Sibling Saturday: The Children of Joseph and Olivine (Hotte) Beauvais

Today’s Sibling Saturday is the fifth part in an ongoing series about my ancestors’ families. Here are the previous articles in this series:

• 21 May 2016: Sibling Saturday: The Children of Jean-Baptiste Bouchard (1698-1755)

• 21 April 2018: Sibling Saturday: The Children of Pierre Janvry dit Belair (1851-1941)

• 21 July 2018: Sibling Saturday: The Children of Olivier and Elizabeth (Vanasse) Vanasse

• 15 September 2018: Sibling Saturday: The Children of Albert and Clémentine (Léveillé) Desgroseilliers

Joseph and Olivine (possibly their wedding photo)

My maternal great-grandparents Joseph Beauvais and Olivine Hotte were born in Papineau County, Quebec – he in Ripon and she in nearby Hartwell (now Chénéville). They married on 16 August 1897 in Chénéville. Joseph and Olivine were the parents of 16 children: 12 sons and 4 daughters. Joseph was a bûcheron (a woodcutter, timberman or a faller) and that’s probably what led him to move his young family to Tupper Lake in New York State, an area known for its lumber production. His second son Oscar was born there in 1899. The Beauvais family lived in New York for one or two years, before they returned to live in the province of Quebec. About 1923, Joseph and his family moved to Moonbeam, a village in northern Ontario. Olivine died there soon after on 4 June 1926. Joseph died on 17 September 1937, also in Moonbeam.

I knew some of my mother’s aunts and uncles, like Réal and the three youngest ones. When my family was on holiday in Ontario and Quebec in 1986, we visited Gatineau (across from Ottawa in the province of Quebec) and met Réal (Mom’s godfather) and his wife Stella. While there, we visited Jean-Marie and spent a lovely afternoon at his home. His twin brother Jean-Paul was there, so I met him, too. As for Laurette, I knew her from our occasional visits to Moonbeam where she lived. (Moonbeam is about 1½ hours north of Timmins where my family lived.) After we moved to British Columbia in 1979, we rarely saw Mom’s Beauvais relatives. We really appreciated that Aunt Madeleine, Mom’s sister, who lived in eastern Canada, kept us up-to-date with news about their relatives.

Children of Joseph and Olivine (Hotte) Beauvais

1. Ovide Beauvais
Ovide was born on 8 June 1898 in Chénéville. On 7 June 1920, he married Lucienne Duchesne in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. They had 16 children. In 1941, Ovide and his family moved from Sudbury and settled in Blue Water, a village that no longer exists near Sarnia, Ontario. He died on 12 July 1981 in Sarnia.

2. Oscar Beauvais
Oscar was born on 25 November 1899 in Tupper Lake, Franklin County, New York, USA. He married on 5 October 1922 in Montpellier, near Chénéville, Rosa Robillard. They were the parents of 14 children. Oscar and his family later settled in Blue Water like Ovide and Juliette. Oscar died on 4 July 1979 in Sarnia.

3. Juliette Beauvais
My grandmother Juliette was born on 30 June 1901 in Chénéville. On 18 August 1925, she married Eugène Desgroseilliers in Moonbeam. Juliette and Eugène, who had nine children, lived in northern Ontario and northern Quebec, where he was a chief of police. In 1942, they settled in Blue Water like her brothers Ovide and Oscar. Juliette died of pancreatic cancer on 14 August 1948 in Sarnia, Ontario. Eugène’s brother Ovide Desgroseilliers married Juliette’s sister Laurette (Lorette) Beauvais. I wrote about Juliette and her sister Agathe at Sibling Saturday: Juliette and Agathe Beauvais.

Juliette and Agathe (about 1935)

4. Marie-Louise Beauvais
Marie-Louise was born on 30 January 1903 in Montpellier. She died on 26 May 1947 in hospital, possibly in Kapuskasing, Ontario. Marie-Louise was unmarried. About 10 years ago, her niece, my Aunt Madeleine, told me that Marie-Louise had been in love with one of her sister Juliette’s brothers-in-law, either Arthur Desgroseilliers (1901-1923) or Hormidas Desgroseilliers (1906-1934). Unfortunately, both brothers died young and unmarried.

