52 Ancestors: #39 Marguerite Lacasse

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has issued herself and her readers a challenge for 2014. It’s called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”, and as Amy explains, the challenge is to “have one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It could be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem — anything that focuses on one ancestor”.

For the 39th week of this challenge, I chose Marguerite Lacasse (1839-1907).

Marguerite is my maternal great-great-grandmother and is number 31 in my ancestor list.

With this article, I’ve now written a blog post about all my ancestors from my parents through my great-great-grandparents for the "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge. For the remaining weeks, I’ll write about other ancestors that I'll choose at random.

Born on a spring day, Marguerite was baptized when she was five days old on 28 April 1839 in Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours church in Montebello, located in the Petite-Nation seigneurie on the banks of the Outaouais (Ottawa) River. [1] Her parents Pierre and Thérèse (Doyer) Lacasse already had four children and would have five more after Marguerite.

Location of Petite-Nation seigneurie (in purple in top left corner) [2]

The Lacasse family appeared on the 1842 census of Canada East (now the province of Quebec) enumerated in Petite-Nation, the seigneurie owned by Louis-Joseph Papineau. [3]

Louis-Joseph Papineau*

* Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1986-36-1, MIKAN no. 2834250.

The 1842 census is partly nominal and records only the names of heads of households, which means that Marguerite (who was not yet three years old) was recorded as one of three unnamed females five years of age and under in her father’s household. The family lived on a 120 acre property.

At the age of twenty-five, Marguerite married Louis Hotte, a farmer, on 27 March 1864 in St-André-Avellin. [4] Not only were they distantly related (fifth cousins), but Marguerite was five years older than Louis. [5]

Over the course of the next twenty years, Marguerite gave birth to eleven children – six sons and five daughters. Eight survived childhood and married, but three sons, Napoléon, Joseph Adélard and Gédéon, died young.

By 1877, Marguerite and Louis had relocated to Chénéville, where my great-grandmother Olivine was born that January. This small rural community, a little to the north of St-André-Avellin, would now be the family’s home, where all the (surviving) Hotte children married.

Marguerite was twenty days short of her sixty-eighth birthday when she passed away on 3 April 1907 in Chénéville. [6] She was buried there two days later in the parish cemetery in the presence of “un grand nombre de parents et [d’amis]” [a large number of family and of friends], including her younger son Adrien. [7]

Sources:

1. Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours (Montebello, Quebec), parish register, 1815-1900, p. 145 verso, entry no. B.31 (1839), Marguerite Lacoste [sic] baptism, 28 April 1839; Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 1 May 2008). Montebello is now in Papineau County, Quebec.

2.“Manoir-Papineau National Historic Site of Canada”, Parks Canada (http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/qc/manoirpapineau/index.aspx : accessed 13 September 2014), “A Bit of History: The Seigneury of La Petite-Nation”.

3. 1842 census of Canada East, Ottawa District, Petite-Nation (seigniory), p. 1262 (stamped), line 29, Pierre Lacoste [sic] household; Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-729. Louis-Joseph Papineau (1786-1871) acquired Petite-Nation from his father in 1817.

4.St-André-Avellin (St-André-Avellin, Quebec), parish register, 1864, p. 49 recto, entry no. M.6, Louis Hotte – Marguerite Lacasse marriage, 27 March 1864; St-André-Avellin parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 27 March 2008).

5. Marguerite and Louis are fifth cousins through their common ancestors Guillaume Labelle (ca 1649-1710) by his wife Anne Charbonneau (1657-1729).

6. St-Félix-de-Valois (Chénéville, Quebec), parish register, 1905-1913, p. 183 verso, entry no. S.6, Marguerite Lacasse burial, 5 April 1907; St-Félix-de-Valois parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 18 February 2008).

7. St-Félix-de-Valois, parish register, 1905-1913, p. 183 verso, Marguerite Lacasse burial, 5 April 1907. Although Marguerite’s husband Louis survived her, his name is not mentioned as one of the witnesses who were present at her burial.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tuesday’s Tip: When did Olive Huot die?

On a late summer’s day in 1835, my maternal great-great-great-grandparents Charles Beauvais and Olive Huot married in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, located a little to the north of Montreal. [1] They had three children: Charles, Pierre (my great-great-grandfather) and Céline, born in 1836, 1838 and 1840, respectively. [2]

The family suffered its first loss when mother Olive died. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I know it was between 1840 and 1846.

