Mystery Monday: Guérard – Laronde Marriage

The marriage record for my paternal ancestors Jean-Baptiste Guérard (ca 1814-after 10 Oct 1870) and Euphrosine Laronde (ca 1820-before 1861 census) does not seem to exist.

I started looking for this couple’s marriage over twenty years ago. I used published resources like Tanguay’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes and microfilmed ones like Loiselle Marriage Index.

Later, I searched a number of online resources when they became available on the Internet, including:

• “Drouin Collection” at Ancestry.ca
• BMS2000 [baptism, marriage, burial] database
• Généalogie du Québec et française d'Amérique 
• Le Centre de généalogie francophone d'Amérique [Gedcom files]
• Mes aieux

I also turned to a firm of Montreal-based professional genealogists for help. Unfortunately, they didn’t succeed in locating a marriage record, but they sent me a report of the types of sources they consulted without success; for example, Fichier Fabien, the Archives nationales du Québec à Montréal, and various Répertoires des mariages.¹

Lake Allumette on the Ottawa River in Ontario (ca 1870)

I might not know exactly when and where Jean-Baptiste and Euphrosine married, but I have it estimated to presumably before December 1840. That’s when their daughter Marie was born, according to her baptism, which took place in February 1841 on Ile des Allumettes.²

Thinking they might have married where their daughter was baptized, I searched the 1841-1851 mission register of St-Paul’s church in Aylmer, Quebec, which is available in the "Drouin Collection" at Ancestry.ca. (St-Paul’s was established in 1841 and started keeping records that year.) I didn’t find a marriage entry for them.

I looked at the register of nearby parish of St-Grégoire-de-Naziance in Buckingham, searching page-by-page from January 1839 through to March 1841. I didn’t find the marriage record.

I extended my search to parishes further afield, like the Pembroke, Ontario missions register for 1839-1842, but was unsuccessful. (Pembroke, which lies across the Ottawa River on the Ontario side, faces Ile des Allumettes.)

I was also not successful when I looked at Ottawa’s Notre-Dame Basilica for January 1835 to July 1841. (I didn’t search earlier than 1835, because Euphrosine, who was born about 1820, probably wouldn’t be younger than 15 years old at her wedding.)

I can think of three reasons why Jean-Baptiste and Euphrosine’s marriage is impossible to find.

#1 – The family lived on Ile des Allumettes in Pontiac County, a sparsely populated and more or less wilderness area in the 1850s. The island didn’t have a resident priest at this time and was served instead by missionary priests. Jean-Baptiste and Euphrosine's marriage record may never have made it into the sacramental register in the travelling priest’s home parish. If it did, it’s in a parish that I haven’t searched or considered.

#2 – Since Euphrosine was born in the Lake Nipissing region of present-day Ontario, she might have married there.³ If she was married by a missionary priest, he might have lost or mislaid the record before he reached his usual parish.

#3 – Euphrosine and Jean-Baptiste might have wed in a Native Indian ceremony with the event going unrecorded.⁴

So, after 20 years of looking, this is where I’m at – the same place as I was at the beginning of my quest.

Could it be that I’ve overlooked a particular parish? Could it be that my Guérard – Laronde ancestors’ marriage record doesn’t exist?

What about you, dear readers? How would you proceed?

Sources:

1. Institut généalogique J.L. & associés inc., “Rapport de recherche en généalogie concernant le couple Guérard-Laronde”, prepared by Micheline Lécuyer, prés., Montreal, Quebec, for Yvonne Demoskoff, 10 September 1991; copy privately held by Yvonne Demoskoff, Hope, British Columbia, 2013.

2. St-Paul (Aylmer, Quebec), parish register, 1841-1851, p. 14 verso, no entry no. (1841), Marie Guéra[r]d baptism, 4 February 1841; St-Paul parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : 11 March 2008). Marie’s date of birth “dans le mois de décembre dernier” (in the month of December last) is stated in her baptism record. The baptism took place in the mission of St-Alphonse de Liguori on Ile des Allumettes, but recorded in St-Paul’s sacramental register.

3. Ste-Anne (Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue (aka Ste-Anne-du-Bout-de-l’Isle), Quebec), parish register, 1796-1846, p. 54 verso, no entry no. (1824), Euphroisine [sic] Laronde baptism, 28 July 1824; Ste-Anne parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : 4 March 2011). Euphrosine was 3 years old. Her baptism entry states she was born “au Lac Népiscingue” [Lake Nipissing].

