The following newspaper article is a brief biography of Simon Plamondon, the earliest white man to settle in Lewis Co. The article was written by Judd C. Bush for the Chehalis Bee-Nugget.

"S. Plamondon, The Pioneer"

Simon Plamondon, the very first white man to settle in Lewis county, was a French-Canadian, an employe of the fur companies who operated in the northwest a hundred years ago. His name appears repeatedly on Doctor Tolmie's records kept at the Hudson Bay Company's agricultural station at Nisqually and it is reasonably certain that he married the daughter of Chief Schanewah of the Cowlitz tribe of Indians and established himself on Cowlitz prairie about 1820. His death occurred in October, 1881, at his home on Cowlitz prairie, and at that time he laced only a few months of being 100 years old.

There does not seem to be any written record of Simon Plamondon's life and the stories told by his immediate descendants, who are now very old, are the best records obtainable. The writer has spent considerable time trying to gather and piece together the story of Plamondon's life, but this has seemed impossible and unless others come forward with documents the authentic story will never be written. However, it has been deemed best to publish at this time the statements of those who knew Plamondon and the little bits of information obtainable about him with the hope that other information from sources now unknown will come to light so that some time a more complete and connected narrative of the early life of the first white man to settle in Lewis county may be written.

Probably no living man has a clearer recollection of Simon Plamondon and his affairs than John B. Sareault, his grandson, who was a favorite of the old man to the very end of his life. He relates that when his grandfather was 98 years old he went to his house unbeknown to him, after an absence of a dozen years, and when Plamondon heard his voice he immediately called to him from an adjoining room and was delighted to have him with him again. The story of his early life is very incomplete, but according to Mr. Sareault's best information he was a full-blooded Canadian, born about 1782. He left home in eastern Canada at about 19 years of age and was three or four years reaching the coast. Apparently he was in company with a few other Canadians. Possibly the elder Bernier and Cottenoir were of the party, although if Cottenoir was born in Maine county, Canada, in 1795, as has been stated, he would have been too young to accompany Plamondon at the time it is said he first left home.

The party of adventurous Canadians apparently spent the time from Canada to the coast exploring the country and various streams. Sometimes they built a canoe and floated down a river, making no progress westward. Eventually,however, they arrived at the headwaters of the Columbia river and floated down the river in boats. Plamondon told his grandson that before he visited Cowlitz prairie he made a long trip northward, going up the Columbia river to the McKenzie river and north to the Yukon river, trapping as he went north and "cacheing" his furs until the return trip.

Afterwards he came alone to the camp of the Cowlitz Indians, near Toledo, where the Indians held him a prisoner. He did not know their jargon, but he talked to them in the jargon of Indians farther east and they recognized enough to know that he had been much among the Indians.

Mr. Sareault says his grandfather did the major part of the hewing of the logs for the first church ever built in Washington and that the log church stood practically on the site of the church now used at Cowlitz. He has the old broadax with which the hewing was done. Among other relics which he holds are an old gun, changed from a flintlock to the later pattern with which a cap was used and a lantern made entirely of tin in which a candle burned. The lantern was of the style common in early Hudson Bay days and was made in England. A pair of church bells, donated by a lady in France and handsomely inscribed, were mounted at the first mission church but they were later destroyed by fire.

The farm that was the Simon Plamondon farm is the farm on the west end of Cowlitz prairie now owned by the Henriot Bros.

Mrs. St. Germain's Story.

Mary Ann St. Germain, who died November 3, 1917, at Tacoma, in an interview with Frances Stone, written for the Tacoma News, in 1916, gave the following information concerning Simon Plamondon, her father: According to the approximate estimate of Mrs. St. Germain, Simon Plamondon went north from the Hudson Bay post at Vancouver in 1816. He went to Cowlitz prairie where was the main village of the Cowlitz Indians. His reception there was unfriendly and he returned to Vancouver and got clothes and tobacco which he took with him on a second trip to Cowlitz prairie and presented to the chief of the tribe, Schanewah. The chief then told him he might remain if he would marry his daughter, which he consented to do, and the Indian ceremony was performed. Thirty young men were placed at the service of the chief's new son-in-law and he became one of the prominent men of the tribe. Whether these thirty young men were used in beginning agricultural operations for the Hudson Bay Company on Cowlitz prairie, or whether the farming operations were not begun until a later date is an interesting question. Mrs. St. Germain says that it was later that the company obtained the hold on the prairie through the influence of Mr. Plamondon. In the forties 75 French families came from Canada and settled on the prairie. It was about that time that the country passed into the possession of the United States and each of these French families, including Plamondon, took land claims on the prairie.