When I first began looking for Olive’s death a few years ago, two events helped set the 1840 to 1846 time frame:

1. The baptism of Céline (Charles’ daughter by his first wife) on 26 July 1840. [3]
2. The baptism of Philomène (Charles’ daughter by his second wife) on 28 January 1846. [4]

Since Olive appears to have died in the early 1840s, I wondered if her burial record might be found in St-Jérôme where Céline was baptized. Unfortunately, the record does not appear in that parish’s sacramental registers.

I then turned to the records of Montebello’s church in the seigneurie of Petite-Nation, in present-day Papineau County in southwestern Quebec. I thought perhaps I might find Olive’s burial record in the community where Charles’ daughter by his second wife was baptized in 1846. I did not find it.

That’s where things stood until earlier this month, when I decided to look again at the 1842 census of Canada East. I didn’t think it would be of much use, though, because it’s partially nominal since only heads of households are enumerated by name.

I located Charles on the 1842 census living in the Petite-Nation seigneurie. As Charles Beauvais, farmer, he appears on line 20 of stamped page 1265. [5] His household consisted of the following individuals:

• 1 Male “30 and not 60”
• 1 Male “above five and under fourteen years of age”
• 1 Male “five years of age and under”
• 1 Female “five years of age and under 5”.

However, one person was absent from the household – an adult woman. I double-checked the columns for females “14 and not 45” and “45 and upwards” to see if I had missed an adult woman, but I hadn’t. Olive’s absence from her husband’s household suggested that she was deceased.

Thanks to a fresh look at the 1842 census I was able to establish a more specific range for my 3x great-grandmother’s death.

I now know that Olive died between 26 July 1840 (when her daughter Céline was baptized) and 1 February 1842 (the official date for that year’s census). [6]

So, my tip to my readers is don’t ignore documents that have seemingly limited information. Use them not only for what’s in them, but also for what’s missing from them.

Sources:

1. Ste-Anne (Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec), parish register, 1835, p. 28 recto, entry no. M.20, Charles Bouvet [sic] – Olive Huot marriage, 7 September 1835; Ste-Anne-des-Plaines parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 25 April 2008).

2. Ste-Anne (Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec), parish register, 1836, p. 17 recto, entry no. B.117, Charles Bouvet [sic] baptism, 1 July 1836; Ste-Anne parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 29 March 2008). Also, Ste-Anne (Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec), parish register, 1838, p. 4 recto, no entry no., Pierre Bouvet [sic] baptism, 24 February 1838; Ste-Anne parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 29 March 2008). Also, St-Jérôme (St-Jérôme, Quebec), parish register, 1840, p. 34 verso, entry no. B.137, Céline Bouvais [sic] baptism, 26 July 1840; St-Jérôme parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 28 February 2008).

3. St-Jérôme (St-Jérôme, Quebec), parish register, 1840, p. 34 verso, entry no. B.137, Céline Bouvais [sic] baptism, 26 July 1840. Although Céline’s mother was not present at her daughter’s baptism (only her godparents were, according to the then custom), if Olive had been deceased, it would have been noted in the baptism record.

4. Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours (Montebello, Quebec), parish register, 1815-1900, p. 104 recto, entry no. B.16 (1846), Philomène Beauvais baptism, 31 January 1846; Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 31 March 2010).

5. "Canada, recensement du Bas-Canada, 1842", index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-11344-9231-72?cc=1834340 : accessed 4 September 2014), entry for Charles Beauvais, Ottawa > Petite-Nation (seigneurie) > image 29 of 40; citing Public Archives, Ottawa, Ontario.1842 census.

6. Dave Obee, Counting Canada: A Genealogical Guide to the Canadian Census (Victoria, BC: Dave Obee, 2012), 65. According to Obee, the 1842 census “was to be completed by February 1, 1842.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sympathy Saturday: Gathered for a Funeral

Jacqueline (left) with her sisters and their paternal aunt Flavie (centre, back), 1960

My grandfather Eugène died 54 years ago today on 20 September 1960. He had recently turned 60, and had been unwell for some time. When his younger daughter Jacqueline (my mother) visited him earlier that summer, he told her that it wasn’t the same ‘unwell’ feeling he had when drinking (“C’est pas la boisson”, he said), but something different.

One day that September, Mom got a phone call from her sister Madeleine. She “just about broke down” when Madeleine told her their father was very ill, in hospital with cancer.

