Mount Petite Jean

Today Laura and I went to the top of Petite Jean Mt. and met Ingrid.  The coffee here was really good.  But the best part was seeing Ingrid.  She’s loving her job with the heart doctor.  Justin has a new job at McCarty Nissan selling cars. He works Saturday.  I’m hoping once a month we can meet Ingrid and visit.

In the 1700s, a young French girl named Adrienne disguised herself as a cabin boy named Jean in order to follow her beloved to the New World. Because of her small size, the other sailors nicknamed her “Petit Jean,” French for “Little John.” At some point after arriving in Arkansas, Petit Jean became ill, although the exact nature of her illness remains unclear. One source implies that she contracted swamp fever while nursing her lover back to health from that disease; another lists symptoms—“fever, convulsions, delirium, and finally coma”—but only says that her malady was “strange to Chavet and his sailors.” Whatever her illness might have been, her identity was revealed. Unfortunately, she succumbed to the illness, died, and was subsequently buried atop the mountain now called Petit Jean.