Complicated cousins

As a child traveling to visit family in Highgate, Vermont I would ask how people we met were related and most of the time Dad just replied that we were cousins. It seemed like the entire town was related to us. As I began to study family history I realized just how complicated the relationships were. My Chicoine-Raymond-Dupuis ancestors and their blended families of Bouvier Lemelin, Cook and Raymond half siblings began to settle there in the 1830's and first appear in the 1840 census. My Chicoine-Beaulac ancestors appear in nearby Swanton in the 1820's moving back and forth to Canada until the early 20th century when my Dad and his family finally settled there for good.

Chicoine- Bouvier-Cook-Raymond cousins ca 1920

This confusing mix can be seen through the story of my 2nd great grandmother Salome Dupuis. She grew up in the town of Lacadie (L'Acadie) in the province of Quebec situated in the Richelieu river valley south of Montreal. It was founded by her ancestors. Her grandparents Charles Dupuis and Anne Doucet arrived there around 1770 after meeting and marrying in exile in Connecticut during the Acadian expulsion in 1763..

Ste. Marguerite Parish church Lacadie QC

Salome was the youngest of a large Dupuis family. She was married in 1840  at age 18 to Louis Lemelin age 42. Louis was from a Lacadie family and had married there in 1816 before Salome was born,  to Marguerite Herbert. From that first marriage 12 children were born but only two sons, and a girl of 10 were living with him in Napierville when his wife died.

Louis married Salome in 1851, a woman of about the same age as his sons. She became a second mother for his young daughter Marie Marguerite. Louis and Salome had a baby which they named Salome but sadly she died during infancy. Their 4 other children thrived.Louis and Salome lived most of their married life in the town of Henryville, only one of their four children was born elsewhere, in 1844 in Napierville.Then almost 9 years and 5 children later he died leaving Salome age 27 alone with her four living children.

How did she support herself after her husband's death? Or did she depend on her extended family for help? It is quite possible that her stepsons Leon and Louis both close to her own age were still living at home. (Louis' sons by his first marriage.) They later married but not until after 1850. Using census and church records I have tried to trace her marriages and migrations from her hometown of Lacadie, QC  to the border towns of Henryville, Quebec and Highgate, Vermont. In the process, like many other French-speaking  immigrants to an English speaking world her name was anglicized to Sally Wells (a translation of Du-puis or Du puit - well)

Salome Dupuis' sister in law Domithilde Allard  was married to Salome's brother Joseph Dupuis. Domithilde's sister Emeliene had married Marcel Raymond brother of Julien Raymond. The Raymond family probably knew the Dupuis family as they lived in Lacadie from before her birth until around 1829 when they moved first to Napierville and then to Henryville.. After 1837 the two oldest Raymond sons were living in Highgate Vermont just across the border. Since Henryville was the nearest Catholic parish to Highgate in the 1830's it is possible that Salome and Julien met at family weddings and baptisms.  However they met, Salome wed  Julien Raymond in 1851. He was a recent widower age 33 with at least three children under 10 according to the 1850 census but perhaps 7 under 10 according to the ages of children listed in the 1860  US census who were born before 1850. 

Bouvier-Chicoine-Cook blended family

Julien Raymond had lived in the US since before 1840 - perhaps immigrating there as a result of the uprising of 1837 and its disruptions of life in the area of the Richelieu valley. He may have come with his father Antoine and mother Marie Garand and sibling Marcel who also appears in the 1840 census. Both men are listed under their surname's "dit" name, the nickname Toulouse, he as Jules and his brother as Marshall..Julien who married Theotiste Fontaine in 1837 in St. Valentin has no children in the census but they would go on to have 7 children. In the same 1840 census my Dad's great grandfather Jean Baptiste Chicoine (John Chequin)  and family were listed as residents of nearby Swanton, VT..

Chicoine Lemelin (Lemnah) cousins 1918

Salome and Julie and their blended family of at least 7 and perhaps 11 lived in Highgate in a section that was called Frenchtown. In an 1871 map of the area there are at least two Raymond families listed (Rainmount). Adult children of their previous marriages: Julien and Theotiste, Salome and Louis Lemelin also settled in Highgate and some of their descendants wound up marrying each other. Eventually Jean Baptiste Chicoine's children and the descendants of the Raymond-Lemelin clan married. Two of my Dad's grandmothers were Raymonds - Adelaide the daughter of Julien and Salome and Virginia - the daughter of his brother Marcel and Emeliene Allard.  Virginia Raymond was married three times and raised a blended family of Bouvier, Chicoine and Cook children thereby  adding to the confusion.  

