Church Record Sunday: Hubert Neveu’s 1853 Burial Record

Hubert Neveu died 165 years ago this month in July 1853. He is my paternal 4x great-grandfather and is somewhat of an ancestral brick wall. For example, I haven’t found a birth or baptism record for him and I don’t know who his parents are.

Born about 1777, Hubert was a voyageur in the fur trade. He married Josephe Pitabanokwe (var. Petabanokwe), an Algonquin, in August 1818. They were the parents of at least 11 children, including Louise Neveu, the great-grandmother of my grandmother Julie Vanasse.

Hubert died between July 8 -14, 1853. His burial record doesn’t indicate the exact date, only that it was in the second week of July of that year and that he was buried in the church cemetery of Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel in LaPasse, Renfrew County, Ontario. [1]

Hubert Neveu burial record (Ancestry)

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

Dans la seconde semaine de Juillet a été inhumé dans le cimetière / de cette mission le corps de Eubert Neveu agé de 76 ans. Témoins / Antoine Lavoie et J. Baptiste Lanvin. [signé L.C.A. Ouellet]

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

In the second week of July was interred in the cemetery / of this mission the body of Eubert Neveu aged 76 years. Witnesses / Antoine Lavoie and J. Baptiste Lanvin. [signed L.C.A. Ouellet]

Source:

1. Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel (LaPasse, Ontario), parish register, 1851-1943, p. 6 recto, entry no. S.2 (1853), Eubert Neveu [sic] burial, July 1853; Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel parish; digital images, “Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967”, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 September 2014).

Copyright © 2018, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Wedding Wednesday: Laronde – Kekijicakoe

One of the more interesting weddings among my ancestors is that of Toussaint Laronde, a voyageur, and his Native American (possibly Algonquin) wife Marie Kekijicakoe, from whom I descend patrilineally. [1]

Toussaint and Marie seem to have been a couple from about 1812 or 1813 when their first child (daughter Angélique) was born. There were thirteen more children born to them until about 1839. [2] I’ve written about two of those children in Sibling Saturday: Euphrosine and Elisabeth Laronde.

In 1837, Toussaint and Marie married in a Roman Catholic ceremony officiated by Father Pascal Brunet, a missionary priest from Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, now Montebello, Papineau County, Quebec. [3] Toussaint and Marie were granted a dispensation to marry because of their relationship of second degree of consanguinity (they were first cousins). [4]

I searched digitized images of the parish registers of Petite Nation and Buckingham (both in the province of Quebec) and Notre-Dame Cathedral in Ottawa, Ontario for 1836-1837, where some of Father Brunet’s sacramental records are conserved, but didn’t find an entry showing this Laronde marriage. [5]

Before they married, Toussaint baptised (specifically, “ondoyé”) Marie. [6] A spiritual affinity or relationship thus formed between the one who baptised (Toussaint) and the one who was baptised (Marie). [7] Father Brunet was not aware of this baptism and the resulting affinity, an impediment to the marriage.

It wasn’t until a year later that another missionary, Father Louis-Charles Lefebvre de Bellefeuille, a Sulpician priest from Montreal, discovered the impediment. [8] He accordingly granted two dispensations (spiritual affinity and consanguinity) and rehabilitated or ‘ratified’ Toussaint and Marie’s 1837 marriage, making their union canonically valid. [9] The rehabilitation took place on 28 August 1838 at Poste des Allumettes on Ile des Allumettes in Pontiac County, Quebec. [10]

Note that no mention is made in Toussaint and Marie’s 1838 marriage record that they were previously wed in a Native American ceremony or that they received an annulment for such a ceremony. [11]

Finally, here are images from the FHL microfilm showing the marriage rehabilitation record, followed by my English translation of the French text. I originally prepared the translation (Appendix C, further below) on 20 March 2011 when I put together my Laronde research in a 23-page document (“The Family of Toussaint Laronde and Marie Kekijicakoe”); it appears on my blog for the first time.

Marriage rehabilitation record of Toussaint and Marie Laronde (page 77 verso and page 78 recto)

Marriage rehabilitation record of Toussaint and Marie Laronde (page 78 verso)

English translation of the marriage rehabilitation record

Sources:

1. Marie’s surname is “Kekijicakoe” in her son François’ baptismal entry. (Her name appears to be spelled Kekiji[cakoe], although it is somewhat difficult to decipher.) To date, this is the only record I have found in which Marie’s Aboriginal surname is explicitly stated. St-Grégoire-de-Nazianze (Buckingham, Quebec), parish register, 1839-1854, p. 35 verso, entry no. B136 (1840), Francis Laronde baptism, 15 September 1840; St-Grégoire-de-Nazianze parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 28 February 2011).