4. Euphrosine’s father Toussaint Laronde appears to be the son of a French-Canadian father and an Aboriginal mother. Her mother Marie Kekijicoköe [Kekijicakoe], described as “une sau[va]gesse” in her daughter’s baptism record, was probably Ojibwa (Chippewa, Algonquin).

Image credit: 

“Lake Allumette on the Ottawa River in Ontario” (ca 1870), by Alfred Worsley Holdstock (1820-1901), W.H. Coverdale Collection of Canadiana, Library and Archives Canada.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Friday’s Faces from the Past: Eugene and his daughter

Eugene Desgroseilliers and his daughter Mariette, 1928

Today marks the 53rd anniversary of the passing of my maternal grandfather Eugène Desgroseilliers, who died on 20 September 1960 in Sarnia, Lambton County, Ontario.

I wanted to honour his memory by posting this wonderful photo of him and his little girl Mariette.

My aunt (who passed away in 2008) appears to be about six or seven months old, while my grandfather was 27 years old (or 28, if the picture was taken on or after his birthday on 30 August).

Eugene, his wife Juliette and their infant daughter lived in Hearst, Cochrane District, Ontario, so that lake behind him is possibly Lac Ste-Thérèse, located just north of town.

Isn’t my grandfather handsome in his police uniform and my Aunt Mariette adorable with her little black patent leather shoes?

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tombstone Tuesday: Joseph Beauvais

Gravemarker of Joseph Beauvais and members of his family

My maternal great-grandfather Joseph Beauvais passed away 76 years ago today on 17 September 1937. He was 59 years old; cause of death was chronic endocarditis.¹ Joseph died in the village of Moonbeam, Cochrane District, Ontario, where he and his family moved to in the mid-1920s. He was buried there two days later.

Mom’s only memory of her grandfather Joseph is of attending his funeral. She remembers how her father Eugène picked her up so that she could see her grandfather in his coffin. At four years old, the experience scared her and she never forgot it.

Although I visited Moonbeam a couple of times in the 1970s when I lived in Ontario, I never thought of stopping by the cemetery. I was fortunate to find a photograph of his tombstone online.²

Joseph’s name and that of his wife Olivine and two of their children (Marie-Louise and Aldège) are inscribed on the marker.

The gravemarker reads:

BEAUVAIS

Epoux / JOSEPH BEAUVAIS / 1878 – 1937

Epouse / OLIVINE NEE HOTTE / 1879 – 1926

Fils / ALDEGE / 1905 – 1940

Fille / MARIE-LOUISE / 1903 – 1947

Sources:

1. “Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947”, database and digital images, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : 9 February 2012), entry for Joseph Beauvais, 17 September 1937.

2. Moonbeam Cemetery, database and digital images (http://cimetiere.moonbeam.ca/indexEn.html : accessed 12 September 2013), photograph, gravestone for Joseph Beauvais (1878-1937), Moonbeam, Ontario. Used with permission.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Those Places Thursday: St-Joseph and St-Charles Schools

Here in British Columbia, school has been in session since last Tuesday (September 3rd). Just about every year at this time, I think back to my elementary school days in Timmins, Ontario and reminisce about how I loved school.

What I loved most about school was learning new stuff. I was a good student in every subject (except Arithmetic). I behaved, I was quiet and studious, I was eager to please and eager to help.

There were times, though, when school wasn’t such a nice place. I was very poor at Arithmetic and would be kept in class during part of recess so that the teacher could get me to understand a concept. (I didn't mind so much losing the chance to play outside at recess, but worried that I was different from the other children.) Some of the boys would make fun of my last name (they made up rhymes and teased me), and walking to and from school in winter was an ordeal on many days. (I can still see myself slipping and falling on icy patches.)

My schools, St-Joseph and St-Charles, were rather plain looking two-storied buildings that shared one large town block. St-Joseph was the smaller building and had eight (possibly ten) classrooms; it’s where I did Grades 1 and 2. St-Charles was bigger and had twenty classrooms (four in the basement and eight on each of the two floors); it’s where I did my Kindergarten and Grades 3 through 6.

The two schools were part of what was known as separate schools. These were French or English Roman Catholic schools where Catholic children could be instructed in their language and in their faith. Very basically, we were ‘separate’, because we weren’t public, non-denominational schools.

