Demonbreun's great-grandfather,
Pierre Boucher, was the first Canadian to be raised to the rank of
nobility. His father, Etienne, served in the French army in Canada during the
French and Indian War, the North American front of the
Seven Years' War. After his country, France, was beaten in the
Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Canada in 1759, Jacques-Timothee Boucher at the age of 28 migrated south to the British colonies, what became the United States, and got into the
fur trade. Preferring the simple life of a trapper and hunter, he dropped the noble title, adapting it in an anglicization as his new surname, Demonbreun. He had begun traveling to the Middle Tennessee area in the 1760s while in his 30s. In 1766, while hunting near the muddy water at the mouth of a small creek entering the
Cumberland River in the region called
French Lick, Demonbreun noticed a large number of
buffalo and
deer using a
salt lick. The spring is a natural source of
sulfurated water, and eventually became known as
Sulphur Dell. He lived in a
cave there for several months until he could build a cabin near the river to use as his home base for
fur trapping. Demonbreun made frequent trips to the early Nashville settlement to engage in fur trading with local
Native Americans. When
James Robertson and the
Watauga settlers established
Fort Nashborough in 1778, they were surprised and relieved to find that Demonbreun, a white man, was thriving there. The cave that he lived in is now listed on the
National Register of Historic Places listings in Davidson County, Tennessee in July 1979. It was first explored between 1750 and 1799. The cave has been named after him: "
Demonbreun's Cave" ==Military service==