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!

Louisiana Cousins: Broussard

Until I did two blog entries about my 5th great grandparents, Charles Dupuis and Anne Doucet I had not thought about relatives in Louisiana. After doing that research I discovered that I probably have quite a few cousins,* some from their siblings and others from other lines. One of them, my 6th great grand uncle Joseph Broussard,  is famous. Joseph was a sibling of Anne Doucet's grandmother Marie Broussard, daughter of Jean Francis Broussard and his wife Catherine Richard.

The Broussard family lived in Port Royal, L'Acadie, now Nova Scotia. Following the "expulsion" from Nova Scotia in 1755 by the British, Joseph and his brother Alexandre,  formed a resistance group which would fight the British and the expulsion for 4 years. Both were nicknamed "dit Beausoliel" meaning good sun, which in turn referred to that area of Nova Scotia which they had settled. Finally, to avoid killing their group off by starvation, Joseph negotiated a surrender which provided for his group being housed,fed and kept together as prisoners until 1763. Following the "Treaty of Paris" in 1764 Joseph chartered a schooner on which a large group of Acadian refugees sailed for "any land where French was spoken". 

This voyage taking the group initially to Santo Domingo (St.Dominique) and eventually to Louisiana in 1765. Upon arriving in Louisiana the group of Acadians were dispatched with tools to the Attakapas region with Joseph named as group leader with the rank of Captain in the militia. Shortly after his arrival at the Attakapas, Joseph would contract yellow fever and die, as did his brother Alexandre and other members of their family.

The Broussard clan would survive in Louisiana through their children. The Broussards are a particularly prolific family.

For more information see  http://kandrtell.tripod.com/gen/broussard.html. 

Descendants of Joseph, Alexandre and their siblings Catherine (1st Landry and 2nd Prejean) Isabelle (Trahan), Timothee, Armand, Charles Eloy and Francoise (LaBauve) settled in  St. Martinsville, Louisiana and surrounding areas. More information on St. Martinsville, LA.

more information on St. Martinsville, LA

http://www.cajuncountry.org/st-martinville.php

*I will be blogging about my other Louisiana cousins just as soon as I sort them all out. They include the surnames Dupuis, Doucet, Landry, Dugas, Bourg and Robichaud. 

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From Desc. of Francois & Nicolas Broussard CD ROM

Acadian Expulsion II: Exile brings my 5th great grandparents together

It was a clear fall day in Port Royal, L’Acadie (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) when Anne Doucet age five , my 5^th great grandmother, stood on the deck of the ship that would take her, her parents Jean Doucet and Anne Bourg and her two younger siblings Joseph three and Jean Baptiste less than one year old, away from all that was dear and familiar to them. Did she stand tall straining to see over the rail as their world went up in smoke? Did she tearfully cling to her mother’s skirts as her parents held her younger siblings? Little did she know that day what more changes would come in her young life. Oddly enough if her family had not been exiled she probably would never have met her future husband Charles Dupuis, age 9, who was being deported from Grand Pre the same year.  Exiles they would be brought together by fate in the British colony of Connecticut. There they would exchange wedding vows about 8 years from now.

The ship, possibly the Experiment, was bound for New York under a British order expelling over 6,000 Acadians from their home which they had occupied for over 150 years. They were being scattered all over the British colonies in North America and the Antilles. For some reason this ship stopped in St. Christophe, an island in the Antilles held by the British. There her father Jean would die of the chicken pox at age about 30. Her mother would continue with her small children to New York and eventually Connecticut where she met and married another deportee, Joseph Herbert who  had lost his spouse Madeleine Dupuis, sister of Charles Dupuis my 4^th great grandfather. Anne is listed with him there in 1763 and their combined family of nine children. By the time they would be free to leave exile Joseph Herbert and wife Anne would have five more children. Did Charles and Anne meet when Joseph and her mother married and there were relatives of his first wife in attendance? Charles Dupuis, an orphan, was also living in Connecticut with his brother Simon-Pierre and his family. Connecticut was more prepared and hospitable to the deportees and the legislature made provisions for the Acadians of whom 700 eventually wound up on their shore.