Our teachers were mostly women (the first time I was taught by a male teacher was in Grade 6), a fair amount of whom were from the Soeurs de l’Assomption de la Sainte Vierge (s.a.s.v.), an order of teaching nuns.

Yvonne (right) and her sister Marianne, 1966

This picture of my sister and I shows us in our school uniforms: a navy blue jumper (sleeveless V-neck dress that fell just above our knees), a white blouse, and a red tie and vinyl red belt. Marianne and I were 5½ and 8 years old, so we were in Grades 1 and 3, respectively. I can tell it was winter time, because we’re wearing pants. Our hometown had very cold winters, so we wore tights and pants under our uniforms because we walked to school. (We took off the pants once in class and stored them with our coats, boots, hats and mittens.)

Let’s see if I remember the names of my teachers.

• Kindergarten: Madame Sylvia St-Jean
• Grade 1: Mademoiselle Dagenais
• Grade 2: Soeur Lorraine Marie, s.a.s.v. (Sister Lorraine Marie was also the principal at St-Joseph. Whenever she had to attend to some official duty, a stand-in teacher would take over the class.)
• Grade 3: Mademoiselle Blanche Desjardins
• Grade 4: Madame Jeanne Lauzon
• Grade 5: Mademoiselle Dicaire
• Grade 6: Mademoiselle Larose, Monsieur N… (a male teacher from Haiti), Madame Jastrebski, and Mademoiselle Nicole Melançon (I don’t recall why we had a group of teachers during Grade 6, as opposed to one teacher in previous Grades. I remember that Miss Larose and the male teacher were replaced in the first few months by Mrs. Jastrebski and Miss Melançon, because we were somewhat of a rowdy bunch. Miss Melançon knew how to tame us, and she quickly became our favorite.)

I still have a few souvenirs from my K-6 school years:

• my Diplôme “Jardin d’Enfants” (kindergarten diploma)
• a few examples of classwork (printed letters and numbers)
• some artwork (from Easter and other holidays)
• a holy image (which I received for learning the Gloire au Père)
• my bulletin scolaire (Grade 3 year-end report)

St-Joseph and St-Charles were eventually found to be too old (I think they were built in the 1930s or 1940s) and outdated and were torn down to make way for one modern school in the 1970s or 1980s.

I have (mostly) great memories of my school days. What about you, dear readers? What memories or stories do you have of your school days?

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tombstone Tuesday: Wasyl Demosky

Wasyl Demosky gravemarker

Wasyl Demosky was my husband’s paternal grandfather. He died on 12 September 1933, eighty years ago this Thursday. He was buried two days later in Tolstoy Doukhobor Cemetery, just north of Veregin, Saskatchewan. I wrote a brief article about him last year.

Although Wasyl’s surname is spelled “Demoskoff” on his grave, his name was Demosky. I suspect that his younger sons George and William (who changed their name from Demosky to Demoskoff in 1940) were the ones who modified their father’s name when a marker was chosen.

Wasyl’s gravemarker reads:

DEMOSKOFF

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

WASYL M.

1883 – 1933

AT REST

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sunday’s Obituary: Fred G. Cazakoff

Fred G. Cazakoff obituary, 1985

Fred, my husband’s maternal uncle, passed away on 11 September 1985. He was the youngest son and eighth child of George and Polly (Poznekoff) Cazakoff. He was also the closest in age to his only sister Ann, who predeceased him in July 1980. 

Source:
“Cazakoff”, obituary, undated clipping, from unidentified newspaper; Demoskoff Family Papers, privately held by Yvonne (Belair) Demoskoff, British Columbia, 2013. Yvonne received an assortment of family memorabilia (including Fred’s obituary) in January 2012 from her father-in-law William (Bill) Demoskoff.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Funeral Card Friday: Elizabeth Vanasse

Front and back of memorial record

This lovely memorial record was printed for the funeral of my paternal great-grandmother Elizabeth (Vanasse) Vanasse. Folded, it measures 14 cm x 8 cm (approximately 5½“ x 3¼”). My aunt Joan (one of Elizabeth’s granddaughters) sent me the booklet with other family memorabilia in late 1987.