Simon Plamondon was married three times. Mrs. St. Germain says she was the fourth child by the first wife, Veronique; that she was born in April, 1827, her mother dying soon after. His second wife was also a Cowlitz woman, widow Bercier, and the third was a niece of Bishop Blanchet. The story was published in one of the standard histories (Bancroft, I believe) that Plamondon had 19 wives and 73 children. Mrs. St. Germain indignantly denied that story. She said her father had four children by his firs wife and four by the second. The children by the first wife were Sophie, Simon Jr., Therese and Mary Ann. The children of the second wife were Angelique (Mrs. Gill), Genevieve (Mrs. Ross), Moise and John B. The children of the third wife were Norbert and Augustin.

At the time of his death in October, 1881, Plamondon was 99 years, four months and 11 days old. According to Mrs. St. Germain, during all the time since he first arrived at Cowlitz prairie he never lived anywhere else and made only short business trips to Portland.

Some Family History.

John B. Sareault, now 64 years of age, who has a number of documents of value in connection with the Plamondon research, is a grandson of Simon Plamondon, his mother having been the third child of the first wife of Plamondon. Mr. Sareault gives the following interesting bit of family history.

Simon Plamondon's first wife was the daughter of Chief Schanewah of the Cowlitz tribe of Indians. By this marriage there were four children. Sophie, the elder, born about 1821, became the wife of Michel Cottenoir.

Simon Plamondon, Jr., married Marie Foron of Soak Harbor, Vancouver Island, a sister of Narcis Foron, who had located on Grand prairie.

Therese became the wife of Ellie Sareault about 1849.

Mary Ann married Joseph St. Germain.

Plamondon's second wife was the widow Bercier, who had children by the marriage with Bercier. The children from the marriage with Plamondon were:

Genevieve, the oldest daughter, who married Captain John Ross of Vancouver Island.

Angelique, the second daughter who married Simon Gill, a full-blooded French-Canadian. Mrs. Gill is still living at Tumwater.

Moise, the first son, died in the Indian territory. Mrs. J. B. St. Germain of Olequa is Moise's daughter by his first wife. Moise's second wife was a daughter of Denoyer, who took as a homestead the Carver place below Toledo.

John Plamondon, the second son, who was born on Cowlitz prairie December 4, 1843, lives at Vader.

Plamondon's third wife was a niece of Bishop Blancet. By her he had two sons. The elder, Norbert, lives at Kelso. Augustin, when last heard of, was in an institution in Canada.

Plamondon's Son-in-Law.

Elie Sareault was born on Montreal Island at St. Genevieve, of French parentage, June 5, 1829. He died and was buried at St. Genevieve, May 28, 1909. Mr. Sareault, who was a pioneer settler of Cowlitz prairie, crossed the plains in 1848 with an ox team train of 60 to 90 wagons in company with a party of Oblat fathers. The train was surrounded two or three times while enroute by hostile Indians but the Oblat fathers, "black robes," walked out and met the Indians who called off the attack when they saw that men of the Church were in the party. This party of fathers settled on one of the Indian reservations on the Sound and established a mission. Mr. Sareault went with them to the Sound but remained there only a short time. He came up Sound to Nisqually where he met Plamondon, who brought him to Cowlitz prairie. This was probably in the winter of 1848. Some time after his arrival on the prairie young Sareault married Therese Plamondon, the third child of Simon Plamondon by his first wife. Five children were born to this marriage and include: Margaret, now Mrs. E. A. Webster of Saskatchewan; Michael, deceased 20 years ago; Lucy, died in 1892; John B., now a resident of Cowlitz prairie; and Daniel, who lives at Alberni, on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Elle Sareault went to Oro Fino at the time of the gold excitement, but spent most of his life on Cowlitz prairie farming and working at the blacksmithing trade. In 1867 or 1868 he built the sawmill and gristmill on Mill creek, near the west edge of Cowlitz prairie, for Marcel Chappellier. This mill was on what is now the August Johnson property. The burrs used in the mill were brought from France and were at a later time used in the Toledo flouring mill. In the winter of 1869 Mr. Sareault and his two sons operated the Chappellier mill. The sawmill was kept going day and night and made a cut of from 500 to 1000 feet of lumber daily, depending on the stage of the water that furnished the power. When the water was high the saw, which was a straight blade and worked up and down, ran very fast, but when the water in the creek was low it ran much slower.

