52 Ancestors 2015: #3 Marguerite Carpentier

I’m participating in “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2015 Edition” by Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small.

For the 3rd week of this challenge, I used the optional weekly theme (Tough woman) and chose Marguerite Carpentier (ca 1774-1874).

My maternal ancestor is a ‘tough woman’ to research. I’m really keen to know more about her, because she’s also my matrilineal ancestress in the seventh generation, and I can’t go any further than her.

What I Know:

• Her name. She’s “Marguerite Carpentier” in 1814 (when her daughter Thérèse, my third great-grandmother, was baptized) and in 1874 (at her burial). She was “Marie Carpentier” in 1829 (when Thérèse was married).

• Her approximate year of birth. She was born about 1774, 1776, 1779, 1782, or before 1797 (based on her ages on censuses and her age at her burial) in the province of Quebec.

• Her husband. He’s François Durgey or Doggie or Doyer, who was born about 1769/1770 in New Hampshire. His name might have been originally Francis Durkee, which would have been difficult to pronounce in French once he relocated to Canada.

• Her religion. She and her children were Roman Catholic, while François was Anabaptist.

• Her places of residence. For example, in July 1814, she, her husband and their eldest children lived in Petite-Nation seigneurie, later Montebello, Quebec. The family was still living there on the 1842 and 1852 censuses. By the time of the 1861 census, widow Marguerite lived in her son-in-law’s household in Papineauville, Quebec.

• Her death and burial. She died on 16 May 1874 in Papineauville and was buried there two days later in Ste-Angélique parish cemetery.

What I don’t Know:

• Her birth and baptism.

• Her parents or her siblings.

• Her marriage. It was presumably before 15 October 1810, when her and François’ eldest child (Thérèse) was born, and possibly in Petite-Nation seigneurie, where many of their children were baptized between 1815 and 1829.

Are there any of Marguerite’s descendants out there reading this article? If so, would you be able to fill in the missing bits of her life?

Copyright © 2015, 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.

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.