Church Record Sunday: Elisabeth Lemieux’s 1891 Burial Record

Elisabeth, also known as Isabelle, is my maternal 3x great-grandmother.

The ninth child of Jean-Baptiste and Marie-Anne (Séguin) Lemieux, Elisabeth was born on December 16, 1810 in LaPrairie, a community on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River facing Montreal.

In January 1828, Elisabeth married François Desgroseilliers in nearby Châteauguay. The following year, her elder sister Jovite (1808-1893) married Joseph Desgroseilliers, François’ brother. (One day I’ll write an article about how they are sometimes confused as one couple in online family trees.)

Elisabeth and François had eleven children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. About twenty years after François’ death in 1853, Elisabeth left her home in Châteauguay County, Quebec for Russell County, Ontario. Her children Aurélie, François, and Pierre (my 2x great-grandfather) also moved to Ontario about that time.

Elisabeth died in Embrun, Russell County, Ontario on July 14, 1891. [1] Her death registration, however, states that she died on July 15. [2] The funeral took place two days later (July 16) at St-Jacques church, followed by burial in the parish cemetery.

Elisabeth Lemieux burial record (Ancestry)

My transcription of Elisabeth’s burial record (original lineation indicated by / ):

Le seize Juillet, mil huit cent quatre vingt onze / Nous soussigné Vicaire, avons inhumé dans le / cimetière de cette paroisse, le corps de Isabelle / D. Lemieux, décédée avant-hier a l’âge de quatre- / vingt-deux ans, épouse de feu François Desgro- / seillers [sic], cultivateur de cette paroisse. Étaient / presents Onésime Desrosiers, Amable Bourdeau / et autres de cette paroisse, qui ainsi que le fils / François Desgroseillers [sic], n’ont pu signer. / Lecture faite. [signé ChsSdeCarufel Ptre]

My English translation of the record (original lineation indicated by / ):

The sixteen July, one thousand eight hundred ninety one / We undersigned Vicar, have interred in the / cemetery of this parish, the body of Isabelle / D. Lemieux, deceased before yesterday at the age of / 82 years, spouse of the late François Desgro- / seillers [sic], farmer of this parish. Were / present Onésime Desrosiers, Amable Bourdeau / and others of this parish, who along with the son / François Desgroseillers [sic], could not sign [their names]. / Reading done. [signed ChsSdeCarufel Ptre]

I noticed a couple of minor errors in Elisabeth’s burial record. One, she was 80 years old (not 82) when she died. Two, her late husband François never lived in Embrun (he died in Châteauguay County, Quebec), so could not have been a cultivateur de cette paroisse. Someone present at the funeral, possibly a family member, likely gave these incorrect details to the vicar, the recently ordained Charles Sicard de Carufel. [3]

Sources:

1. St-Jacques (Embrun, Ontario), parish register, 1884-1891, page no. 531 stamped, entry no. S.25 (1891), Isabelle Lemieux (written as Isabelle Lemieux, indexed as Isabelle Desgroseillers) burial, 16 July 1891; St-Jacques parish; digital images, “Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967”, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 22 September 2015).

2. “Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947”, digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 22 September 2015), entry for Isabelle Desgroseilliers (written as Isabelle Desgroseilliers, indexed as Isabelle Desposeillien), 15 July 1891; citing Archives of Ontario, Registrations of Deaths, 1869-1938, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, series MS935, reel 62.

3. Cyprien Tanguay, Répertoire Général du Clergé Canadien […] (Montréal, 1893, 514); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/ : accessed 11 July 2018), entry for Charles-Olivier Sicard de Carufel.

Copyright © 2018, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sunday’s Obituary: Célestin Desgroseilliers

Célestin Desgroseilliers passed away 58 years ago on 22 November 1957 in Ottawa, Ontario. [1] He was a younger brother of my maternal great-grandfather Albert Desgroseilliers. Célestin was born on 19 November 1881 in Embrun, Russell County, Ontario. He was the ninth child and sixth son of Pierre and Flavie (Lepage) Desgroseilliers.

In January 1904, Célestin married Fabiana Gauthier, by whom he had ten children. He and at least two of his brothers (Prospère and Albert) were tall men. He was a merchant in Sturgeon Falls and in Kapuskasing, Ontario before relocating to Ottawa in the mid-1950s.