Marie-Louise (left) holding her niece Mariette, daughter of Juliette (centre) and Eugène (right) (1928)

5. Aldège Beauvais
Aldège was born on 16 August 1905 in Montpellier. In January 1940, one of Aldège’s horses kicked him in the face. He died from complications from his injuries on 2 February 1940 in Montreal, Quebec. Aldège was unmarried.

6. Léger Beauvais
Léger was born on 4 January 1907 in Montpellier. On 26 February 1935, he married Rollande Filion in Cochrane, Ontario. They lived in Moonbeam and were the parents of 14 children. Léger died on 6 September 1992 in Moonbeam.

7. Romuald Beauvais
Romuald was born on 16 March 1908 in Montpellier. He married Bernadette Dubosse (Dubosq) on 22 November 1944 in Moonbeam. They had four children. Romuald died on 5 November 1991 in Kapuskasing.

8. Emile Beauvais
Emile was born on 7 April 1910 in Montpellier. On 15 July 1947, he married Claire Bourgeois, a schoolteacher, in Val-Rita, Ontario. The couple had four children. Emile died on 28 July 1990 in Hearst, Ontario.

9. Martial Beauvais
Martial was born on 17 September 1911 in Montpellier. He married Marie-Paule Marin on 3 July 1948 in Moonbeam. They had seven children. Martial died 18 August 1982. The cause of death was a vehicle accident, according to the coroner’s report.

10. Réal Beauvais
Réal was born on 26 January 1913 in Montpellier. On 15 August 1936, he married Stella Moisan in Val d’Or, Quebec. The couple had 16 children. Réal died on 29 September 1997 in Gatineau. Réal and his younger sister Agathe were godparents to their niece, Jacqueline Desgroseilliers (my mother), at her baptism in 1933.

Réal (1986)

11. Aurèle Beauvais
Aurèle was born on 6 June 1914 in Montpellier. He married Florence Carrière on 12 May 1942 in Moonbeam. They had four children. Aurèle died in 1996 in Hearst.

12. Joseph Beauvais
Joseph was born on 22 August 1916 in Montpellier. On 22 November 1939, he married Germaine Girard in Moonbeam. The couple, who had six children, lived in Val d’Or. Joseph died there on 6 March 2003.

Joseph (about 1936)

13. Agathe Beauvais
Agathe was born on 3 March 1918 in Montpellier. She and her elder brother Réal were godparents to their niece, Jacqueline (my mother), at her baptism in 1933. Agathe married Lucien Larouche on 25 March 1940 in Val d’Or. They had eight children. Agathe died on 30 December 1956 in Val d’Or after giving birth to a son earlier that day. Her niece, my Aunt Madeleine, said her death was due to a blood clot. My Mom Jacqueline was visiting her when they got the news of their Aunt’s death. I wrote about Agathe and her sister Juliette at Sibling Saturday: Juliette and Agathe Beauvais.

14. Laurette (Lorette) Beauvais
Laurette (Lorette) was born on 9 August 1919 in Montpellier. She married Ovide Desgroseilliers on 9 September 1936 in Moonbeam. They had seven children, all boys, and lived in Moonbeam. Laurette died on 24 April 1995. Ovide’s brother Eugène Desgroseilliers married Laurette’s sister Juliette Beauvais.

Ovide and Laurette with their niece Jacqueline (1974)

15. Jean-Marie Beauvais
Jean-Marie and Jean-Paul were fraternal twins. They were born on 1 May 1921 in Montpellier. Jean-Marie married Huguette Larouche on 5 July 1948 in Val Senneville, Quebec. They lived in Gatineau, Quebec and were the parents of four children. Jean-Marie died there on 20 December 2010. Jean-Marie and Jean-Paul served in World War II. Jean-Marie was posted at CFB Chilliwack, British Columbia for a time. On their leave, the twins visited their eldest sister, my grandmother Juliette, at home in Blue Water. Mom said Juliette loved her brothers and was close to them even though there was a 20-year gap between them. Uncle Jean-Marie lived for a brief time with my parents and our family in the early 1970s. He was a sales rep for Filter Queen vacuum cleaners and came to Timmins to recruit my father as a salesman. I can still see Uncle Jean-Marie sitting in our living room on Main (now Bélanger) Avenue talking to someone on the telephone and asking for a French operator. He believed that since Canada was a bilingual country, the phone company ought to find him someone who spoke French. I'm pretty sure he succeeded, too.