In 1877 Mr. Sareault sold his farm (now the Gus Bonnin farm) and returned to his old home in Canada, where he found his father still living. During the remaining years of his life he made repeated trips back and forth between Canada and Cowlitz prairie, but finally died, as stated above, at his old home.

John B. Sareault

John B. Sareault was born on Cowlitz prairie April 24, 1857. He remembers that in the hard winter of 1862 and 1863 he was in Vancouver, Wash., and returned to Cowlitz in the spring of 1864. late in the fall of that year he went to Vancouver, B. C., where he remained until the early spring of 1869 when he rejoined his father and older brother who were running a blacksmith shop. In the spring of 1870 the elder Sareault moved onto his farm which previous to that time had been rented to Thomas Rush, Sr. J. B. Sareault seemed to have gone about a great deal as a boy. In the spring of 1872 he went to Alberni, Vancouver Island, and remained on the island until 1874, when he came back to the farm again until November, 1876. On November 2 of that year he was the second man hired to help put in the first dam at Winlock and remained on that job until it was completed the following first of February.

We then find him with Frank Bros. & co., agricultural machinery, in Portland, until November, 1877, when his father, who had just sold his place to Wm. Stevenson, asked him to go with him to Canada. He remained in Montreal until about the first of November, 1878. During his stay in Montreal he met a young lady, Miss Rose Major, with whom he was united in marriage September 24, 1878. At the time of her marriage Mrs. Sareault spoke no English but she learned the language in after years and speaks it with a clear understanding and apparently as easily as her native French. The young couple soon after their marriage turned their faces westward and landed in Portland where Mr. Sareault again entered the employ of Frank Bros. & Co. and remained 14 years with the firm. In 1892 he gave up his position and bought the T. M. Pearson donation land claim of 320 acres on Cowlitz prairie where he and the family have ever since made their home.

Mr. Sareault runs a blacksmith shop at the farm, works with a four-pound hammer, and is sound and well, and one of the boys, Joseph Adolph, has shown his aptitude for things mechanical by his automobile work. Another son, James Elias, who is a millwright at Dryad, left the navy after two years of service with the grade of electrician first-class and engineer second-class. A third son, Gurge, who remains home, shows ability as a first-class farmer. Charles H., a practical painter, won two prized at the fair for India ink sketches. The "old man" says taxes are away too high, that the farmers can't stand it, and is ready for any move that will help lessen the burden of taxation.

Mr. and Mrs. Sareault have been busy people during their lives, people that Roosevelt would have admired, for the bringing of a family of 15 children into the world and the successful rearing of ten of them to manhood and womanhood, not to consider the daily toil of the farm, are enough to be counted a great achievement in these days of small families. The sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Sareault include:

Mary Ernestine, born January 12, 1880, now Mrs. W. J. Steffin of Crofton, Nebr.

Marguerite Hermine, April 5, 1881, now Mrs. A. T. H. Brooling of Onalaska.

John B., October 4, 1882, died November 8, 1896.

George P., February 9, 1884, died May 11, 1886.

Louis D., August 31, 1885, died September 13, 1898

Therese Solima, December 18, 1887, now Mrs. Joseph F. Borte of Cowlitz prairie.

Rose Emelia, August 28, 1899, now Mrs. I. J. Marquis, Onalaska.

George Philip, July 19, 1891, at home.

Irene, June 8, 1884, at home.

James Elias, December 28, 1895, at Dryad.

John B., November 2, 1897, died June 14, 1919.

Charles Hector, January 25, 1900, at home.

Joseph Adolph, August 13, 1901, at home.

Baby boy, born December, 1903, died at one day old.

Agnes Melvina, May 4, 1905, at home.

Source: Bush, Judd C. "S. Plamondon, The Pioneer." The Chehalis Bee-Nugget, 16 Feb 1923, p. 9.

Transcribed by Diana Smith. She has no further information on this family.

Editor's Note: Additional information on the Plamondon family is availble in the biography of L. N. Plamondon, son of Francis Norbert and Ellen (Scanlon) Plamondon, and grandson of Simon Plamondon and his third wife, Henrietta Pelletier.