Célestin died in hospital after a short illness. He was survived by his wife, 8 children, 16 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren.

Source:

1. “Ontario, Canada, The Ottawa Journal (Birth, Marriage and Death Notices), 1885-1980”, digital images, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 21 November 2015), Celestin Desgroseilliers death notice; citing The Ottawa Journal, 23 November 1957, p. 24, col. 1; City of Ottawa Archive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; database created from microfilm copies of the newspaper.

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #35 Cordélia Racette

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 35th week of this challenge, I chose Cordélia Racette (1849-1928).

Cordélia is my maternal great-great-grandmother and is number 27 in my ancestor list.

Cordélia (Racette) Léveillé

Born on 11 November 1849, Marie Delphine Cordélie Racette was baptized the next day in St-Pierre-du-Portage parish church in L’Assomption, L’Assomption County, Quebec. [1]

Known by her third name, Cordélia was the eldest daughter among the six sons and four daughters of Joseph Racette and his wife Marcelline Gagnon.

In about 1856, the Racette family left their home in L’Assomption County for Russell County, Ontario, where the younger children were born.

Cordélia married her third cousin Joseph Léveillé, a widower, on an autumn day in 1870. I wrote last week about how I haven’t been able to locate the exact date and place of their wedding through civil registration or sacramental records; see 52 Ancestors: #34 Joseph Léveillé.

With her marriage, Cordélia became stepmother to Joseph’s six year old daughter Adeline. For the next twenty-four years, she also became mother to her own brood of eleven children – four sons and seven daughters, including my great-grandmother Clémentine. The youngest child in the family, Eugène, was born in 1896 when Cordélia was 47 years old.

In June 1921, Cordélia and Joseph made their final appearances on a federal Canadian census. They lived in Russell County on their farm in the village of Limoges (known as South Indian at this time), with their daughter Adélaïde, their housekeeper. [2]

After Joseph’s death in late 1922, Cordélia went to live with her younger son Louis in Eastview, now part of Ottawa. She died there at home on 86 Cedar Street on 17 December 1928. [3]

Louis was the informant on his mother’s death registration. Interestingly, he gave Cordélia’s date of birth as 10 October 1849, four weeks earlier than the date seen in her baptism record. The cause of death was endocarditis chronic of three months duration. [4]

Cordélia’s funeral took place in St-Charles church in Eastview, followed by burial in Limoges. [5] She was survived by all her children, except her eldest son Joseph, who died as an infant in 1875, and by her stepdaughter Adeline, who died in 1894.

Sources:

Photo supplied by Paul Lavoie.

1. St-Pierre-du-Portage (L’Assomption, Quebec), parish register, 1849, p. 38 verso, entry no. B.168, Marie Delphine Cordelie Racette (written as Marie Delphine Cordelie Racette, indexed as Marie Delphine Cordelie Routh) baptism, 12 November 1849; St-Pierre-du-Portage parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 August 2014).

2. 1921 census of Canada, Cambridge (Township), Russell, Ontario, population schedule, enumeration district 125, subdistrict 3, p. 9, dwelling 70, family 70, Joseph Leveille [sic] household; digital image, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 11 September 2013); citing Library and Archives Canada, Sixth Census of Canada, 1921, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Library and Archives Canada, 2013; Series RG31, Statistics Canada Fonds.

3. “Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 August 2014), entry for Cordelia Leveillée [sic], 17 December 1928; citing Archives of Ontario, Registrations of Deaths, 1869-1938, MS 935, reel 358; Archives of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

4. “Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947”, digital image, Ancestry.ca, entry for Cordelia Leveillée, 17 December 1928. Endocarditis is “inflammation of the inside lining of the heart chambers and heart valves (endocardium)”. MedlinePlus, database, National Institutes of Health (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001098.htm : accessed 20 August 2014), “Endocarditis”.

5. St-Viateur (Limoges, Ontario), parish register, 1928-1939, p. 8, entry no. S.20 (1928), Cordelia Racette burial, 19 December 1928; St-Viateur parish; digital image, “Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 August 2014).

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #34 Joseph Léveillé

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 34th week of this challenge, I chose Joseph Léveillé (1839-1922).

Joseph is my maternal great-great-grandfather and is number 26 in my ancestor list.