After leaving me in the care of my paternal grandparents at home in Timmins (I was only two years old and Dad was working), Mom, Madeleine and a few of their Desgroseilliers relatives who also lived in northeastern Ontario left for Sarnia. They drove all night, a journey of about 963 km (about 597 miles), that Mom still remembers as “a really bad night”. The next day, they were met by Mom’s sisters Mariette, Simone, Normande and Jeanne d’arc, who lived near their father.

Arriving at Sarnia General Hospital, Mom and Madeleine realized just how ill their father was when he didn’t recognize his daughters, even though Madeleine gently told him “Poppa, c’est Jacqueline…”.

A few days later, while Mom was resting at her sister Simone’s home, Eugène passed away.

A requiem high mass was held three days later at St. Thomas Aquinas church on 23 September 1960. Mom, her sisters, as well as their father’s surviving brothers and sister and various relatives, were present.

A blurry photo of sisters in mourning; left to right:

Simone, Mariette, Jacqueline, Madeleine, Jeanne d’arc and Normande, 1960

Eugène was laid to rest next to his Juliette, who predeceased him in 1948, at Our Lady of Mercy cemetery in Sarnia.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #38 Arline Deschatelets and Her Estimated Date of Birth

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has issued herself and her readers a challenge for 2014. It’s called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”, and as Amy explains, the challenge is to “have one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It could be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem — anything that focuses on one ancestor”.

For the 38th week of this challenge, I chose Arline Deschatelets (1844/47-1923).

Arline is my maternal great-great-grandmother and is number 29 in my ancestor list.

She was one of the eleven children of Joseph Deschatelets and his wife Angélique Caillé, who married in 1835 in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Terrebonne County, Quebec. [1]

I don’t know when or where Arline was born; I haven’t found her baptism record and civil registration didn’t exist in Quebec at this time. Despite my searches, her baptism doesn’t appear in the parish records of Ste-Anne-des-Plaines (where her parents married), in St-Jérôme, Terrebonne County (where her three immediate siblings were baptized), or in Montebello, Papineau County (where her next sibling was baptized). I also checked nearby parishes like Grenville, Montpellier, Chénéville, St-Sixte, St-Emile de Suffolk, Plaissance, Papineauville and Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix, all without success.

Despite this shortcoming, I turned to other records to provide approximate dates of birth for Arline. Here’s what my calculations based on those records look like in a table format:

I adapted my table above on a similar one I saw a few years ago in Emily Anne Croom’s Unpuzzling Your Past. [2] (I was waiting to get Croom’s book from the library to help me complete my article, which is why Arline didn’t appear in Week 37 like I had originally planned.)

Without Arline’s baptism record to tell me when she was born, the best I can have is a birth range for her. Therefore, based on census, marriage and burial records, Arline was born between 6 April 1844 and 4 April 1847 (using the earliest and latest calculated years in the table).

Sources:

1. Ste-Anne (Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec), parish register, 1835, p. 3 recto, no entry no., Joseph Pinault [sic] – Angélique Caillé marriage, 19 January 1835; Ste-Anne parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 25 March 2008).

2. Emily Anne Croom, Unpuzzling Your Past, 4th ed. (Cincinnati, Ohio: Betterway Books, 2001), 105.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Wednesday’s Child: Alma Desgroseilliers (1904-1907)

Little Alma Desgroseilliers was only three years and six months old when she died. [1]
 

Alma with her brothers Eugène (left) and Arthur (right), about 1906.

She was the third child and eldest daughter of Albert and Clémentine (Léveillé) Desgroseilliers.

Born on 14 January 1904 in St-Charles, Ontario, Alma was baptised “Alma Fabiana” three days later in St-Thomas Apôtre church in nearby Warren. [2] Actually, I’m not sure if her godparents brought her to Warren (taking a newborn out in winter doesn’t seem prudent), or if Father Nayl travelled to St-Charles to baptise Alma, and then once back in Warren recorded the details in his church’s sacramental register.

In about 1906 or early 1907, Alma’s parents and her elder brothers (Eugène, my maternal grandfather, and Arthur) moved to Cobalt, northeast of St-Charles, near the Ontario-Quebec border. I don’t know what prompted my great-grandfather Albert to relocate his young family there, but perhaps it had something to do with silver being discovered in Cobalt in 1903. [3] Neither his daughter's death registration nor her burial record indicate what kind of work Albert did at this time. (He had been a farmer in St-Charles.)