16. Jean-Paul Beauvais
Jean-Paul and Jean-Marie were fraternal twins. They were born on 1 May 1921 in Montpellier. On 12 September 1959, Jean-Paul married Pauline Ennis, a widow, in Montreal. He died in 2002.

Back, left to right: Jean-Marie, Joseph, and Jean-Paul
Front, left to right: Laurette, Réal and his wife Stella (1987)

Copyright © 2018, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Sibling Saturday: Juliette and Agathe Beauvais

Juliette and Agathe were my maternal grandmother and great-aunt, respectively. Their parents Joseph and Olivine (Hotte) Beauvais married in August 1897 in Hartwell (now Chénéville), Papineau County, Quebec.

Juliette, born on 30 June 1901 in Chénéville, was the third child and eldest daughter. Agathe, who was born on 3 March 1918 in nearby Montpellier, was the thirteenth child and second youngest daughter. They had twelve brothers and two sisters. Twenty-three years separated the oldest child Ovide from the youngest, fraternal twins Jean-Marie and Jean-Paul.

The Beauvais children were raised mostly in Montpellier, a village in the Laurentian Hills in Papineau County, in southwestern Quebec. Their father Joseph was a farmer and woodcutter. About 1922, the family moved to the quaintly named village of Moonbeam, in northern Ontario. Four years later, mother Olivine died in June 1926 of ‘cardiac asthenia’ (Da Costa’s syndrome).

A few months before her mother’s death, Juliette married Eugène Desgroseilliers on 18 August 1925 in Moonbeam. They were blessed with nine children: Noël (who died at birth), Mariette, Madeleine, Simone, Marianne (who died young), Jacqueline (my Mom), Gaston (he died when he was six years old), Normande, and Jeanne d’arc. After living in northern Ontario and northwestern Quebec for a few years, Eugène and Juliette settled in Blue Water, near Sarnia, Ontario in 1942.

Juliette (left) and Agathe (right) pose on a staircase in the above photo. The handwriting on the back of the picture says “à Hearst vers 1930” [in Hearst about 1930]. I doubt that the year is correct, because Agathe would have been only 12 years old. If the location is correct, though, the photo dates more likely to the mid-1930s, because Juliette, her husband and their children lived in Hearst, west of Moonbeam, until about 1936, when they moved to Rouyn, Quebec.

On 25 March 1940, Agathe married Lucien Larouche in Val d’Or, Abitibi District, Quebec. Their marriage registration gives their occupation as bonne (maid) for Agathe and mineur (miner) for Lucien. The couple had eight children: Renée, Gaston, Blandine, Gérard, Laurier, a son (who died soon after birth), Elisabeth, and Christian.

In 1948, Juliette became ill. She had advanced cancer of the pancreas. Within a few months of the diagnosis, she died in hospital in Sarnia on 14 August 1948, four days before her 23rd wedding anniversary.

Agathe survived her sister by eight years. She died suddenly from a blood clot after giving birth to a son on 30 December 1956. My Mom and Dad were visiting her sister Madeleine in Kirkland Lake at the time. Mom recalls that she was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom at Aunt Madeleine’s house when Dad woke her to break the news. Mom cried because Agathe, her godmother, was her favorite aunt.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

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.

Census Sunday: The Beauvais Family and the 1911 Census

1911 census of Canada (Hartwell Township, Quebec) [1]

My great-grandfather Joseph Beauvais and his family were enumerated on the 1911 census of Canada. [2] They lived in the parish of Notre-Dame-de-la-Consolation situated in Montpellier in Hartwell Township.