Joseph Léveillé

Early in my research, I found sources that stated Joseph was born about 1839 or in 1842 in New Glasgow, Quebec. It wasn’t until I got a subscription to Ancestry that I eventually found his baptism record. It showed that my great-great-grandfather was born and baptized on 23 August 1839 in St-Lin, L’Assomption County, Quebec. [1] Granted, New Glasgow and St-Lin are near each other, but not near enough to be the same place.

Joseph was a younger son of Jean-Baptiste Léveillé and Adélaïde Coderre. He had four older brothers, Jean-Baptiste, François-Xavier, Louis and Joseph (the last two died as infants), and two sisters, Marguerite and Marie Mélina (who also died as an infant).

The Léveillé family is enumerated on the 1851 census in L’Assomption (at that time Leinster) County in Quebec. Ten years later, Joseph and his parents are living in Russell County, Ontario, according to the 1861 census. It’s possible they were there as early as 1857, because a local history book names a Jean-Baptiste Léveillé and a Xavier Léveillé among some of the first settlers of Embrun. [2] These men could be Joseph’s father and brother, or his two eldest brothers, who paved the way, so to speak, for the rest of the family to join them in this part southeastern Ontario.

In October 1862, Joseph married as his first wife Marguerite Gauthier in Embrun. [3] The couple had one child, a daughter, before Marguerite died. Despite my searches, I haven’t found her burial record or her death registration. I also haven’t found his second marriage, to Cordélia Racette, in the sacramental registers of St-Jacques parish of Embrun. Fortunately, though, the 1871 census helps out by giving a date: November 1870. [4]

In the late 1980s, a distant cousin wrote to me about our mutual ancestors Joseph and Cordélia. He told me about the time he visited their youngest daughter Florida and how she had shared with him many details about her family, as well as photos of her parents. Florida appears to be the source for her parents’ marriage date and place of 10 November 1870 Embrun, Ontario and for the photo of Joseph seen above that was sent to me by my correspondent.[5]

Joseph and Cordélia, who were third cousins, had eleven children, born between 1872 and 1896: Mélanise (Mélanie), Joseph (who died young), Léonie, Clémentine (my great-grandmother), Adeline, Amanda, Adélaïde, Odilon Dominat, Louis, Florida and Eugène.

Joseph, who was a laborer and farmer all his life, died presumably in October 1922. He was buried on 21 October 1922 in the parish cemetery of St-Viateur in Limoges, Russell County, Ontario. [6] Unfortunately, his burial record doesn’t give his date or place of death. I didn’t find Joseph's death registration in Ancestry.ca’s “Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947” database or in “Ontario Deaths 1869-1947” at FamilySearch.org. I even searched the microfilmed death registration records at the Archives of Ontario when I was in Toronto last May, but didn’t locate Joseph. I also checked the "Le LAFRANCE" database at GénéalogieQuebec.com in case he died in the province of Quebec, but there weren’t any candidates. Finally, Joseph’s death wouldn’t be registered in that site’s “Mariages et décès 1926-1997” database, because the records begin in 1926, five years after he passed away.

Sources:

1. St-Lin (St-Lin-des-Laurentides, Quebec), parish register, 1839, p. 21 recto, entry no. B.102, Joseph Léveillé baptism, 23 August 1839; St-Lin parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 22 August 2008).

2. J.-U. Forget and Elie-J. Auclair, Histoire de Saint-Jacques d’Embrun (Ottawa: La Cie d’Imprimerie d’Ottawa, 1910), 19; digital image, Our Roots (http://ourroots.ca : accessed 21 April 2013).

3. "Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923," digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-24169-4211-91?cc=1927566&wc=M6VT-9TG:221001601,221046001,221030802,221049401 : accessed 27 March 2012), Russell > Embrun > St Jacques > Baptisms, marriages, burials 1858-1869 > image 62 of 187, Léveillé – Gauthier marriage.

4. 1871 census of Canada, Russell Township, Russell County, Ontario, population schedule, subdistrict d, p. 27, dwelling 95, family 95, Joseph Léveyer [sic] household; digital image, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 22 August 2008); citing Library and Archives Canada, Census of Canada, 1871. The enumerator wrote “November” in Column 16 (Married within last twelve months), indicating that Joseph and Cordélia married in November 1870.

