Marie Thérèse Coincoin

The family was enslaved by the Louisiana French Natchitoches post's founder and commandant, Chevalier Louis Juchereau de St.

Some records show that Coincoin's first five children were of full African blood and others suggest they were partially Native American, fathered by Chatta.

The efforts of a parish priest to break up their union in 1778, by filing charges that threatened her being sold away to New Orleans, prompted Métoyer to buy and manumit her.

That small tract of 80 arpents (67 acres), alluvial river-bottom land adjacent to Metoyer's plantation, was conceded by the local commandant in January 1787 and patented by the Crown in May 1794.

[citation needed] On the heels of that patent, Coincoin applied for a significantly larger concession — 800 arpents of piney woods on Old River to the west of her farm — a tract identified today as section 55, Township 8 North, Range 7 West, where she established a vacherie (cattle range) and hired a Spaniard to operate it for her.

That third holding, adjacent to her homestead, provided a stake for a younger son who had come of age after the Louisiana Purchase, too late to benefit from the more-liberal land policies of the Spanish regime.

[12][13] Coincoin lived frugally and served others, investing all her income into the purchase of freedom for the children from the slave marriage of her youth.

[citation needed] Her eldest son Augustin Metoyer donated land for a church at Isle Brevelle, Natchez, Louisiana.

[15] The Coincoin–Prudhomme House, or Maison De Marie Therese, a small Creole-style cottage constructed of bousillage and half-timber still stands on her original c.1780s–1816 farmstead, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places since December 6, 1979.

[18] Historians Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills found evidence that Coincoin was the second-born daughter in her birth family.