Joseph’s eldest daughter, Juliette, my grandmother, was born on 30 June 1901, so this enumeration is her first appearance on a federal Canadian census.

Cropped version of 1911 Hartwell Township census

The Beauvais family, as seen in the above cropped image version of the 1911 Hartwell Township census, consisted of head of family Joseph (33), his wife Olivine (33), and their children Ovide (12), Oscar (11), Juliette (9), Marie-Louise (8), Uldège (5), Léger (4), Romuald (3) and Emile (1).

The enumerator Antoine Leduc signed his name at the top of the form and wrote the responses in French. Although he dated the return Juin 17 [June 17], the official census date was 1 June 1911, making it the “first Dominion census taken in June”. [3]

Joseph’s main occupation is being a farmer (cultivateur), but he works additionally as a woodsman (bûcheron), for which he declared that he earned $150 in 1910. Other details include the family’s religion (Roman Catholic), its members’ place of birth (the province of Quebec, except second son Oscar was actually born in New York State, USA), and that the only ones who can read and write are the five eldest children, presumably because they spent 10 months in school during the previous year. The family commonly speaks French.

Sources:

1. 1911 census of Canada, Hartwell Township, Labelle, Quebec, population schedule, subdistrict 15, p. 17, dwelling 126, family 134, Joseph Beauvais household; digital images, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 31 May 2014); citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm reels T-20326 to T-20460.

2. 1911 census of Canada, Hartwell Township, Labelle, Quebec, pop. sched., subdist. 15, p. 17, dwel. 126, fam. 134, Joseph Beauvais household.

3. Dave Obee, Counting Canada: A Genealogical Guide to the Canadian Census (Victoria, BC: Dave Obee, 2012), 148.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #12 Olivine Hotte – Timeline of Her Life

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 12th week of this challenge (already 3 months!), I chose my maternal great-grandmother Olivine Hotte (1877-1926).

Olivine seems to have had a fairly typical French-Canadian, Roman Catholic life for one who was born in the 19th century. She lived at home until she married, had a large brood of children, followed her husband when he moved briefly to the U.S.A. and then back to Canada. (I wrote about this move in her husband’s story last week, which can be read here.) Olivine gave birth to her last children (twin boys) in 1921 and died, sadly, when they were only five years old, in 1926.

Timeline of Olivine Hotte

Childhood Years

10 Jan 1877 – Olivine Hotte is born in Hartwell (now Chénéville), Papineau County, Quebec. She is the eighth of eleven children of Louis Hotte and his wife Marguerite Lacasse.

15 Jan 1877 – Olivine is baptised in St-Félix-de-Valois R.C. church in Chénéville.

4 Apr 1881 – Olivine, her parents and her siblings appear on the 1881 census, residing in Chénéville.

23 Jun 1891 – Olivine, her parents and her siblings appear on the 1891 census, residing in Chénéville.

Married Years

16 Aug 1897 – Olivine marries Joseph Beauvais in Chénéville.

8 Jun 1898 – Olivine’s first child, son Ovide, is born in Chénéville.

Between 8 Jun 1898 and 25 Nov 1899 – Olivine, her husband and their young son move to Tupper Lake, Franklin County, New York, USA.

25 Nov 1899 – Olivine’s second child, son Oscar, is born in Tupper Lake.

1 Jun 1900 – I haven’t located Olivine and her family in Franklin County, New York on the 1900 U.S. census. It’s possible that they have already returned to Canada by this date.

Between 25 Nov 1899 and 31 Mar 1901 – Olivine and her family return to live in Chénéville.

31 Mar 1901 – Olivine, Joseph, and their two young sons appear on the 1901 census, residing in Chénéville.

30 Jun 1901 – Olivine’s third child, daughter Juliette, is born in Chénéville. (Juliette is my grandmother.)

Between 1 Jul 1901 and 30 Jan 1903 – Olivine, Joseph and their family move to Montpellier, near Chénéville.

