Our research on the Dubay Family begins with Louis (Lewis) Dube (Dubay) Sr., an early French fur trader.
The first wife of Louis Dubay, known as Quakageka, was said to be the second daughter of Chief Pewatenot. They had one known son, Jean (John) Baptiste Dubay.
The second wife of Louis was Mary Keshegut, with whom he had five known children, possibly seven. Louis claimed Mary was half Menomonee and half Ojibwe.
As the fur trade was winding down in Detroit and war between the English and Americans loomed in 1810, Louis moved his family from Detroit to Green Bay. At this time Green Bay’s culture was still predominantly French and the fur trade still flourishing there.
Louis and Mary began having children, who would find themselves to be the last generation of the French voyagers in Wisconsin.
After the War of 1812, Americans flooded into the Green Bay area. They bought their puritanical culture and beliefs. Over the next twenty years the culture of Green Bay area was Americanized.
The Dubay’s once again found the world around them greatly changed.
As the French fur trade era ended in Green Bay, the children of Louis and Mary followed their half brother John Baptiste Dubay to the Fort WInnebago area in Columbia County.
In the late 1850’s, as white settlement overtook that area, the Dubay clan once again moved. Their final homes would be in the Mosinee Area, where they would raise their children.
Many of the Dubay descendants live in the Mosinee Area today.