Spotlight ~ Jean-Baptiste Otisse Interment

Documentarian Weblog ~ Stardate 14064.8
Today I'm going to blog about using the Drouin Collection, U.S. and French Catholic Church Record from 1695-1954. All of the examples I am using are from Ancestry.com. I've used these records a lot in the search of my French-Canadian ancestors. These records were written by the parish priests and are hand-written in french. Sometimes this makes it quite difficult to decipher these records. Most of the time I have to use my sleuthing skills by looking at the records previous to and after the record I am trying to decipher. If I get really stuck, I sometimes use Google Translate to help me figure out what words I don't understand. And this can be hard when you have to guess what the letters of some words are.

Here is an example of a decent record. It's fairly easy to read with good handwriting and clear wording:

Ancestry.com                                     

This is the record of the marriage of Michel Otisse and Emma Roy. They are my great-grandparents. I like that this record is signed by both Emma and Michel.

Here is a closeup of the first part of the record:

Their names are on the left ~ Michel Otisse and Emma Roy.

The date is next <Le vingt-six Novembre mil huit cent soixante-dix-huit> the 26th of November 1878. Most records are worded in pretty much the same way. This record states some of that legalese and then continues with his name and <cultivateur> farmer, that he is the oldest son of Adophe Otisse and Marguerite Chassé. Then it continues with Emma and her parents. It's all pretty straight forward. If I was having trouble with the date, I might check the previous record to see the year and month, knowing that the day for this record would be later.

So today I would like to share with you the hardest record to read I have ever come across in the Drouin Collection. It is the record for the death and burial of Jean-Baptiste Otisse. (My previous blog spotlighted his first wife, Cécile Poulin.) He is my sixth great-grandfather. He was born in Dover, New Hampshire and was taken by the Abenaki Indians to Canada and sold into slavery in 1689, when he was just nine years old. 

Here is the record of his death and burial in 1760.

Now, at first glance, I figured that I would not be able to glean any information from this record, but as I began working with it and using other records to confirm, it began to come together. The transcription gives the year as 1760 (at the top) in Baie-St-Paul. Let's take each record on the page individually. I'm covering the four records on the left page only.  My ancestors record is the third one down on that page.

With the first record, we have the <enterrement> burial of Constance Tremblay on <le 10 Septembre 1760>. Now, this parish priest gives us a special treat of listing the date with the names in the margin. Most priests did not do this. And the year in the record is written out in words, not with numbers, as it was with the first example I gave with Michel Otisse. With this record, having those dates, especially with numbers in the margin really helped with deciphering. This priest also makes his esses with a swooping letter that looks something like a cursive f to me. I have seen this before so when I came across them, I knew them to be esses and not f's. 

The next record is a <baptême> baptism dated <14 Sbre 1760>  14 Sep 1760. This can be seen in the margin. 

 

The last record on the page is also a <baptême> baptism for Marie-Rose Fortin dated <le 18 Sbre 1760> 18 Sep 1760. At first, I only saw Fortin in small letters, but thought the first name might be Rose. Then I saw the Marie above it and looked in the text and it looked more like Marie Rose Fortin in the text to me. 

Now we come to the record of my ancestor Jean-Baptiste Otisse. He was born to British parents as John Otis. When he came to Québec he was baptized in the Catholic Church as Jean-Baptiste. Otis when pronounced by the french became Otisse or O-teese with the s pronounced softly, not a hard s that sounds like a z. This caused lots of spelling problems and it was sometimes spelled Otice, Otise, Otisse, and Othys. This parish priest spelled his name Otice and you can see it in the margin. <enterrement> Burial of Jean Otice. The date is not super clear, <16 Sbre 1760> the six wasn't clear, but other records (Tanguay, see below) do show his death date as 16 Sep 1760, and since the previous record on this page is 14 Sep and the record after is 18 Sep, I think we can assume that 16 Sep is correct. I was able to decipher the words <l'an> year and then the date written out <mil sept cent soixante seize de Septembre> 1760 16 September. There's not much else here that I could read, but I did find <mort aujourd'hui> died this day, which means his death and burial dates are the same.

 

b in the Tanguay Collection means christening date, m means marriage date, and s means the burial date. 