They were civilians caught up in Le Grand Derangement – the Great Expulsion of neutral Acadians during what is called in North America, the French and Indian War and in Europe, the Seven Years War. They had lived under British rule since before Anne and her parents were born. (See my blog Acadian Expulsion I for explanation of the reasons for the expulsion and the story of Charles and his 10 siblings)  

The British victory in the  battle on the Plains of Abraham, near Quebec City, in 1759 and the treaty  of 1763 gave the refugees from L’Acadie another hard choice. There was little possibility of returning to their farms confiscated and given to British settlers. A few stayed in the colony to which they had been deported but most sought to find more culturally congenial places to live. Those deported to England where conditions were harsh asked to be sent to France. There was a promise of land but the French King failed them and most left again to immigrate to a new territory. Louisiana had passed from French to Spanish rule by 1762 and the Spanish were welcoming to new settlers especially Catholics. The first Acadians arrived in Louisiana in April 1764 and a flood would follow them as news got back about the area. Some who went to the Caribbean to the island of Dominique, French territory eventually wound up in Louisiana.

Charles and Anne exchanged their wedding vows privately before two witnesses around July of 1768 in Connecticut, since there was no priest present to witness their marriage. Perhaps they  were already preparing to go back together to Canada. Daughter Marie Anne would be the only of their 11 children born in Connecticut. Nine months later, in the parish church of Laprairie in the Richelieu valley south of Montreal, they renewed those vows in April 1769. Charles was the only one of his siblings who would return to Canada – perhaps because of his marriage to Anne as most of the Herberts would return to this area as well as her mother and step-father Joseph Herbert and her half siblings. Only Anne’s brother Joseph appears to have decided to follow other Acadians south, perhaps via the Isle of Dominique to finally settle in Louisiana. In 1772 at age 20 he marries Anne Landry, a fellow Acadian,  in St. Martinsville, Louisiana and they settle and raise a family in Opelousas where he dies in 1803.  Jean Baptiste disappears from the records and may have died during the expulsion or while in Connecticut. In a list of Connecticut residents in 1763 Joseph Herbert and second wife Anne Bourg are listed with nine children only, Jean Baptiste would have made 10 if he was still alive.

Anne Doucet’s family now merged with that of Joseph Herbert decided to return to French speaking lower Canada (now under British rule) and settle in the Richelieu valley and join her daughter and her husband. There was no hope of returning to L'Acadie and reclaiming confiscated lands. They probably were homesick for their own language, customs and religious tradition. They arrived in 1774 when her mother’s 1762 second marriage in Connecticut was blessed in the church of Laprairie.  They brought five small children born in Connecticut between 1763 and 1773 which may account for their longer stay in Connecticut. Did tensions between the American and their British rulers influence their move?Joseph died six years after they had their marriage blessed and recorded in the parish records. Members of Joseph’s family including his father had settled in Laprairie area after 1763.

Charles Dupuis and Anne Doucet would have  10 more children in Lacadie and in Laprairie where they moved in the 1780's. Anne died 10 days after giving birth to their youngest child in 1790 and Charles in 1798. Both are buried in Lacadie. They never saw Salome their  granddaughter my 2nd great grandmother born there to their son Antoine and his wife Josephte Montminy in 1822.

Acadian Explusion: a family scattered

Contemporary painting of another Acadian town being burnt - Thomas Davies 1758*

On a summer day in 1755 my 4^th great grandfather Charles Dupuis, age 9 watched from shipboard as everything he knew receded over the horizon. He, with 10 of his brothers and sisters, their spouses, uncles, aunts and cousins watched in horror as British soldiers set fire to their farm houses and barns. He left behind the graves of his parents Antoine and Marie Josephte Dugas who died when he was only a year old. He would be the only one of his family who would return to what had been French territory. Before that he would be a refugee in the British colonies of North America.

My great grandmother Adeline Raymond pictured on the right,  was descended from many of the original settlers of L'Acadie. (modern Nova Scotia)  Her mother was listed as "Sally Wells" on US records. I knew she was French and eventually discovered that her real name was Salome Dupuis, daughter of Antoine Dupuis resident of Lacadie, a small town south of Montreal in the Richelieu valley. Her paternal grandparents Charles Dupuis and Anne Doucet were both born in L' Acadie - he is Grand Pre in 1746 and she in Port Royal around 1750. Hence both as children would have been witnesses to the expulsions and emigrations from Acadie which began in the late 1740's and escalated 1755-1762. It is unlikely that Salome knew her grandparents as both died before she was born. Did she learn of the exodus from stories passed down in her family? If so did she pass them on to Adelaide?

The fate of the children of Antoine Dupuis and Marie Josephe Dugas, parents of Charles, gives a sample of the various places of deportation and emigration experienced by families in L’Acadie. Antoine and Marie both died in Grand Pre in 1747 right before the Acadian Expulsion known as L’Grand Derangement. My ancestor Charles, twin brothers Joseph and Jean Baptiste and sister Euphrosine were all under 10 when the parents died and likely were taken into the homes of older married brothers and sisters.

