Jean Baptiste Benoit (or Benois) was one of the first, if not the first settler in the Old Third Ward. According to a thread on ancestry.com Jean Baptiste Benoit was born around 1814 and was married in Little Chute in 1839. A biographical sketch appears in The Wisconsin Creoles. By the mid-1830's he had staked out about three and a half acres north of the Fox River just above the Grand Chute between what is now the north end of the Memorial Bridge east to S. Elm St. Theodore Conkey's 1843 fields notes show the original sketch and the current location.
After the land was surveyed beginning in 1843, he purchased his stake in 1845, sold it a month later to land speculators Augustin Grignon, brother of Hippolyte "Paul" Grignon and Green Bay businessman Daniel Whitney, then promptly disappeared. Descendents of Benoit state on ancestry.com that family oral history indicates the surname was changed to Londrosh or Londroche between 1839 and 1850.