5. Paul Lavoie to Yvonne Belair, letter, 7 January 1988; privately held by Yvonne (Belair) Demoskoff, 2014. Paul, a great-great-grandson of Joseph and Cordélia (Racette) Léveillé, spoke with their daughter Florida (Léveillé) Leroux in Vars, Ontario in 1974.

6. St-Viateur (Limoges, Ontario), parish register, 1911-1927, p. 294, entry no. S.15, Joseph Léveillé (written as Léveillé, indexed as Laville) burial, 21 October 1922; St-Viateur parish; digital image, “Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 22 August 2008).

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #10 Albert Desgroseilliers – A tall and bespectacled man

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 10th week of this challenge, I chose my maternal great-grandfather Albert Desgroseilliers (1879-1957).

During the first week of this challenge, I wrote about Albert’s wife Clémentine Léveillé; you can read about her here.

My great-grandfather Albert was born on 12 February 1879 in Embrun, Russell County, Ontario. He was the eighth child and fifth son of Pierre Desgroseilliers and his wife Flavie Lepage. (Five other children were born after Albert.) He received the name Norbert at his baptism the day after he was born, but was known as Albert. He was not the first son named Albert in his family, though. An earlier Albert was born in July 1873, but lived only 12 days.

Albert grew to be a tall man, about 6’5”. I don’t know when he started needing eyeglasses, but he appears to be wearing a pair in the earliest photo I have of him taken at his son Eugène’s wedding in August 1925.

In the spring of 1899, Albert married Embrun-born Clémentine Léveillé in St-Viateur church of Limoges, near Embrun, on April 24. Clémentine was a few months older than her husband, as she was born on 12 November 1878. Within a few months, the couple moved north to Nipissing (now Sudbury) District and made their home in the village of St. Charles, where Albert’s parents and other paternal relatives were now living.

Albert and Clémentine’s first child, Eugène, was born in August 1900. Thirteen more children followed between 1901 and 1923: Arthur, Alma, Ovila, Hormidas, Roméo, Anna, Léonidas, Flavie, Léandre, Donat, Ovide, Ovila, and Joseph. Two daughters and a son (Alma, Ovila and Anna) died when very young, between 1905 and 1910.

Albert (sitting, left) with his wife and six of their children, 1950s

After living in St-Charles for about 17 years, Albert moved his family further north to the quaintly named village of Moonbeam, in Cochrane District. There, his three youngest children were born. The family sustained two loses when sons Arthur (21) and Hormidas (27) died in 1923 and 1934, respectively.

The first child to marry was my grandfather Eugène, when he wed Juliette Beauvais in the summer of 1925 in Moonbeam. Albert and Clémentine became grandparents the next year when Juliette gave birth to a son in December 1926, but sadly, the child did not survive. More grandchildren, though, came at a regular pace over the years, with the last one born five years after Albert's death.

In the mid-1940s, Albert gave up farming, and moved to Sturgeon Falls, not far from St. Charles. Here, he and Clémentine lived out their remaining years.

In the fall of 1957, Albert travelled to Ottawa, presumably to visit his younger brother Célestin, who was ill. Célestin died that November in hospital. Albert must have been taken ill, as well, because he died while still in Ottawa less than a month after his brother, on 16 December 1957. His nephew Laurent (Célestin’s son) registered Albert’s death. (I’ve written here about how I learned that Albert died in Ottawa, instead of Sturgeon Falls where I had always been told he died.)

Albert’s funeral was held in Sturgeon Falls on 19 December 1957. He is buried there in St. Mary’s (Old) Cemetery.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Mystery Monday: The Missing Birth Registration

Albert Desgroseilliers, about 1955

Albert Desgroseilliers

My maternal great-grandfather Albert Desgroseilliers was baptized on 13 February 1879 in Embrun, Russell County, Ontario.¹ According to his baptism record, he was born the previous day, presumably in Embrun, where his parents resided and where his father Pierre was a cultivateur (farmer).²

Civil Registration

I knew that registration of births, marriages and deaths began in 1869 in the province of Ontario, and so assumed I’d find Albert’s birth registration in the “Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1913” database at Ancestry.ca. Knowing that Desgroseilliers is often misspelled in indexes, I kept my search simple and filled in only three fields: Year: 1879; Gender: Male; and County or District: Russell. There were 236 results, but Albert wasn’t among them.³