So there you have it, a successful deciphering of an incredibly illegible record from the Drouin Collection. You can see why I love the Tanguay Collection so much, it's so much easier to read. 😌 

 

Spotlight ~ Cécile Poulin

Documentarian Weblog ~ Stardate 14056.7

I've decided that I need to do a better job of blogging items I find on Ancestry to help me keep track of them. Today, I'm looking at Cécile Poulin, b. 20 Janv 1676; 1st wife of Jean Baptiste Otisse I. The Tanguay Collection (Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes depuis la fondation de la colonie jusqu'á nos jours) (Genealogical Dictionary of Canadian Families from the Founding of the Colony to the Present Day) by Cyprien Tanguay, 1819-1902, Published in 1871 shows that she was born in Sainte-Anne. I began searching to try to find out where this is.  

In this blog, when I use directions, like "north of" or "south of", I'm referring to the St. Lawrence River (Fleuve Saint-Laurent). The river itself runs in a north-easterly direction connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. So the direction south, may look clearly west in a photo, if that portion of the river turns east and west. South would mean up river, towards the Great Lakes. The same is true for north which means down river towards the Atlantic Ocean.

St. Lawrence/Great Lakes Watershed

                                                                                                Karl Musser                                                           

I found a Sainte-Anne-des-Chênes in Manitoba, near Winnipeg, but I am thinking that is a bit too far away for this time frame. Jean Baptiste lived in Baie-Saint-Paul, just off the St. Lawrence River, north of Quebec City. He was taken into captivity and brought to Canada from New Hampshire by the Abenaki Indians in 1689 when he was just 9 years old. This is an unimaginable story that I will cover in another post.

At first, I had to check and make sure that Cécile wasn't born in France. It is clear from the collection that her parents were born in Canada.

Here are two examples that show first generations in Canada with their parents and where they are from.

 This Michel O'Brien is the son of William and Margaret from Dublin, Ireland.

This Louis Olivier is the son of Pierre and Marie-Anne Dubuc of St-Eustache Parish in Paris, France.

"Roman Numerals. Roman numerals indicate generations. A person with I beside the name is the first ancestor listed in Tanguay's Diccionnaire. II is a child of the first ancestor. III is the grandchild of the first ancestor, and so on." 

Next I found a river, Rivière Sainte-Anne near Église Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade which is south of Quebec City. This is getting closer to Baie-Saint-Paul. Then I found another river, Rivière Sainte-Anne-du-Nord, near Beaupré. It flows through Canyon Sainte-Anne near Mont Sainte-Anne, a ski area. Then I found south of Beaupré, the town of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. It lies between Quebec City and Baie-Saint-Paul. I believe this to be the town where Cécile was born.

Google Maps

 

To confirm this I consulted The Genealogy of the Otis Family by Gérard Malchelosse, ©1921. It states ~ "Jean-Baptiste Otis married in 1703 Cécile Poulin, born in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré January, 20 1676, daughter of Jean Poulin and Louise Paré." He goes on to say that the records do not show that they were married in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, but he surmises that they were because this is where her family lived at the time.

Next, I made an amazing discovery. I was under the impression that Jean-Baptiste Otisse I had first settled in Baie-Saint-Paul after his captivity, but he didn't. He only lived a portion of his life there. I remember reading that he ended up with the Seminaire de Québec in Québec City. There is some question about this though because he never learned to read and write. He does show up in records around 1702 at La Petite Ferme (the Little Farm) which was run by the seminary. The amazing discovery is that I found La Petite-Ferme just north of Saint-Joachim (which is just north of Beaupré and Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré). This must be how Jean-Baptiste and Cécile Poulin met. He was living in the area. 

The astonishing part is that there is a building at La Petite Ferme that was recognized by Canada's Historic Places in 1992. The building is shown to have been constructed from 1692 to 1732, which is in the time frame that Jean-Baptiste and Cécile Otisse lived there. They were married in 1703. What an exciting discovery and it's definitely a place I would like to visit!

 

Google Earth view of La Petite Ferme

 

  

 Jean-Pierre Adam

 

L'Association des amis du cap Tourmente

 

                                                Municipalité de Saint-Joachim

  The building has been restored and the project was completed in 2011.

Marie-Josée Deschênes ~ architecte

Popfort