives were engaged in the Indian trade.
John G. Freeze, in an 1879 article, "Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography," reports that she married Roland Montour, "a brave of the Senecas." No further information is available about him. In 1709, while conducting Indians to trade in Albany, her brother, Louis, an interpreter, was murdered. Madam Montour, who had accompanied Louis, remained in New York and, because of her knowledge of various European and Indian languages, was employed by Gov. Robert Hunter as an interpreter. There, she married an Oneida chief, Carondowana. In 1727, when the Oneida chief Swatana (Shickellamy) came to Pennsylvania, Madam Montour and her family came also. She again served as an interpreter until her husband was killed in a 1729 raid.
Alison D. Hirsch, assistant professor of American Studies and History at Penn State University, writing on Madam Montour, claims she stands out in American history as a "self-fashioned woman . . . the most creative -- most outrageous -- in fashioning her life from the whole cloth in the midst of Pennsylvania's most volatile frontiers."
Evidently illiterate, Madam Montour never signed any document with more than an "X" and historians must rely on sparse records by others. She allowed Pennsylvanians to believe that her parents were French, and her father was a governor of Canada. Her myth included that she had been captured at a young age and raised among the Indians. She spoke English, German, Algonquin and Iroquois, as well as French.
According to historical reports, Madam Montour lived near present-day Montoursville with her son, Andrew, and her niece, French Margaret.In John F. Meginness' history of Lycoming County, Count Zinzendorf, a Moravian missionary in Pennsylvania traveling with Conrad Weiser, recounts in his journal a meeting with Madam Montour in 1742.
Meginness writes: "The journal kept by Count Zinzendorf shows his party left Shamokin for the upper reaches of the West Branch on Sept. 30, 1742. When they approached Otstuagy (Montoursville) -- sometimes called Otstonwakin -- Weiser rode ahead to notify the inhabitants. It was then the residence of the celebrated Madam Montour, a French half-breed who located there as early as 1727."
Interviewed in 1744, at the age of 77, Witham Marshe wrote of Madam Montour that "She has been a handsome woman, genteel and of polite address." She is reported to have died in 1753.
Andrew, is described by Zinzendorf as a guide and interpreter whose "cast of countenance is decidedly European, and had his face not been encircled with a broad band of paint, applied with bear's fat, I would certainly have taken him for one. He wore a brown broadcloth coat, a scarlet damask lapel waistcoat, breeches over which his shirt hung, a black Cordovan neckerchief decked with silver bangles, shoes and stockings, and a hat.
"He was very cordial, but on addressing him in French, he, to my surprise, replied in English."
Zinzendorf also reports that Andrew Montour's ears were "braided with brass and other wire like a handle on a basket."
According to historian Paul Wallace, he performed numerous diplomatic errands for both Pennsylvania and Ohio, and held a captain's commission from Virginia in 1754.
Andrew Montour also received (but did not keep) land in present-day Mifflin County and Montoursville. He was killed near Pittsburgh in 1772 by a Seneca Indian.
Another of Madam Montour's relatives was the aforementioned French Margaret, the niece who moved into the West Branch Valley from the Allegheny River area in 1745.
According to Meginness, French Margaret established a town -- and enforced prohibition -- within the present limits of Williamsport's 7th Ward.
Moravian evangelist John Martin Mack visited French Margaret's Town in 1753, and writes in his journal: "Aug. 28 -- Towards 9 a.m. we came to a small town where Madam Montour's niece Margaret lives with her family. She welcomed us cordially, led us into the hut, and set before us milk and watermelons.
"We had a long conversation with her on many subjects. She spoke of her husband (a Mohawk Indian known as Peter Quebec) who has had no whiskey for six years and who has already dissuaded two men from drinking.
"French Margaret is held in high esteem by the Indians, and allows no drunkards in her town."