Inside text of memorial card

My great-grandparents Elizabeth and Olivier Vanasse, who married in July 1889 in Chapeau, Pontiac County, Quebec, were first cousins. They had nine children, including my grandmother Julie.

Elizabeth passed away on 1 September 1947 in Ottawa, where she lived after Olivier’s death. The funeral was held there two days later, followed by interment in the cemetery of St-Alphonsus of Liguori (Roman Catholic) church in Chapeau, where she lived most of her life.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Friday Photo: Visiting Cousins

On the first two Fridays of each month, I showcase a family photo and answer the “who, what, when, where and why” of that picture. The first week’s Friday photo is taken from my side of the family and the second week’s Friday photo is chosen from my husband’s side of the family. (I got the idea for this column from Amy Coffin’s ebook The Big Genealogy Blog Book advertised on her The We Tree Genealogy Blog.)

Belair siblings with Philippe cousins

Who:
Maurice Belair (centre) with (left to right) his sisters Darlene and Joan and his brother Ray. With them are their cousins Joan (facing Darlene) and Delia Philippe (far right).

What:
My Dad Maurice and his brother and sisters pose with their cousins.

When:
About 1941 or 1942, probably late spring or early autumn. (Dad looks like he’s wearing thick socks with his boots.)

Where:
At my grandparents Fred and Julie’s home in Fauquier, Cochrane District, Ontario.

Why:
The Philippe family, who lived in Timmins, Ontario was probably on a visit to my Dad’s family. Joan and Delia’s father Joseph was my grandfather Fred’s nephew, being the son of his late sister Angélina (Belair) Philippe.

I love this photo, despite its poor shape and left-side tear. It’s small, measuring about 7 cm x 9 cm (approximately 2¾” x 3½”). The picture is one of my favorites, because it shows my father Maurice and his siblings when they were young, happy and healthy. It’s also only one of a few photos taken during the time when the family lived in Fauquier in northeastern Ontario.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Ottawa's Parliament Hill – Who Owned It?

View of Barrack Hill and the Ottawa River at Bytown (Ottawa)

Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours going through some old genealogy file folders I created about 30 years ago. (I was young when I started genealogy ☺) I looked over each folder, filled with mostly general topics. I kept what I wanted, re-filed some material under more appropriate headings, and put the rest in a discard/recycle pile.

One file that got my interest was the one about the city of Ottawa. Back when I started being interested in my family’s history and genealogy, my grandfather Fred used to tell me the story about how his paternal ancestors once owned the land on which the federal parliament buildings are now located in Canada's capital.

The story went something like this: my grandfather’s father Pierre Belair (1851-1941) or his grandfather Paul Belair (1822-1902) owned property in what was later downtown Ottawa. His ancestor sold his land for a pair of oxen. In time, Canada’s federal government was built here and this area called Barrack Hill became known as Parliament Hill.

When I first heard this story, I thought it was pretty fantastic. But, I also thought that my grandfather’s tale might be too fantastic and wondered if he was pulling my leg.

About a decade later, I visited my sister and her young family in Ottawa. While there, I went to the land registry office to see if I could find any evidence that my Belair ancestors owned land in Ottawa. I told the clerk what I knew and asked if there were any documents that showed early 1800s Ottawa land owners. She couldn’t go that far back, she said. I then asked if there were any documents showing who owned the land before it became Crown property. She showed me some early documents or maps. I forget how old they were, but they weren’t helpful, and I couldn’t find my Belair ancestors on them.

After thanking the clerk, I visited the City of Ottawa Archives. I found a government publication that gave me some information, but not what I was hoping for. I read in a book that the Parliament Hill land “originally formed part of a 600-acre lot granted by the Crown, in 1802, to Jacob Carman, the son of a United Empire Loyalist” and that later, the current owner Hugh Fraser sold the land to Governor Dalhousie in 1823.¹

So, it turned that someone did own the land that later became Parliament Hill, but it wasn’t my ancestor. I don’t really think my Pépère Fred deliberately told me a tall tale. I believe there might be a grain a truth in the story, but that I just haven’t found it. Maybe one day I will.

Source:
1. Parliament Hill / La Colline parlementaire, by Dr. Lucien Brault (Ottawa: National Capital Commission), ‘Introduction’.

Image credit:

“View of Barrack Hill and the Ottawa River at Bytown (Ottawa)”, by Edmund Willoughby Sewell (1800-1890). Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1991-120-3.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.