No wonder my Dad's explanation for everyone we would meet in Highgate was - we are just cousins!

Chercher la femme! French mothers and grandmothers

On this week before Mothers day I am looking at the matrilineal ancestry in my family tree. On my paternal grandmother's side I can go all the way back to 16th century France in the area around LaRochelle. 

Ida Emma Desrosiers (Moreau dite Desrosiers) 1873-1924 was born in Vermont, a second generation American whose grandparents immigrated from French Canada. In the only fuzzy  picture I have of her circa 1890 she is living with her husband in Canada and expecting their first child. She would have 9 pregnancies and 7 children would survive. She and her husband Paul Marcel Chicoine would move back and forth across the US border until finally settling in Highgate, Vermont in 1906.

Adelaide Raymond (Raymond dite Toulouse) 1852-1916 was born in Highgate, Vermont. Her cousin Virginia Raymond was the grandmother of Ida Emma's spouse Paul Chicoine. She married Joseph Desrosiers (Moreau dit Desrosiers) in 1870. She had at least 12 children between then and 1895. 9 girls and 3 boys.She lived all of her life in the small Vermont town of Highgate in a section called "Frenchtown" because of the number of French Canadian families settled there. Her great grandfather Antoine Raymond and wife Marie Garand had settled there early in the 19th century. Two of their sons Marcel and Julien are in the family tree, making their daughters Adelaide and Virginia cousins.

Virginia Raymond, (Raymond dite Toulouse) 1846-1934 , a large and colorful character known in the family as "Grandma Cook" survived three husbands (Antoine Bouvier, Paul Chicoine and William Cook) and produced a formidable set of French matriarchs that can be seen in this picture of her daughters from the three marriages. She had nine children. seven of whom survived. In interviews for this tree, my father shared that she treated all the children alike so he had trouble figuring out who belong to which father.

Salome Dupuis, (1822-1907) was born in Canada and died in Highgate. She was the mother of Adelaide Raymond by her second husband Julien Raymond.

She lost her first husband Louis Lemelin in 1849 after only 9 years of marriage leaving 5 children under 10.  She married Julien in 1851 in Canada. He was already living in Highgate and had lost his first wife Theotiste Fontaine in 1850 who left him with 7 children under 10. All of this blended family with their 12 children lived in Highgate, VT. Her marriage to Julien Raymond produced at least 8 children more between 1851 and 1865. (This is why my father had trouble figuring out who was not related to him in Highdate!)  Salome is listed in US records as Sally Wells - a translation of her last name Dupuis. Salome's father Antoine Dupuis was the son of a refugee from Acadie (Nova Scotia) expelled by the British in one of the deportations from Grand Pre.  (see Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) His father was deported to Connecticut as a young man, married there but returned to New France around 1769 and settled in a small town in the Richlieu valley south of Montreal founded by Acadien refugees. They called the town L'Acadie in honor of their homeland. Her mother was not Acadien but descended from a line of mothers and grandmothers reaching back to the late 16th or early 17th century to Bernarde Venet a native of  Verdille, Charente-Poitou, France, a town near LaRochelle, whose daughter with husband Maixent Veillon,  Sebastiene immigrated to New France.

Sebastiene Vellion 1626 - 1698 Born in Verdille  married Mathieu Choret in the port city of LaRochelle France in 1647 just prior to sailing for New France. Before the time of the marriage on March 4  her parents had evidently moved to LaRochelle and the marriage ceremony was in the large church of Notre Dame de Cogne. Mathieu was a native of LaRochelle. Many  settlers of New France embarked from this seaport. They settled near Quebec City and had at least 7 children. When her husband died  she remarried. Below is a summary of the matrilinial line from Sebastienne down to Salome Dupuis' mother Marie Josephte Montminy (Montmesnil).

Jeanne Choret 1652-1718 married Jean Morisset and settled on the Island of Orleans opposite Quebec city in the St.Lawrence. They had at least 14 children.

Marie Jeanne Morisset 1683-after 1726 married Leonard Clement dit LaBonte (having at least 14 children) in Ste-Famille, (Holy Family) parish on the Island of Orleans (Ile d'Orleans).

Marie Jeanne Clement 1704-after 1731 married Joseph Denys dit LaPierre in St. Michael's parish Bellechasse, Quebec. They had 6 children.