I wasn’t worried that I hadn’t found Albert on my first try. I decided to look at the images for Russell County for 1879; since there were only 54 images, it would be an easy task. The section for Embrun begins on image 20 of 54, with entry No. 3 on stamped page 553. I knew this spot was the right place among the images, because the informant was “C. Guillaume / PP [parish priest] / Embrun Russell”. (Father Guillaume served as St-Jacques’ curé from 1875 to 1885.)⁴

Missing birth registration

I looked through the January births and then the February ones, but couldn’t find my great-grandfather. He should have been between entry No. 18 (Hormidas Gagnon) and No. 19 (Joseph St Amour), based on how he appears in St-Jacques’ parish register. I continued to look through the rest of the February and March entries, but Albert was nowhere to be seen.

Next, I checked all the 1879 entries (on images 20 through 30 of 54 images) in the Division of Russell (where Embrun is located) of the Registration District of Russell [County] and made a list of all the individuals whose births were registered by Father Guillaume.

Once the list was complete, I noticed that Father Guillaume submitted three batches of names to the division registrar for 1879: on March 25, on June 30 and on December 31. The first batch (March 25) was of baptisms that took place between January 1 and March 23. (Although Father Guillaume recorded a child’s date of baptism with a mention of when he or she was born in the sacramental register, it’s the child’s date of birth that is required in the (civil) registration book.)

St-Jacques’ sacramental register

I then made a list of the baptismal entries in St-Jacques’ sacramental register for the same time frame as the district registration entries.⁵ That’s when I realized there were 39 baptismal entries, but only 35 birth registration entries. The following four names were missing:

• Norbert [aka Albert] Degroseillier (B.16),
• Mary Ann O’Burns (B.21),
• Gédéon Moïse (B.29) and
• Edmond Isaïe Brien dit Durocher (B.32).

What happened?

Why didn’t these four individuals make it into the 1879 registration book for Russell County? These names were located within other pages that had names entered in the sacramental register, so it’s not a case of a skipped page. Both the church register’s and the district registration book’s pages are consecutively numbered. Did Father Guillaume neglect to submit these names or did the division registrar William Loux fail to enter them in the registration books?⁶ Could it be that a missed step resulted in a disconnect between the priest and the division registrar, or between the division registrar and the next level of government?

Wanting to know more about the early history of the Vital Statistics Act (1869), I downloaded (for a fee) an interesting journal article titled “Ontario’s Civil Registration of Vital Statistics, 1869-1926: The Evolution of an Administrative System” by George Emery.⁷ I learned that division registrars “recorded vital events on forms provided by the Registrar-General”, and that after 1875, “municipal registrars [communicated directly with] the Registrar-General”.⁸

However, I’m still curious about what procedures were in place in 1879 for getting birth information from a parish church priest to a division registrar, and from that registrar to the Registrar General of Ontario and eventually to microfilmed holdings.

I also recently learned that original handwritten indexes exist for Ontario birth registrations.⁹ (I already knew that computer-generated index books existed.) I might have to plan a trip one day to Toronto to consult these originals at the Archives of Ontario.

Conclusion

My goal was to find my great-grandfather’s baptism record and his birth registration. I’m happy that I found at least one of these records. I’m also glad that I did a comparison of the religious and secular registers, because I saw that there was more than one birth entry missing from the county registration book and not just Albert’s.

For now, though, it’s a mystery why Albert is missing from the 1879 Ontario birth registration records.

Sources:

1. St-Jacques (Embrun, Ontario), parish register, 1877-1883, folio 97 (stamped), entry no. B.16, Norbert Degroseiller [sic] baptism, 13 February 1879; St-Jacques parish; digital image, “Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923”, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ : accessed 20 April 2013). To access these browsable-only images, follow this path from the FamilySearch homepage: Search > Records > Canada > Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923 > [Browse] > Russell > Embrun > St Jacques > Baptisms, marriages, burials 1877-1883.

2. St-Jacques, parish register, 1877-1883, folio 97 (stamped), Norbert Degroseiller [sic] baptism, 13 February 1879.

3. “Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1913“, database, Ancestry.ca (www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 April 2013).

