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.

Tuesday's Tip: Vital Records Aren’t Always Accurate

Author and genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills has stated that “as researchers, we can take no record at face value”. [1]

That statement is solid genealogical advice, but I didn’t think I would need to apply it to my father-in-law’s marriage registration record. After all, I figured that Pop – as the informant of his own marriage – would provide accurate and reliable details.

Except that I was wrong, because Pop hadn’t been fully accurate on that record.

Bill and Ann Demoskoff's marriage registration (cropped image)

About a year and a half ago, I thought it would be nice to send away for my husband’s parents’ marriage registration. We both knew when and where his parents married, because Pop told us when we asked him many years ago. He said he and Ann married on 1 June 1952 at her father’s farm near Kamsack, Saskatchewan.

When Michael and I told his father that we requested the registration and were looking forward to receiving it, he asked why we bothered to order it. The way he looked at it was since he had already told us when he married, we didn’t need to get it in writing, so to speak.

We received the “Registration of Marriage” record from the province of Saskatchewan in October 2012. [2] Something immediately stood out when we looked at it. The “Place of Marriage” was a land description: SE 1-35-32-W1, only, it wasn’t the description for Ann’s father’s property as we knew it. Her father George’s property was NW 17-31-32-1, and had been since 1918, and still was at the time of her marriage. What was going on? Where had Bill and Ann married?

Michael called his father to ask him. Pop, who was in his mid-90s at this time, gave it some thought, and proceeded to tell his son that he and Ann married in two places.

That detail didn’t make sense to my husband, so he asked his father for clarification. It turns out that the marriage ceremony took place on the Cazakoff family property at NW 17-31-32-1 like he originally told us, but that afterwards, the bride and groom and their guests had the wedding meal and festivities at another location – at SE 1-35-32-W1, where Pop resided as a lodger. In Pop’s mind, his marriage therefore occurred in “two places”. (For some additional information about Bill and Ann’s wedding, see Wedding Wednesday: Demoskoff – Cazakoff.)

The day after their wedding, Bill and Ann drove to nearby Arran, the rural municipality seat, to register their marriage. When he was asked for the “place of marriage”, he replied “SE 1-35-32-W1”, even though that’s where the wedding feast was held, not where the wedding ceremony took place. Now that he was of an advanced age with a somewhat poor memory, he couldn’t explain to his son why he gave the wrong location to the clerk that day in June 1952.

Here’s what I learned from this exercise:

• Don’t solely depend on a family member’s memory for dates and places of events.
• Order vital records where and when you can.
• Check the received records for inconsistencies.
• Get clarification for questionable details.

And most of all, don’t take ‘records at face value’ :-) 

Sources:

1. Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2007), 33.

2. Province of Saskatchewan, marriage registration, no. 001562, William W. Demoskoff – Ann Cazakoff marriage, 1 June 1952; Department of Public Health – Division of Vital Statistics, Saskatchewan.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Tuesday’s Tip: Beware the Same Name Trap

I know that in some families there are sometimes two living children with the same name. For example, my paternal ancestor Pierre Janvry dit Belair (born 1772) had an elder brother named Pierre Janvry dit Belair (born 1766). Both married twice, had large families, and lived long lives.

However, I didn’t expect to find four living siblings with the same or nearly-the-same-name in one family.

A few days ago, I was trying to sort out the children of my 7x great-grandparents Jacques Marcot and Isabelle Salé, who married in about 1670. They had fifteen children – 10 sons and 5 daughters.

Until now, I believed that their granddaughter Marguerite Marcot (my maternal ancestor) was the daughter of one of their sons and his wife née Morisset. But this was just an assumption on my part. It turns out I hadn’t sufficiently checked Marguerite's parents.

When I took a closer look at all those Marcot – Salé children, I realized that Jacques and Isabelle had four sons who had Jean or François in their names. They were:

• Jean-Baptiste (1676-1731), who married Marie Paquin,
• Jean-François (1691-after 1737), who married Geneviève Morisset,
• Jean aka Jean-François (ca 1693-1760), who married Marie-Anne Morisset,and
• François (ca 1693-1727), who married Marie Thérèse Desnoyers.

I was also surprised to learn that Jean-François (the one who married Geneviève Morisset) had a brother Jean aka Jean-François who also married a Morisset. (Geneviève and Marie-Anne were sisters.)

So I asked myself which one of these Marcot – Morisset couples were my ancestors?

After searching Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec des origines à 1730, by René Jetté (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1983), Tanguay’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes, 7 vols (1871–1890, reprint, Montréal: Editions Elysée, 1991), and the database at PRDH (Programme de recherche en démographie historique), I discovered that I had confused Marguerite and her parents Jean-François and Geneviève with Marie Madeleine and her parents Jean aka Jean-François Marcot and Marie-Anne Morisset.

So after all these years, I wasn’t a descendant of Jean-François Marcot and Geneviève Morisset, I was a descendant of his brother Jean aka Jean-François Marcot and Marie-Anne Morisset.

My tip to you: beware the same name trap and check all the children in a family to make sure there aren’t multiple living siblings with the same or very similar first names.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.