Clotilde Denys dite LaPierre abt 1731-after 1756 married Joseph M. Remillard in Beaumont, Quebec.

Francoise Remillard abt 1756-after 1795 married Pierre Montminny (Montmesnil) in St. Michel, Bellechasse but by the time her daughter Marie Josephte married Antoine Dupuis in 1805 the family was living in L'Acadie. All three of her sisters were married there between 1795 and 1818.

Marie Josephte Montminy (Montmesnil) 1772-before 1831 married Antoine Dupuis in L'Acadie. Salome was the youngest of eight children. Her older brother Antoine also immigrated to the US settling in Detroit. Two of her older sisters married before her in L'Acadie and since her parents appear to have been deceased by 1796 she may have lived with them before her marriage and met Antoine because of that.

Immigrants and Native Americans

(my grandparents Ida Emma Desrosiers and Paul Marcel Chicoine)

My father Elphege Bernard Chicoine's roots are deep in French Canada. His ancestors started to immigrate from France early in the 17^th century with the earliest being Abraham Martin (for whom the plains of Abraham near Quebec city are named) who arrived around 1619. Abraham died in 1665 which was around when the first Chicoine, Pierre may have arrived in New France. Pierre was born about 1632 in Chaunay-sur-Lathan, a town near Angers in the Indre-et-Loire region of France. Pierre is mentioned in the 1666 census of Montreal as a servant who by 1678 has received the title to Bellevue under the feudal system in place at the time. In 1670 Pierre married a Madeleine Chretien, originally from Paris, who was about 10 years his junior. She had arrived as one of the “Daughters of the King” : imported brides from France who were imported to civilize the frontier settlement. A number of these women appear in my father’s family line which will be the subject of a future blog.

Pierre and Madeleine had 10 children, 7 girls and 3 boys but only two of their sons had children to carry on the Chicoine name and it is from those sons: Pierre and Paul that most Chicoine families in the US are descended. (Another Chicoine line, so far unconnected with this line, is found on the Gaspe peninsula)

Dad was born in Bedford, province of Quebec but his parents were both born in the US and his family had been going back and forth across the Canadian border since the early 19^th century. Although he spoke French at home, his schooling was in the US in English after the family immigrated in 1906 to Highgate, Vermont. Dad never lost the French Canadian accent.

The earliest record of a Chicoine ancestor in US so far is the marriage of Jean Baptiste Chicoine and Marguerite Beaulac (Desmarais dite Beaulac) before a Justice of the Peace in 1822 in Swanton Vermont. Marguerite’s mother Marguerite Gray was possibly full or half Native American. Jean Baptiste is a mystery man since my father was convinced that he also had some native blood. On a baptism record for Jean Baptiste’s daughter Eulalie, his father served as godfather  (also Jean Baptiste Chicoine) and is identified as the grandfather of the child, his wife Archange Valade is listed as the godmother but not the grandmother of the child. Jean Baptiste appears to have been born before his father married Archange and his baptism record has not been located.  It is entirely possible that he might have had a native mother since the Chicoine’s did some fur trapping. Swanton, where the marriage took place, was home to the Abenaki people.

Signature of Jean Baptiste Chicoine

Jean Baptiste learned how to write his name in US and his signature on sacramental records is “John Chiquoine” (see image).  Jean Baptiste also kept ties to his only surviving sibling Emilie Chicoine Gosselin who lived in Vercheres near Montreal. . The family traveled to Vercheres from Vermont in 1826 so that his sister and her husband could serve as godparents to his daughter Marie Emilie. The family appears to have returned to Canada in the 1830’s settling around Henryville but by the 1840 US census they are again in Vermont and Jean Baptiste is  listed as John Chequin or Chiquin. The same census lists Dad’s maternal and paternal grandmothers’ families (they were cousins) Marcel Raymond and his brother Jules Raymond under their “dit” names (perhaps another blog topic – in brief an alias used by French Canadian families) as Marshall and Jules Toulouse. Based on birthplace of their children the couple appear to have moved at least once during the 1840’s to Canada and returned to Vermont for birth of Dad’s grandfather Paul in 1846 and his brother Anselm in 1848 but by 1848 daughter Marguerite is born in Henryvile.  By 1851 Jean Baptiste  is working as a blacksmith in Henryvile.  He died there in 1867. The 14 Chicoine children appear to have settled not only in Canada and Vermont but also in Kankakee county, Illinois.