Jette, Francois ¹

   Other names for Francois were Shetais, Francis and Stay, Frank.

  General Notes:

FRANK STAY.
Frank Stay, one of the oldest residents of Camp Release township, Lac-qui-parle county, has had a varied and eventful history, and the story of his life is interwoven with the narrative of facts as they have transpired in southwestern Minnesota. It is a most interesting past to which such lives as his link us, and never will be repeated on this western world.

Frank Stay was born in Canada, about fifty miles northwest of Montreal, July 10, 1837, and his father, Francis Jette, who was born in 1819, and came of old French stock, followed farming in Canada. He is still living in Acton Vale, Canada.

Frank Stay spent the first seventeen years of his life in Canada, and in the summer of 1854, after spending the fourth of July at either Galena or Chicago, came to St. Paul, where he worked out the season on a flat boat up and down the Minnesota river. He then went to Blue Earth and took a contract to split one hundred thousand rails. In June, 1855, he went to Yellow Medicine, where he was employed by the government until 1857. Yellow Medicine was then called the Upper Sioux agency. He worked on a farm for Major Brown, twelve miles out of Yellow Medicine. There he remained two years, after which he was made farmer himself and received a salary, and was furnished goods by Capt. Louis Roberts with which to trade with the Indians. On August 19, 1862, he was warned by Red Dog, a friendly Indian, of an outbreak impending, and at once sought out his friend, Jim Lindsay, but found him already killed by the Indians.

Frank Stay made his way through the woods and across the prairie to the village of Yellow Medicine; he went to old man La Belle's house, but found it deserted; passed the night on his knees under a tree on Hawk Creek fighting mosquitoes; the next day started out, and came across several dead bodies, which so frightened him that for two days he took to hiding. He arrived at Fort Ridgely, twelve miles below Lower Sioux agency at 9 o'clock in the morning of Friday, having had nothing to eat from Monday's supper. At one o'clock was the famous Fort Ridgely battle; he joined the Renville Rangers; he was in the Birch Cooley fight, lasting for forty-eight hours, and at Wood Lake. The same morning of the Wood Lake battle a few men (there may have been twenty) started for an Indian farm to get potatoes or other necessary eatables in the field, for all the stores were burned down. They had gone but a short distance when the Indians in ambush fired on the foraging party; they turned and made for the camp, where they had just sat down to breakfast when they had to leave that untasted and jump to arms. They saved their comrades but the battle was fierce and brisk. Moses Mireau was also in the same battle. Their company, the Renville Rangers, under Lieut. James Gorman, bore the brunt of Ridgely, Birch Cooley and Wood Lake battles. Frank Stay and Francis Giard were besieged three days once by Indians at Lake Benton in 1865. The lake is Lake Stay, where they so valiantly fought for their lives. Frank Stay still carries a ball in his right shoulder as a reminder of that fight.

In 1862 Mr. Stay served under Captain Gorman, for three months from August 20, and participated in several brisk skirmishes with the Indians. In December he was sent to St. Paul, where he remained until the following spring, when he began an adventurous career as a scout, in which he was engaged for three years. In 1865 he turned his attention to hunting and trapping, in which he was engaged for several years. In 1867 he took a pre-emption claim, built a shanty and a sod barn, and did his first breaking with oxen.

Mr. Stay was married in 1880 to Mrs. Celia Charron, who was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, October 10, 1848. Mrs. Stay moved to Nicollet county in 1851, where her people lived until the Sioux were removed to Lower Sioux agency, where they lived at the time of the outbreak, August 18, 1862, Her father was United States interpreter for the Sioux tribe. In 1855 her father's family moved to the Lower Sioux agency, where they lived until 1862, when on August 18, they were all taken prisoners by the Indians, and retained in captivity seven weeks. During the last few years Mrs. Stay has written several articles on the Indian outbreak that have proved extremely interesting as well as valuable. Mr. and Mrs. Stay have a family of ten children: Fred, Nettie, Lizzie, Phemie, John, Frank, Unazime, Phronie, Mary and Joseph. Fred was born at St. Peters, Minnesota, the next three at Fort Ridgley, and the rest on the farm in Lac-qui-parle county. Fred is a widower, having lost his wife (Rachel Tousley) June 1, 1897. They had two children: Cora and Harold. The oldest daughter, Nettie, married Joseph Barret November 26, 1898 and they have two children: Raymond and Mary. Phemie married John C. Wertz, a conductor on the C., M. & St. P. R. R., in May, 1896, and they have three children, John, May and Clinton Lloyd.

Mr. Stay is a Republican, while all his wife's people have been Democrats. He owns a good and well cultivated farm of some two hundred acres, in a good state of cultivation, and provided with fine farm buildings. He is one of the oldest settlers of the county, and is full of incidents and anecdotes of the early days.

In writing of her nationality and ancestry Mrs. Stay said: "I am an American, full blooded. My back-bone tingles with the essence of Americanism. Father (A. J. Campbell) was of Scotch descent on his father's side. He it was [sic] got one hundred and seven prisoners from Little Crow's warriors as a mark of friendship, love and esteem they had always felt for him only during the few weeks in which they applied tomahawk, fire and desolation to our fair border."

From: Compendium of History and Biography of Central and Northern Minnesota (Chicago, Geo. A. Ogle & Co., 1904), pages 334-35.
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mn/county/wilkin/bios/1904-s3.htm#94

Francois married Living

Francois next married Cecelia Margaret Campbell, daughter of Antoine Joseph Campbell and Mary Ann Dalton, on 28 Apr 1880 in De Graff, Swift, MN. (Cecelia Margaret Campbell was born on 10 Oct 1848 in St Paul, MN ⁴ and died on 9 Aug 1935 in Montevideo, Chippewa, MN ⁵.)