Military Monday: Ovide Desgroseilliers, WWI Sergeant

I read today in Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections that more World War I service files have been uploaded at Library and Archives Canada, so I decided to see if some of my distant Desgroseilliers relatives’ files were among them. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Ovide’s file was finally online. He was the youngest brother of my maternal great-grandfather Albert Desgroseilliers (1879-1957).

After a quick read, here are some highlights of my great-great-uncle Ovide’s file (34 images):

Name: Ovide Desgrosseilliers (index) / Ovide Desgrossiellier (his signature).

Birth date and place: 26 April 1884 Embrun, Ontario, Canada.

Height: 5’ 7”.

Marital status: Wife (Anna Maurice) and two young children (Carmel and Guy).

Enlistment date and place: 3 April 1916 Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, Canada.

Previous military service: 3 years, 97th Regiment.

Rank: Promoted from Private to Sergeant on 1 May 1916.

Battalion: 163rd Battalion (F.C.) C.E.F.

Theatre of war: Arrived in Bermuda on 29 May 1916. He remained there until his discharge a few months later, and was never sent to the Western Front (France).

Discharge: He was deemed “medically unfit for further service” and discharged on 22 November 1916 (presumably due to a condition known as orchitis).

For more information about Canadian WWI service files, read the introductory articles and then search the soldiers' database. Note that the digitisation of these files is an-ongoing project. LAC states on its website that: “As of today, 181,338 of 640,000 files are available in the database. Latest box digitized—box: #2490, name: Devos.”

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Maritime Monday: S/S Lake Superior and the July 1899 Doukhobors

On 20 July 1899 – 116 years ago today – the Lake Superior arrived at Quebec City. The steamship had left Liverpool, England twelve days earlier and carried 670 passengers that included a small contingent of Doukhobors. [1]

Unlike the first groups of exiled Doukhobors who had immigrated to Canada in the previous months (including my husband’s ancestors), these 12 families from Elizavetpol and Kars provinces in Russia consisted of “Doukhobor military personnel detained in Russia until their terms of military service expired”. [2]

Their surnames were Goncharov, Golubov, Panferkov, Popov, Salykin, Slastukhin, Sukhorukov, Zhuravlev, and Zybin. [3]

Sources:

Image credit: Photo of S/S Lake Superior (built 1884), digital image, Norway – Heritage (http://www.norwayheritage.com : accessed 8 January 2014).

1. Steve Lapshinoff & Jonathan Kalmakoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928 (Crescent Valley: self-published, 2001), 106.

2. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 106.

3. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 106.

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Military Monday: My Carignan-Salières Regiment Ancestors

Thanks to Gail Dever of Genealogy à la Carte for bringing to her readers’ attention last week the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Carignan-Salières regiment in New France (First of Régiment Carignan-Salières arrived 350 years ago today).

This famous regiment of 1200 men left France for Canada between June and September 1665 to “combat the Iroquois threat to the struggling colony of New France”. [1]

I have lines of descent from about 43 of those soldiers. (I haven’t finished adding details to my database, so there might be more.) At least two of those forty-three were part of the first four Companies (Chambly, Froment, La Tour and Petit) that sailed on Le Vieux Siméon and arrived in Quebec on 19 June 1665. [2] They are

Bernard De Niger (Deniger) dit Sanssoucy (ca 1627-before 25 Nov 1700) [3]
• Origin: archdiocese of Bordeaux, Guyenne, France
• Company: Froment
• Rank: Soldier
• Spouse: Marguerite Raisin (ca 1651-1700), a fille du Roi, who arrived in 1670. I have three lines of descent (all maternal) from Bernard and Marguerite.

and

Pierre Marsan (Merçan) dit Lapierre (ca 1626-between 1691 and 1693) [4]
• Origin: Rouen, Normandy, France
• Company: Chambly
• Rank: Sergeant
• Spouse: Françoise Baiselat (ca 1646-1694), a fille du Roi, who arrived in 1668. I have two lines of descent (paternal and maternal) from Pierre and Françoise.

Sources:

Image credit: Wikipedia contributors, "Carignan-Salières Regiment," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carignan-Sali%C3%A8res_Regiment : accessed 20 June 2015).

Photo Credit: “Reconstition régiment Carignan Sallierres au fort Chambly [sic]” by Richard Coté (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carignan_Sallierres2.jpg : accessed 20 June 2015).

1. “Carignan-Salières Regiment Lineage Chart”, database, Acadian and French Canadian Genealogy (http://habitant.org/index.htm : accessed 20 June 2015).

2. “Regiment”, database, La Société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan, Inc. (http://www.fillesduroi.org/src/ships.htm : accessed 20 June 2015), “Regiment (Ships)”.

3. René Jetté, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1983), 775. Also, Peter J. Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663-1673, 2 vols. (Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Quintin Publications, 2001), 2: 481.

4. Jetté, Dictionnaire, 332. Also, Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers, 1: 64.

Copyright (c) 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.