Born enslaved in Natchitoches in 1742, Marie Thérèse Coincoin won her freedom in 1778 when her partner, French merchant Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer, purchased her liberty and gave her 67 acres. She became a master entrepreneur — trapping bears, growing tobacco, manufacturing medicines — and systematically bought freedom for six of her family members. By her death in 1817, she owned over 1,000 acres. Her sons Louis and Nicolas Augustin Metoyer founded Melrose Plantation and St. Augustine Church on Isle Brevelle, establishing what became one of the wealthiest and most enduring free Black communities in antebellum America. The gens de couleur libres of the Cane River were not a footnote — they were planters, slave owners, church founders, and a community whose descendants still live along the same river. Coincoin's story is the spine of Cane River Creole history.