A Branch of the Tree

While writing that story about my great-grandmother, I may have become ensnared in the claws of Ancestry.com. It started off with a free trial, and then I got sucked into paying for a month’s subscription.

While I was consumed in collecting the puzzle pieces used to construct the family tree, my husband would occasionally walk into the room and ask things like “What are you finding out?” and “What are you discovering?” and “What are you learning?”

My typical response was “I dunno.”

The last time he asked, I responded, “People are born, and then they die.”

This post is a way to force myself to think about and expand upon my response.

Since the original objective was to discover more about my great-grandmother, I focused on the maternal branch which is: Michelle -> Pauline -> Dolores -> Exilia -> Anna -> Hermine -> Charlotte.

I was unable to discover much about Charlotte. I found a record of her marriage to Michel in 1827. They had at least one son in 1828 and one daughter – Hermine – in 1842. I assume Charlotte was born around 1810 and died sometime after 1842.

Michel had a strange last name. At first it was Mingot (or Mingo or Mingou or something like that), but then a “dit Dumaine” got tacked on at some point. Adding “dit Dumaine” was a way to differentiate all the Mingots out there. For some reason, Hermine ended up with a simple “Dumaine” on her baptismal record, and the Mingot name was dropped. This certainly added to the confusion in looking into Hermine.

Anna

Hermine married Narcisse (Aren’t these absolutely great names?), and they had six children I believe (I didn’t spend a whole lot of time verifying this), the oldest of whom was Anna.

Anna married Azarie. Azarie had a father named Azarie (or Zacharie), and he and Anna named their first son Azarie. Nicole told me she likes this name, and I hope there is another Azarie in our family’s future.

Zacharie/Azarie

Azarie

Azarie

In addition to Azarie, Anna and Azarie had 14 other children. I won’t provide details on all of them, but here are a few things that caught my attention.

Their first daughter, Anna, died when she was 14 months old. Three additional children – Adelard, Leona, and Alice – also died when they were about the same age.

I’ve been told three of their daughters – Analda, Rose-Delima, and Beatrice – became nuns. When they became nuns, they took on new names, and, because of that, it is difficult to trace them any further.

Analda

Rose-Delima

Beatrice

Alida

During the two year span between January 1917 and January 1919, another daughter – Alida – married, had a son, lost that son, had another son, lost her husband, and lost a brother.

Napoleon

Dorila

Two of their sons, Napoleon and Dorila, were veterans of World War I. Dorila died shortly after the war at the age of 21.

For completeness sake, there was also Joseph, Rosario, and Yvonne.

And of course their daughter, Exilia – my great-grandmother who married Albert and had her first daughter, Dolores, before moving to the United States.

Exilia

Albert

Dolores

To this point, all of this history occurred in Canada, so the records I was able to pull up were in French. In addition, they were handwritten. I noticed a lot of commonalities across the documents. On the baptismal records, everyone’s name started with either Joseph or Marie. (And all of the town names started with Saint.) The fact of whether or not the baby was légitimes was also recorded along with the mother’s maiden name. Death certificates usually included the words corps and décédé and were signed by the family members who brought in the corps. I find these signatures fascinating. Other records typically included what the head of the family did for a living, though the only occupation I ever came across in my family was cultivator.

In 1923 Albert, Exilia, and Dolores entered the United States across the Vermont border and made their way down to Woonsocket, RI.

Joe and Pauline

Albert and Exilia had two more children, Marie Rita and Joseph Albert. Mirroring his Uncle Dorila, Joe was a veteran of World War II and died shortly after his return while in his twenties.

Out of all the records I came across, I find this one associated with Joe, to be one of the most fascinating:

Dolores married Eugene, and a lot of us know what happens after that.

To date, I have 108 people in the family tree along with 228 records. At least three where born in the late 1700’s, but that’s as far back as I go, and I haven’t gotten past Canada.

We’ll see if I can resist or if I will sign up for another month.