Alma, who had been ill with bronchitis for one week, died on 6 July 1907 in Cobalt. [4] She was buried there in the cemetery the next day; her father was present. [5]

How sad it must have been for Albert, Clémentine and their sons when they returned to live in St-Charles in the spring of 1908.

Sources:

1. “Ontario, Canada Deaths, 1869-1932”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 January 2012), entry for Alma Degrossalier [sic], 6 July 1907; citing Archives of Ontario, Registrations of Deaths - 1869-1932; Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Archives of Ontario; microfilm series MS935, reel 131.

2. “Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1907”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : 20 January 2012), entry for Alma Fabi[ana] Desgrosellier [sic] (written as Desgrosellier, indexed as Desgrciellier), 14 January 1904; citing Archives of Ontario, Registrations of Birth and Stillbirths – 1869-1904; Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Archives of Ontario; microfilm series MS929, reel 174. Also, St-Thomas Apôtre (Warren, Ontario), parish register, 1901-1967, p. 12 verso, entry no. 6 (1904), Alma Fabiana Desgroseilliers baptism, 17 January 1904; St-Thomas Apôtre parish; digital image, “Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967”, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : 20 January 2012).

3. Wikipedia contributors, "Cobalt, Ontario", Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cobalt,_Ontario&oldid=611476989 : accessed 16 September 2014).

4. “Ontario, Canada Deaths, 1869-1932”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 January 2012), entry for Alma Degrossalier [sic], 6 July 1907.

5. "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-24489-8758-36?cc=1927566&wc=M6VR-DTP:220997601,220997602,220997603,221004101 : accessed 20 January 2012), Timiskaming > Cobalt > St Hilarion > Baptisms, marriages, burials 1906-1910 > image 26 of 113, entry for Alma DesGroselliers [sic].

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Church Record Sunday: Jeanne Massé’s Unexpected Death

Burial record of Jeanne Massé (1764)

It’s not very often that I find causes of death stated in my ancestors’ burial records, but I recently came across a noteworthy example.

Jeanne Massé and her husband Michel Campeau are my maternal ancestors. Both were baptized in Montreal in 1677 and 1667, respectively. They married there on 7 January 1696 and raised a family of eleven children. Michel died in 1737, while Jeanne survived him by twenty-seven years, dying on 4 September 1764 in Detroit. She was buried there the next day in the parish of Ste-Anne. [1]

Jeanne’s burial record is most interesting, thanks to the officiating priest Bocquet, who provided more than the required amount of details for such a sacramental record. A copy of that record is seen above, while below is my translation:

“The year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred sixty four, the fifth of September was buried in the cemetery of this church, the body of Jeanne Massé, widow of the late [sieur] Michel Campeau, during his lifetime [bourgeois] of this town, residing [in] Saint Jacques road, died yesterday suddenly; [in a] state of infancy, in which she had fallen for more than three years and her age of approximately ninety years, having hide from all the symptoms which would have caused suspicion the approach of her death. The said burial in presence of the [sieurs] Saint Bernard, [son-in-law] of the deceased, Chapoton, Rocour and many other relatives and friends which the principals have signed with us.”

Jeanne, who was 87 years old and not 90, had been afflicted with dementia for more than three years. Despite her condition, or perhaps because of it, she managed to conceal ill health to the point that her death was unexpected to those who knew her.

Source:

1. Ste-Anne (Detroit, Michigan), parish register, 1760-1781, p. 606, no entry no. (1764), Jeanne Massé burial, 5 September 1764; Ste-Anne parish; digital image, “Early U.S. French Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1695-1954”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 26 August 2014).

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #37 Louis Hotte, landowner

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has issued herself and her readers a challenge for 2014. It’s called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”, and as Amy explains, the challenge is to “have one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It could be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem — anything that focuses on one ancestor”.

For the 37th week of this challenge, I chose Louis Hotte (1844-1923).

Louis is my maternal great-great-grandfather and is number 30 in my ancestor list. (I’m skipping ancestor no. 29 and saving her for next week.)

Born on 17 April 1844 in Grenville, Argenteuil County, Quebec, Louis was the second child of Jean-Baptiste and Archange (Sigouin) Hotte. [1] He had an older brother and six younger brothers and sisters.

Louis was the first of his parents’ children to marry when he wed Marguerite Lacasse on 27 March 1864 in St-André-Avellin, Papineau County. [2] He and Marguerite had eleven children – six sons and five daughters, including Olivine, my great-grandmother – born in Ripon and Chénéville in Papineau County.