30 Jan 1903 – Olivine’s, fourth child, daughter Marie-Louise, is born in Montpellier.

16 Aug 1905 – Olivine’s fifth child, son Aldège, is born in Montpellier.

4 Jan 1907 – Olivine’s sixth child, son Léger, is born in Montpellier.

3 Apr 1907 – Olivine’s mother Marguerite dies in Chénéville.

31 Jul 1907 – Olivine and Joseph are godparents to Oscar Pilon, his sister Odile (Beauvais) Pilon’s two-day old son, in Chénéville.

16 Mar 1908 – Olivine’s seventh child, son Romuald, is born in Montpellier.

7 Apr 1910 – Olivine’s eighth child, son Emile, is born in Montpellier.

17 June 1911 – Olivine, Joseph and their family appear on the 1911 census, residing in Chénéville.

17 Sep 1911 – Olivine’s ninth child, son Martial, is born in Montpellier.

26 Jan 1913 – Olivine’s tenth child, son Réal, is born in Montpellier. (Réal would later be my mother’s godfather.)

About Jun 1914 – Olivine’s, eleventh child, son Aurèle, is born in Montpellier. He was baptised between 28 May and 14 July 1914. (The record omits his date of baptism, but states that he was born the previous day.)

22 Aug 1916 – Olivine’s twelfth child, son Joseph, is born, in Montpellier.

3 Mar 1918 – Olivine’s thirteenth child, daughter Agathe, is born in Montpellier.

9 Aug 1919 – Olivine’s fourteenth child, daughter Laurette, is born in Montpellier.

7 Jun 1920 – Olivine’s eldest child Ovide marries Lucienne Duchesne in Sturgeon Falls, Nipissing District, Ontario. He is the first of her children to marry.

1 May 1921 – Olivine’s fifteenth and sixteenth children, fraternal twin sons Jean-Marie and Jean-Paul, are born in Montpellier. They are the last of Olivine’s children.

1 Jun 1921 – Olivine, Joseph and their family appear on the 1921 census, residing in Chénéville.

Later Years and Death

13 Aug 1921 – Olivine becomes a grandmother for the first time when her son Ovide’s wife gives birth to their first child, son Conrad.

5 Oct 1922 – Olivine’s second child, son Oscar, marries Rosa Robillard in Montpellier. Her husband Joseph is present at the ceremony.

Between Oct 1922 and Aug 1925 – Olivine, Joseph and their younger children move to Moonbeam, Cochrane District, Ontario.

20 Dec 1923 – Olivine’s father Louis dies in Chénéville. It’s possible that Olivine, Joseph and their family have already moved to northern Ontario, because Joseph does not appear among the list of men who were present two days later at his father-in-law’s funeral.

18 Aug 1925 – Olivine’s eldest daughter Juliette marries Eugène Desgroseilliers in Moonbeam. After the ceremony, she and Joseph are photographed with the newlyweds and their in-laws.

4 Jun 1926 – Olivine dies in Moonbeam. Cause of death: cardiac asthenia.

27 Jun 1926 – Olivine’s funeral takes place in Moonbeam. (Three weeks is a long interval between one’s death and burial. Olivine's death registration does not indicate that an autopsy took place. I wonder if that length of time was to allow family members to gather for her funeral?)

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #11 Joseph Beauvais – Resident of Canada and of USA

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 11th week of this challenge, I chose my maternal great-grandfather Joseph Beauvais (1877-1937).

Joseph and Olivine (Hotte) Beauvais

Biographical Info

Joseph was born on 11 April 1877 in Ripon, Papineau County, Quebec. He was the second of seven children of Pierre Beauvais and his wife Arline Deschatelets. On 16 August 1897, Joseph married Olivine Hotte in Hartwell (later Chénéville), near Ripon. Between the birth of the couple’s first child, son Ovide, in June 1898 and autumn 1899, Joseph and his young family moved to Tupper Lake, Franklin County, New York. Since Joseph was a bûcheron (woodcutter, timberman or faller) on the 1901 census of Canada, I suspect that he was in search of work in a part of New York that was known for its lumber production. After son Oscar was born there in November 1899, Joseph was back in Hartwell by March 1901, where he is enumerated on that year’s census with his wife and two sons.

