Jean-Baptiste Faribault was a trader with the Indians and early settler in Minnesota.
Background
His father, Barthélemy Faribault, a lawyer of Paris, France, settled in Canada towards the middle of the 18th century and served as military secretary to the French army in Canada. Faribault was born in Berthier, Lower Canada, and received a good school education. After several years of mercantile employment in Quebec, he entered the fur trade, most probably in the employ of Parker, Gerrard, and Ogilvy.
Career
After the occupation of the country by the English, he retired to private life in Berthier and he held the office of notary public. In May 1798, he went with others to the island of Michilimackinac or Mackinac, one of the depots of this company. Foreign over ten years, he traded with the Pottowatomic Natives at Kankakee, with the Dakota or the Sioux, Natives at Redwood, on the Des Moines river, and at Little Rapids, on the Minnesota River just upstream of present-day Carver, Minnesota, on behalf of the Northwest Fur Company.
During the War of 1812, Faribault refused to enlist in the English army, and suffered imprisonment and the loss of all his goods in consequence.
After the conclusion of the war, in 1815, he became a citizen of the United States, and recommenced his trade at Prairie du Chien. In 1819, he removed to Pike Island in the Mississippi River, and in 1826 to Saint Peter (Mendota, Minnesota), opposite the military post of Fort Snelling.
Faribault County in southern Minnesota was named after Jean-Baptiste. He was much attached to the Roman Catholic faith of his childhood and presented a house for a chapel to Father Lucien Galtier, the first resident missionary in Minnesota (1840).
He died at Faribault, Minnesota, on August 20, 1860.