This is Bob Myers from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan history moment. A visit to Mackinac island will take you to the home of one of Michigan's most remarkable women. Marguerite Magdalene Marcotte was born about 1780 somewhere in Michigan. Historians disagree as to the exact site. Her name has passed down in history and as Madame Magdalene La Framboise. Her father, Jean Baptiste Marcotte, was a French fur trader with the North West Company, and her mother was a Native American woman of prominence in the Odawa nation. Jean Baptiste was murdered during a fight over fur trade goods when Magdalene was still an infant. Her mother took her to be raised by an Adowa family on the grand river, where Magdalene learned to speak Adowa, Ojibwe, French and English. Magdalene entered the fur trade herself and at the age of 14 married Joseph Fafard Dix Lafambois, scion of one of the first families to settle in New France. Years before, the Fafard family had received the nickname La Framboise, which meant the raspberry, and later adopted it as their own family surname. Joseph and Magdalene's marriage represented a good business arrangement between Joseph's fur trading family and Magdalene's Odawa relatives. But in 1806, tragedy struck. One evening. As Joseph knelt in prayer, an enraged customer killed him. Rather than sell or abandon the business in the aftermath of her husband's death, Magdalene obtained a license to trade and went on to manage her family's fur trading posts. By 1818, Madame Laframboise enjoyed an annual income of between $5,000 and $10,000 during a prosperous fur trader could expect to earn no more than $1,000 a year. In 1818, John Jacob Astor, the founder and owner of the American Fur Company, bought her fur trading business. Magdalene retired and built a stately house on Mackinac island and lived there in comfort for the rest of her life. The house survives today as the harbor view Inn. In 1820, Magdalene donated the land for St. Anne's Church of Mackinac Island. She requested in her will that she be buried according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church and asked to be interred under the altar of St. Anne's Church. She died in 1846 and rests today under the church. In keeping with her name, La Framboise, Magdalene's cedar coffin is decorated with a raspberry. This Michigan history moment was brought to you by michiganhistorymagazine.org