Spotlight ~ Gaspard Boucher

Documentarian Weblog ~ Stardate 14165.7
I found the coolest statue today. It is a monument to Louis Hébert, the first settler to colonize in Québec City in 1617. The statue is located in the Montmorency Park National Historic Site. The park is situated at the edge of Upper Town, just above Lower Town, where our hotel for this summer's ancestry visit is located. It's just minutes away. On this statue, is a plaque commemorating the early colonists. One of them is Gaspard Boucher who arrived in Québec in 1635. He is my 8th great-grandfather. 

 

Statue to Louis Hébert, apothicaire de Paris - Photo by Jean Gagnon

Plaque des premiers colons de Quebec - Photo by Jean Gagnon

 Photo by Jean Gagnon

There he is - Gaspard Boucher ~ my 8th great-grandfather. Can't wait to see it in person. 

Spotlight ~ Tracking Down Marguerite DeChaine

Documentarian Weblog ~ Stardate 14163.7
So I'm trying to track down if I have two Michel's in the Otis family of my grandmother. I had one Michel Otis born in 1883 and another Joseph "Michel" Otis born in 1886. Michel Otis had a baptismal record showing as 30 Oct 1883. What confused me at this point was that his father is listed correctly as Michel Otis, but his mother is listed as Emma Lauzier. I suppose at the time I picked up this record, I just figured I'd take a look at it later. I got to thinking that maybe Lauzier was a dit name, so I did an Ancestry search with her name listed that way. I ended up on a google search and figured out that it is indeed a dit name for Roy. I knew I was on the right track when I found a census with the name Lassier and a first name Dulgence. I looked at the record and it looked more like Fulgence to me, which is Emma's father's name. I thought that was quite a coincidence. So I decided to do some searching for her father because he had a less common name, Fulgence. I found a Fulgence Roy on Généalogie du Québec et d'Amérique française and on Royandboucher.com, a site of the Roy and Boucher families. He was born in 1804 and I thought that would make him too old to be my Fulgence Roy. I then noticed he died in 1855 which was before my Emma was born in 1861. It showed his father as Clément Roy and his wife as Marie Anne Gagnon. I poked them in as Fulgence's parents just to see what would happen and Ancestry immediately found them and gave me multiple hints. I knew it wasn't quite right though by the years and then I found that Fulgence Roy had a son, Fulgence. I am thinking, seriously, how many Fulgence Roy's can there be in the world. This son's wife's name is Marie Miville. Now you have to understand that just about every french baby born during this time was named Marie. I have in one family (Cureux's-which my St. Germain is a dit name for) Marie-Louise, Marie-Anne, Marie-Marguerite, Marie-Françoise, Marie-Jeanne, Marie-Madeleine, and Marie-Charlotte. I have many families like this so I wasn't too concerned that his wife's name was listed as Marie. I had his wife's name as Marguerite DeChaine. Well, clearly Marguerite DeChaine and Marie Miville are not the same. So next, I decided to go back to the horse's mouth. Maybe my Marguerite DeChaine is wrong. I went back to my original genealogy book that I started back in the 1980's. I have very little in there, but I had written down exactly what my dad had told me. I did find Fulgence Roy and Marguerite Dechaine in my handwriting. Ancestry had given me very little with these names in there, so I wondered if I might have her name wrong. As I was perusing the records I had found on Google I saw that the wife of the second Fulgence was listed as Marie Miville dit Deschêsnes. Holy crap, Marie Miville is my Marguerite DeChaine. It's another dit name. So in all of my searching, I finally found Fulgence Roy (1904 - the first one) on the Tanguay Collection. It doesn't mention his wife or children, but it does, in the fine print say Desjardins dit Lauzier. So Roy has two dit names Fulgence Roy Desjardins dit Lauzier. Wow, that's a mouthful. I will now put Marie Maguerite Miville dit Deschênes in my Ancestry tree and see if we can track down some records for her.