While searching for records about Louis at Ancestry.ca, I found one in the “Canadian Genealogy Index, 1600s-1900s”. [3] His entry shows that he received some land in Chénéville (then called Hartwell) in 1885. I haven’t looked into this grant, but when I do, I might have to look elsewhere than what the source says, because first, the “Archives of Ontario” are in Toronto (Library and Archives Canada are in Ottawa), and second, I’m not sure why the province of Ontario has records from the province of Quebec. I’ll hopefully untangle this mystery one day. Here’s a screenshot of Louis’ entry in this database:

Louis died on 20 December 1923 in Chénéville. [4] He was predeceased by his wife Marguerite in 1907 and some of their children.

Sources:

1. Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs (Grenville, Quebec), parish register, 1839-1854, p. 7 verso, entry no. B26 (1844), Louis Hottes [sic] baptism (written as Hottes, but indexed as Hottin), 28 April 1844; Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 27 March 2008).

2. St-André-Avellin (St-André-Avellin, Quebec), parish register, 1864, p. 49 recto, entry no. M6, Louis Hotte – Marguerite Lacasse marriage, 27 March 1864; St-André-Avellin parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 27 March 2008).

3. “Canadian Genealogy Index, 1600s-1900s”, database, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 11 September 2014), entry for Louis Hotte. This screenshot has changed from when I first viewed it on 11 July 2009. At that time, the fields “Place, “County” and “Province” were in a different order, and there was a “Comments” field (now not present) before “Source”.

4. St-Felix-de-Valois (Chénéville, Quebec), parish register, 1914-1933, p. 171 verso, entry no. S32 (1923), Louis Hotte burial, 22 December 1923; St-Felix-de-Valois parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 26 March 2008).

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Ray Belair (1931-2014)

Another link with the past was broken today when my Uncle Ray, age 83, passed away this morning.

Born on 19 January 1931 in Montreal, Quebec, Ray was a younger son of Fred and Julie (Vanasse) Belair. He was my late father Maurice’s only surviving brother.

Ray (left) with Maurice, 1950s

As a young man, Ray left his parents and his home in Timmins, Ontario to seek his fortune in western Canada. He arrived in British Columbia about 1950, where he found logging work in and around Hope, a small community about two hours east of Vancouver.

In August 1952, Uncle Ray married local girl Emily Murphy. They had two children, my cousins Janet (known as Jenny) and Leo.

Uncle Ray was instrumental in getting my father to move to B.C. in 1979 to work with him. They formed a joint business in which they built logging roads, mostly in the Boston Bar area north of Hope. Accordingly, Dad packed up his belongings, put up our family home for sale, and drove ahead of us to get started. We followed Dad within a few weeks, after our house was sold.

Ray with his family, 1960s

In October 1980, Uncle Ray lost his wife Emily, to whom he had been married for twenty-eight years. Their daughter Jenny died in February 2011.

After working at logging and road-building for most of his life, Uncle Ray retired in September 1997. His sister Joan and her son André made the trip to B.C. to help Ray celebrate.

Uncle Ray is survived by his son Leo and his family, including a new little great-granddaughter, as well as his sisters Joan and Darlene of Ontario, Canada.

We will miss you, Uncle Ray. Rest in peace.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Maritime Monday: S/S Lake Southwark and the Dimovsky Family

S/S Southwark [1]

Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of articles about Dimovsky families who immigrated to Canada in the late 1890s. They were Doukhobor pacifists who left Russia, seeking a life free from religious intolerance. For a brief explanation about how Doukhobors came to be in Canada, see Family History Through the Alphabet – S is for …

Today’s post is the third and concluding article in this 3-part series. Part 1 (those who arrived in January 1899) is available at Maritime Monday: S/S Lake Superior and the Dimovsky Family. Part 2 (those who arrived in June 1899) is available at Maritime Monday: S/S Lake Huron and the Dimovsky Families.

September 9 (tomorrow) marks the 109th anniversary of the S/S Southwark’s arrival at Quebec City. The ship’s manifest, which is complete, shows one group of people, surnamed Dimovsky. These individuals consist of Danila Dimovsky, with presumably his wife Anna and their young daughter Agafia. [2]

The Southwark departed Liverpool, England on 31 August 1905. On board were 649 passengers, 182 of whom were “Doukhobors exiles from Yakutsk, Siberia”. [3] This “second wave of Doukhobor immigration” lasted from 1902 to 1906. [4]

Upon the ship’s arrival in Canada on September 9, a small group of Doukhobors (but not Danila, his wife or their child) were quarantined, some until October and others until mid-November 1905. [5]

Like the other Dimovsky families about whom I’ve written in this series, I don’t know if or how Danila, Anna and Agafia are related to my husband. (Dimovsky is a spelling variation of Demofsky, later Demosky, later still Demoskoff.)