2. “Registres paroissiaux” [Régistres des missions de 19 juillet 1836 au 27 may [sic] 1839], p. 77 verso, no entry no. (1838), Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838; Family History Library (FHL) microfilm 1703968. Toussaint and Marie had fourteen children, according to their marriage rehabilitation record. By 1838, thirteen survived and they were all legitimated by Father de Bellefeuille when their parents married that year in August. (The deceased child is not identified in the record.) The children and their ages appear in the record in the following order: Denis (23), Angélique (25), Marie (22), Toussaint (19), Euphrosine (17), Anne (15), François (13½), Elizabeth (11), Charles (9½), Eustache (8), Louis (7), Paul (3) and Susanne (4 months). According to some online family trees, Toussaint and Marie were the parents of an elder son named Alexander. The marriage rehabilitation record does not mention Alexander, suggesting that he is not Toussaint and Marie’s son.

3. The marriage rehabilitation record of 1838 states that Father Brunet married the couple “l’année dernière” [last year]. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838.

4. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838.

5. Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours (Montebello, Quebec), parish register, 1815-1900, pages 118-130 (1837); Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 28 February 2011). Also, St-Grégoire-de-Nazianze (Buckingham, Quebec), parish register, 1836-1860, pages 1-22 (1836-1837); St-Grégoire-de-Nazianze parish; digital image, “Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 20 March 2011). Also, Notre Dame (Ottawa, Ontario), parish register, 1829[-1948], unpaginated, entries no. 19–24 (1836); Notre-Dame parish; digital image, “Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967”, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 12 March 2011).

6. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838.

7. “The Catholic Encyclopedia”, New Advent (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ : accessed 18 June 2015), “B: Baptism: Minister of the sacrament: Extraordinary minister”. See also Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, “ASK FATHER: Can a godparent marry a godchild? Confirmation sponsor a confirmand?”, Fr. Z's Blog, 28 October 2014 (http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/10/ask-father-can-a-godparent-marry-a-godchild-confirmation-sponsor-a-confirmand/ : accessed 18 June 2015).

8. Father de Bellefeuille led three missions from 1836 to 1838 to minister to the Christians and Native Americans who lived at Poste des Allumettes and the nearby region of Lake Timiskaming. It was during his last mission in August 1838 that he rehabilitated Toussaint and Marie’s marriage, before his death that October in Montreal. Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada (http://www.biographi.ca/en/index.php : accessed 18 June 2015), “Louis-Charles Lefebvre de Bellefeuille”.

9. A rehabilitated marriage is a non-canonically valid marriage that receives official church recognition. “The Catholic Encyclopedia”, New Advent (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ : accessed 18 June 2015), “V: Validation of Marriage”.

10. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838. Poste des Allumettes, also known as Fort William, was a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post situated on the Ottawa River near Sheenboro in Pontiac County, Quebec.

11. “Registres paroissiaux”, p. 77 verso, Laronde – Laronde marriage rehabilitation, 28 August 1838.

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Follow Friday: Voyageurs Contracts Database

While doing background research for a post I’m preparing about my Métis ancestry, I came across a very interesting website. It’s the Voyageurs Contracts Database, which is part of the Centre du patrimoine [Heritage Centre] located in Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, Canada.

If you have Métis or French-Canadian ancestors who were involved in the fur trade (for example, a voyageur*), you’ll find this database really useful. The main page of the Voyageurs Contracts Database explains that its database “includes data from approximately 35,900 fur trade contracts signed in front of Montreal notaries between 1714 and 1830. […] The information collected from the contracts includes: family names, parishes of origin, hiring company, length of contract, destination(s) […]” and more.

* A “voyageur” is a French term that means ‘traveler’. “Voyageurs were the canoe transportation workers in organized, licensed long distance transportation of furs and trade goods in the interior of the continent. [They] were highly valued employees of trading companies, such as the North West Company […] and the Hudson's Bay Company […]”. (Source: Wikipedia contributors, "Voyageurs," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voyageurs&oldid=418895640 : accessed March 16, 2011).)



Shooting the Rapids (1879)

 (Image source: Frances Anne Hopkins, Library and Archives Canada, acc. no. 1989-401-2, c002774.)

I searched for my ancestor “Toussaint Laronde” using the Database’s Quick Search page. I put “toussaint” in the keywords field and “laronde” in the names field. There were two results; both were my Toussaint. I then clicked ‘Details’ for the results and found items like date, place and length of his contracts, his functions, his wages, and his destinations. (The contracts are dated 13 April 1803 and 28 July 1821.) Next, I clicked ‘Select’, and then ‘View Selections’, where I requested copies of Toussaint’s contracts. In my email, I also asked for the total cost and how I could pay. The archivist promptly answered my questions and said I could pay with PayPal, cheque or money order.

I’m now waiting anxiously for the mail to arrive with paper copies of the microfilmed version of Toussaint’s voyageur contracts!

Copyright © 2012, Yvonne Demoskoff.