Magdelaine La Framboise (1780–1846), born Marguerite-Magdelaine Marcot,[1][a] was one of the most successful fur traders in the Northwest Territory of the United States, in the area of present-day western Michigan.

After he was fatally stabbed in the fall of 1806 by a member of the Potawatomi tribe, she successfully managed her fur trade business for more than a decade, even against the competition of John Jacob Astor.

As one of the most prominent early businesswomen of the new state, in 1984 she was elected posthumously to the recently established Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.

[3] The children's father, Jean Baptiste Marcot, was killed in 1783 by Indians at the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers.

1775) and Magdelaine, the two youngest children, were baptized as Roman Catholic a few years later on August 1, 1786, on Mackinac Island.

Their father had sent the family's children to Montreal to be educated in French-language schools, but their widowed mother did not have the financial resources to do that when the girls came of age.

She moved to Mackinac with Magdelaine and her sisters after the British abandoned Fort St. Joseph, ceding the area to the new nation of the independent United States in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War.

[1] For a time Marie lived with her youngest children in a village of the Lac Courtes Oreilles, located at the mouth of the Grand River.

[1] In later years, Magdelaine's older sisters Therese and Catherine Marcot married and also became active in the fur trade; they took over from their husbands, George Schindler and Jean Baptiste Cadotte, respectively.

"[2] The women used their family ties among the Odawa and knowledge about the varieties of regional Native American tribes and culture to build and maintain their businesses.

Every fall they would take their trade goods for business with the Odawa from Mackinac Island down to the Grand River area.

She continued to manage several trading posts, and expanded her business throughout the western and northern portions of Michigan's lower peninsula.

In 1805 her sister Therese moved with her daughter Marianne to Mackinac full-time after her marriage to trader George Schindler, who was well-respected.

When the 8th Foot regiment departed in 1780 during the American Revolutionary War, Mitchell chose to resign and stay on Mackinac Island with his wife and children.

Afterward, under pressure by Americans against British nationals trading in the United States, the family moved across the border to Drummond Island.

[8] La Framboise, then 41 years old and a very wealthy woman, retired to a stately home on Mackinac Island.

[6] After her retirement from fur trading, La Framboise taught herself to read and write in both French and English.

She supported the first Catholic school for Native American children on Mackinac Island, starting it in her home.

On April 2, 1816 her daughter Josette La Framboise, known as Josephine, married Benjamin Kendrick Pierce (1790–1850), American commandant of Fort Mackinac.

[12] During the 1830s and 1840s, La Framboise continued to host many prominent visitors to Mackinac Island, including French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, who explored the United States and wrote about it, and Margaret Fuller, an "American woman of letters" from Massachusetts.

[1] Fuller memorialized her trip in a non-fiction book entitled Summer on the Lakes, in which she referred to meeting Laframboise, writing: The house where we lived belonged to the widow of a French trader, an Indian by birth, and wearing the dress of her country.

They were all the time coming to pay her homage, or to get her aid and advice; for she is, I am told, a shrewd woman of business.

[1] "Juliette Augusta Kinzie described La Framboise as "a woman of a vast deal of energy and enterprise – of a tall and commanding figure, and most dignified deportment.