Charles Dupuis and Anne Doucet had lived under British rule all their lives.  Britain ruled L'Acadie since 1713, before both of their births. Their ancestors had settled this area in the early 17th century.  After the British takeover initially their families' lives on their prosperous farms had continued as before. The "Great Meadow" had rich farmland that had been reclaimed from the sea by a system of dikes. In 1730 the Acadians swore an oath of allegiance to the British on condition they would not have to fight the French or their Native allies. But toward the end of the 1740's there was unrest in the area due to British insistence on an unconditional oath of allegiance. Wars being fought far away in Europe had repercussions on the land of L'Acadie. Unrest spread and between 1749-1755 active armed resistance to British rule spread throughout the area.

The 11 living Dupuis children (which included two sets of twins) their spouses and children were scattered through the British colonies and England. The names of Charles' brothers, uncles, cousins, brothers-in-law all appear on the list of men scheduled for deportation in 1755. Some of these colonies were hospitable to the refugees but others resented having these families thrust upon them - French speaking and Catholics in an English speaking and Protestant colony. Those who went to England fared worse since they were regarded as enemy combatants and prisoners of war. Three of Charles siblings were sent to England: Francoise Osite Dupuis, her husband Honore Daigle, their children, his brother Jean Baptiste age 10, and eldest sister Marie Josephe Dupuis with her children and  husband Pierre Theriot. Of these Francoise died in England as well as brother -in-law Pierre.

Older brother Antoine Dupuis, wife Marguerite Boudrot and family were sent to New York. Simon-Pierre, wife Marie LeBlanc and children may also have originally been sent to New York but made their way to Connecticut with widowed sister Marguerite Dupuis Boudrot, Charles and sister Euphrosine. His  sister Marie Anne and husband Michel Boudrot were deported to Portabac in Maryland Joseph Herbert and wife Madeliene Dupuis were sent with their teenage children to an unknown British colony perhaps New York with Jean Baptiste's twin Joseph.  Later, after Madeliene's death,  they wind up in Connecticut where he will meet and marry my 5th great grandmother Anne Bourg widow of Jean Doucet, parents of Anne Doucet who would later marry Charles Dupuis. (but that is a story for another blog entry)

When the war between France and Britian ended with a treaty in 1763 the Acadian exiles were free to move to more congenial locations. Between that date and 1767 siblings and their families went to the French speaking island of Dominique (present day Haiti) in the Carribean. Antoine and wife  baptized their children born in New England in Mirebas. Both  parents  died and were buried in Mirebas. Some of their children would continue on to Louisiana. A Spanish colony in 1765 it was especially hospitable to Catholic immigrants seeing them as a bulwark against the British. Acadians who stayed in Dominique were forced to more again during the Haitian Revolt and many moved to  Louisiana which was once again French and back to the former British colonies now the United States.  Marie Dupuis Boudrot and family  brother Joseph, Marguerite Dupuis Boudrot and children,  also sought refuge in Louisiana. Marie Anne Dupuis widow of Michael Boudrot deported to Portabac Maryland went with her family to Louisiana. In 1802 with the Louisana purchase that territory became part of the expanding United States.

Those in England went to France: eldest sister Marguerite Dupuis Theriot  now widowed, her children and Jean Baptiste age 21. In 1767 they were among 78 Acadian families living on the island Belle-Ile-en-Mer off the coast of Brittany. It is from an affidavit sworn by her that much of the information about the family migrations is known. Those in France were often disappointed because the French government did not live up to promises of land and support for the refugees. Some Theriot children who went to France eventually wound up returning to the New World and settling in Louisiana. Jean Baptiste died, unmarried in France in 1783.

 Of the 11 living children of Antoine and Marie Josephte only my ancestor Charles found his way back north after being deported to Connecticut. While in Connecticut he met and married Anne Doucet (her family story will be another blog entry)  In 1769 he came back to former French territory with his new wife and some of her relatives,  to have their 1768 marriage blessed in the newly founded town of Lacadie, Quebec. This town was founded by Acadian refugees and its church Ste Margaret of Blainfindie has the records of the many descendants of Charles including my 3rd great grandmother Salome Dupuis.

This summary of the fate of Antoine Dupuis and Marie Josephte Dugas' children is a microcosm of the Acadian Expulsion - to the British  colonies, to France, England and the French Caribbean islands and eventually migration back to French Canada and Louisiana.

* http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artwork_e.jsp?mkey=3755

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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.