Places of Residence

After his return to Canada, Joseph lived in other communities, so to help me visualize these localities, I created an “ancestral migration” map and added his places of residences on it. I got the idea for this activity a few years ago when I came across a genealogy book or website that suggested creating a map showing where an ancestor lived. Now that I think about it, it might have been The Unpuzzling Your Past Workbook, by Emily Anne Croom (1996). Since that time, I’ve done a few of these maps for myself, which I title “Ancestral Migration of [name of ancestor]”. I’m not sure if author Croom coined the term, or if I came up with it on my own.

Image 1: Map of Quebec, including part of New York State

Image 1 shows where Joseph lived in the province of Quebec and in New York State. Note: Tupper Lake appears on this map of Quebec, but is, of course, in the USA. (Combining Canada and USA on one map was an easy way to show the location of Tupper Lake in relation to where Joseph lived in Canada.)

Image 2: Map of Ontario

Image 2 shows where Joseph lived in the province of Ontario. It was here, in Moonbeam, that he died on 17 September 1937. Joseph was survived by all of his sixteen children, his wife Olivine having predeceased him in 1926.

Make Your Own

If you’d like to make your own “ancestral migration” maps, print an outline map of your desired province or state, determine when and where your ancestor lived, locate those places of residence on your map, make a legend showing the date range of those locations, add some sticky dots (my favorite are the Avery brand ¼” round assorted colour-coding labels), and then write letters inside the dots to correspond with the legend. If you want, include capital cities or other important locations to give you an idea of how close or far your ancestor lived from those places. Be sure to give your map a title and the date you created it, and you’re done!

Source for map outlines (without the addition of yellow stickers and handwritten text added by me):

“The Atlas of Canada”, database, Natural Resources Canada (http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/index.html : accessed 23 September 2009), “Reference Maps: Provincial and Territorial Outline – Quebec Map” and “Reference Maps: Provincial and Territorial Outline – Ontario Map”. The "reproduction is a copy of an official work that is published by Natural Resources Canada and [...] the reproduction has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of, Natural Resources Canada”.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Wedding Wednesday: Beauvais – Hotte

Joseph and Olivine Beauvais, about 1897

This rather grainy picture is actually a recently scanned image of an approximately 25-year-old photocopy of a photograph.¹

It shows my maternal great-grandparents Joseph Beauvais (1877-1937) and Olivine Hotte (1877-1926). I think it was taken on their wedding day, because they look so young compared to other photos I have of them as adults.

Joseph and Olivine married on 16 August 1897 in St-Félix-de-Valois R.C. church in the rural community of Hartwell (now Chénéville), Papineau County, Quebec, Canada.² The newlyweds were distantly related: they were sixth cousins through their 5x great-grandparents Guillaume Labelle (d. 1710) and his wife Anne Charbonneau (d. 1729).

Beauvais - Hotte marriage record (partial image) [3]

Joseph was the second child and eldest son of Pierre and Arline (Deschatelets) Beauvais of Chénéville and nearby Ripon. Olivine was the seventh child and younger daughter of Louis and Marguerite (Lacasse) Hotte of St-André-Avellin (just south of Ripon) and Chénéville.

My great-grandparents had a large family of twelve sons and four daughters (including my grandmother Juliette), all of whom reached adulthood.

Joseph and Olivine’s marriage lasted until her death in June 1926, two months short of their 29th wedding anniversary.⁴

Sources:

1. Joseph and Olivine (Hotte) Beauvais photograph, ca 1897; digital image ca 1988, privately held by Madeleine (Desgroseilliers) Legault, London, Ontario, 2013. Madeleine allowed her niece Yvonne to photocopy the photograph during one of her visits to her aunt. (Madeleine and Jacqueline (Yvonne’s mother) are maternal granddaughters of Joseph and Olivine.)

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

3. St-Félix-de-Valois, parish register, 1887-1899, p. 240 recto, Joseph Beauvais – Olivine Hott [sic] marriage, 16 August 1897.

4. “Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1936 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947”, digital image, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 6 December 2008); entry for Olivine Hotte, 4 June 1926.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.