Sources:

1. Photo of S/S Southwark (built 1893), digital image, Norway – Heritage (http://www.norwayheritage.com : accessed 18 January 2014).

2. Steve Lapshinoff & Jonathan Kalmakoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928 (Crescent Valley: self-published, 2001), 110.

3. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 110.

4. “Index to Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists”, Doukhobor Genealogy Website (http://www.doukhobor.org/Shiplists.htm : accessed 18 January 2014), “Arrivals in 1902-1906”.

5. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 110.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #36 Pierre Beauvais

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has issued herself and her readers a challenge for 2014. It’s called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”, and as Amy explains, the challenge is to “have one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It could be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem — anything that focuses on one ancestor”.

For the 36th week of this challenge, I chose Pierre Beauvais (1838-1895/1897).

Pierre is my maternal great-great-grandfather and is number 28 in my ancestor list.

Younger son of Charles Beauvais by his first wife Olive Huot, Pierre was born in the morning of 24 February 1838 in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Terrebonne County, Quebec, and baptized that day. [1] He had an older brother Charles and a younger sister Céline (Délima).

Pierre lost his mother when he was very young. Olive’s date and place of death are a mystery to me, but it was before the 1842 census of Canada East (present-day province of Quebec), because she does not appear in her husband’s household that year. [2] After his father remarried in about 1843 or 1844, Pierre had a further eleven siblings, seven half-brothers and four half-sisters.

The Beauvais family seems to have moved rather frequently, usually to parts that were just opening up to colonization, such as the Petite-Nation seigneurie in southwestern Quebec.

Pierre still lived at home when he was enumerated on the 1871 census, when he was a cultivateur (farmer) like his father. [3]

When he was thirty-six years old, Pierre married Arline Deschatelets on 13 July 1874 in St-Casimir church in Ripon, Papineau County, Quebec. [4] Pierre and Arline were second cousins (they shared the same Beauvais – Gibouleau great-grandparents), but their marriage record doesn’t mention a dispensation to marry.

Pierre and Arline had seven children, born in Ripon or nearby Chénéville between 1875 and 1889. The eldest son Joseph was my great-grandfather. Daughter Orméline and son Ferdinand died young, in 1885 and 1882, respectively.

Like with his mother’s death, I haven’t found the exact date or location of Pierre’s death. I know that he died after 19 August 1895, because he was present at his daughter Odile (Auxile)’s wedding, but before 16 August 1897, because he’s described as “feu [the late] Pierre Beauvais” in his son Joseph’s marriage record. [5]

Sources:

1. Ste-Anne (Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec), parish register, 1838, p. 4 recto, no entry no., Pierre Bouvet [sic] baptism, 24 February 1838; Ste-Anne parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 29 March 2008).

2. "Canada, recensement du Bas-Canada, 1842", index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-11344-9231-72?cc=1834340 : accessed 4 September 2014), entry for Charles Beauvais, Ottawa > Petite-Nation (seigneurie) > image 29 of 40; citing Public Archives, Ottawa, Ontario.

3. 1871 census of Canada, Hartwell, Ottawa East, Quebec, population schedule, subdistrict h, p. 11 (penned), dwelling 42, family 42, Charles Bouvais [sic] household (written as Bouvais, indexed as Boudrais); digital image, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 16 July 2009).

4. St-Casimir (Ripon, Quebec), parish register, 1866-1898, p. [219?] verso, entry no. M.7 (1874), Pierre Bauvais [sic] – Oralie Deschatelais [sic] marriage, 13 July 1874; St-Casimir parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 29 March 2008).

5. St-Felix-de-Valois (Chénéville, Quebec), parish register, 1887-1899, p. 195 recto, entry no. M.11 (1895), Théodule Pilon – Auxile Beauvais marriage, 19 August 1895; St-Felix-de-Valois parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 4 September 2014). Also, St-Felix-de-Valois (Chénéville, Quebec), parish register, 1887-1899, p. 240 recto, entry no. M.11 (1897), Joseph Beauvais – Olivine Hott [sic] marriage, 16 August 1897; St-Felix-de-Valois parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 13 August 2013).

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.