4. J.-U. Forget and Elie-J. Auclair, Histoire de Saint-Jacques d’Embrun (Ottawa: La Cie d’Imprimerie d’Ottawa, 1910), 44; digital image, Our Roots (http://ourroots.ca : accessed 21 April 2013). French-born Jacques-Charles Guillaume was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in July 1859 in Ottawa. He was St-Jacques’ fifth parish priest.

5. St-Jacques (Embrun, Ontario), parish register, 1877-1883, folio 89 – folio 105 (stamped); St-Jacques parish; digital images, “Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923”, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ : accessed 20 April 2013).

6. Division Registrar William Loux signed his name (W^m Loux) in each entry and on the last page for Russell County, which he dated December 31st, 1879.

7. George Emery, “Ontario’s Civil Registration of Vital Statistics, 1869-1926: The Evolution of an Administrative System”, Canadian Historical Review 64 (No. 4, 1983); digital images, University of Toronto Press Journals (https://utpjournals.metapress.com : 21 April 2013).

8. Emery, “Ontario’s Civil Registration of Vital Statistics, 1869-1926”, 478-481.

9. “Finding a Birth Registration - A Pathfinder”, Archives of Ontario (http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/microfilm/v_bintro.aspx : accessed 21 April 2013).

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Funeral Card Friday: Albert Desgroseilliers

This funeral card is dedicated to the “douce mémoire” (dear memory) of Albert Desgroseilliers, my maternal great-grandfather. The card measures 10 cm long by 5.5 cm wide (approximately 4” x 2”). I don’t remember how I came to own it, but my mother had it for many years before she gave it to me.

I never met Albert, because he died a few months before I was born. He was a tall man, about 6’5” (his eldest son Eugène was even taller – 6’7”), and was a farmer most of his life. Albert was born in February 1879 in Embrun in Russell County, Ontario, and married Clémentine Léveillé in April 1899 in nearby Limoges. Soon after their wedding, they relocated north to St-Charles in Nipissing District, where their son Eugène was born in the summer of 1900.

When I first started researching my mother’s side of the family many years ago, I was told that Albert died in Sturgeon Falls, close to St-Charles, where he and Clémentine settled on a small property. Years later, when I found his burial record in the “Drouin Collection” at Ancestry.ca, I read that he died on December 16, 1957 and that his funeral took place three days later on December 19 in La Résurrection parish in Sturgeon Falls. I was told he died in Sturgeon Falls by my mother and her sister Madeleine, I knew he was buried in that town, and I was satisfied with this information. About three years ago, I ordered a certified copy of Albert’s “Statement of Death” (death registration) from the Office of the Registrar General in Ontario. Was I ever surprised and confused to read that my great-grandfather died not in Sturgeon Falls as I had always believed, but miles away in Ottawa General Hospital in our country’s capital city! (I knew I had the correct Albert Desgroseilliers, because all the other bits of info on the form matched what was verified about him, like his date and place of birth, the names of his parents, and the name of his wife.) I asked Mom if she could clear up this mystery, but she assured me that Sturgeon Falls was where her grandfather died. She suggested I call her elder sister, Madeleine, who would surely confirm that “fact”. So, I call my Aunt Madeleine, and she was just as sure as Mom was about where Albert died. She couldn’t explain why his death registration gave a different, and until now, unheard of place of death. At this point in time (2009), all of Albert’s 14 children were deceased, so I couldn’t ask any of them for their help. I looked at the document one more time hoping to see if I had missed important clues. I believe I found two. First, according to “Length Deceased Resided” were the death occurred, it says that Albert lived in Ottawa for “2 mois” (2 months), indicating that he was there since October. I wondered what would have brought him to Ottawa? I checked my files on his family, and saw that his younger brother Célestin had recently died on November 22 in Vanier. (Vanier used to be a municipality next door to Ottawa, but is now part of that city.) Second, the name of the informant was Laurent DesGroseilliers, Albert’s nephew, and Célestin’s son. It now seemed reasonable to think that Albert travelled from his home in Sturgeon Falls to visit his ailing brother in Vanier. While there, he became ill, was taken to the hospital where he subsequently died. (The death registration does not have a section for cause of death.)

Copyright © 2012, Yvonne Demoskoff