Author: Nancy

I have been researching my family history since 1999 in my spare time. I have made several trips to local repositories in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut to do research in addition to using online resources. I even did a trip to Northern Ireland to try to find my Irish roots. I have attended conferences for RootsTech, National Genealogical Society, Federation of Genealogical Societies and Association of Professional Genealogists. Additionally, I have completed the Boston University certificate program for genealogical research as well as the Intermediate Genealogy Research classes at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburg and at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research. I love doing genealogy research.

Marthe Arnu (1632–1700)

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Marthe Arnu was baptized on 28 March 1632 in the parish of Sainte-Marguerite at La Rochelle, Aunis, the daughter of Marc Arnu and Louise Brodeur, who had married there about 1630. After Marc’s death, Louise Brodeur married Jean Sauviot in 1640, leaving Marthe part of a blended household in one of the principal Atlantic ports connected to the Canadian trade.¹

In 1658 Marthe crossed the Atlantic to Montréal in the company of her mother and her half-sister Marguerite Sauviot. Both young women were among the filles à marier — marriageable women who emigrated before the royal sponsorship program began in 1663.² Their arrival formed part of the continuing migration from La Rochelle that supplied the colony with wives and families during its earliest decades.

On 2 September 1658 a marriage contract was drawn before the notary Basset for Marthe and Pierre Richaume dit Petrus. Marthe could not sign the document, though her husband could — a detail recorded in the act itself and repeated in the biographical literature.³ Pierre, born about 1634 at Hiers-Brouage in Saintonge, had come to Canada as a child with his widowed father. In the 1666 census his surname appears in the form “Richomme,” possibly derived from riche homme.⁴

The couple established their family in Montréal. Their first children, the twins Gabriel and Barbe, were baptized on 22 June 1659; Gabriel was buried that December. Jacques followed in 1661, Marie-Madeleine in 1662, Marie-Marthe in 1665, Élisabeth in 1666, Jeanne in 1668, a daughter Marie who died in 1671, and Madeleine in 1672.⁵ These baptisms and burials are preserved in the parish registers of Notre-Dame de Montréal and in the compiled genealogies of the colony.

Pierre Richaume died at Repentigny between 8 May 1688 and 1 March 1689.⁶ Marthe survived him by more than a decade. On 26 August 1700 she died at the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal and was buried the same day, her death occurring during the epidemic that swept the town that year.⁷

Marthe’s life reflects the early La Rochelle migration to Montréal: the remarriage of widowed parents, the movement of half-siblings to the colony together, the use of notarial contracts to establish marriages and property, and the steady growth of families that transformed a fragile settlement into a permanent community.

Sources

  1. Baptism of Marthe Arnu, 28 March 1632, parish of Sainte-Marguerite, La Rochelle (Aunis), France.
  2. Peter J. Gagné, Before the King’s Daughters: The Filles à Marier, 1634–1662 (Pawtucket, RI: Quintin Publications, 2002), 50–51.
  3. Marriage contract of Pierre Richaume dit Petrus and Marthe Arnu, 2 September 1658, notary Basset, Montréal; Québec, Canada, Notarial Records, 1637–1935.
  4. Census of 1666, Montréal, entry for Pierre Richaume (“Richomme”).
  5. Registers of Notre-Dame de Montréal, baptisms and burials of the children of Pierre Richaume and Marthe Arnu; Québec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621–1968; Cyprien Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes (Montréal, 1871–1890).
  6. Burial of Pierre Richaume dit Petrus, Repentigny, 1688/1689; parish registers; Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique.
  7. Burial of Marthe Arnu, 26 August 1700, Montréal; parish registers; Gagné, Before the King’s Daughters, 51.

Prudence Mary Morton (abt. 1811 – living 1 November 1875)

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An Irish-born settler of Hungerford Township, Hastings County, Ontario

Prudence Mary Morton was born in Ireland about 1811. In both the 1861 and 1871 censuses she was recorded as Irish-born and a member of the Church of England. Her reported ages in those returns place her birth in the second decade of the nineteenth century.¹ ²

A baptism for Mary Morton, daughter of James Morton and Margaret Johnston, was recorded on 6 April 1809 in the Church of Ireland parish of Clones, County Monaghan.³ This is the only parish register entry presently identified for a woman of that name and age in the locality associated with the Doonan family.

She married James Doonan in Ireland, and by the early 1830s they were living in Canada West, where their children were born. The recorded birthplaces of the children show the family moving through the Bay of Quinte region — from Prince Edward County to Belleville and then to Hungerford Township in Hastings County — where they established their permanent home.

A farm household in Hungerford Township

In 1861 Prudence appeared in the census in Hungerford Township in the household of her husband, James Doonan, a farmer. Both were recorded as born in Ireland and as adherents of the Church of England. Their children, all born in Canada, were living with them on the farm.¹

Ten years later, in 1871, the household had entered a later stage of life. Only one son remained at home. Prudence, then fifty-seven years old, was again recorded as Irish-born and Church of England, and the census noted that she could not write.²

The home farm: Lot 8, Concession 1

Land registry records identify the family property as the north half of Lot 8 in the First Concession of Hungerford Township, Hastings County.⁴ This was the farm on which Prudence spent her later life.

On 13 August 1873 James Doonan made his will. In it he devised the farm to his son Edward, together with the livestock and farm implements, but required that Edward provide for the support of his mother during her lifetime. Prudence was to have the room she then occupied in the house and was to be maintained “winter and summer.” She also received a cow and two sheep for her own use.⁵

James Doonan died on 19 September 1873 in Hungerford Township.⁶

Widowhood and legal protection

Prudence survived her husband and was living as his widow on 1 November 1875, when she appeared in a mortgage and a related agreement with her son Edward concerning the farm. In the mortgage she was explicitly described as:

“Prudence Doonan, widow of James Doonan … and mother of the above-named Edward Doonan.”⁷

Because she held a life interest in the land under the terms of her husband’s will, her consent was required when the property was mortgaged. The agreement made the same day set out how her support would be secured:

  • if the farm were sold during her lifetime, she was to receive $200
  • if she chose to live elsewhere, Edward was to pay her $20 per year in place of her maintenance on the farm⁸

She signed the document by mark, consistent with the earlier census notation that she could not write.² ⁸

These records provide a detailed account of the arrangements for her old age and show that her right to support was formally protected against the land itself.

Part of the land record recorded 1 Nov 1875.

Last record

Prudence’s last known appearance is in the agreement of 1 November 1875.⁸ No later record has been found.

Her life can be traced with certainty from her Irish origins to more than four decades on the same farm in Hastings County, where she lived first as the wife of a settler farmer and later as a widow whose maintenance was guaranteed by the provisions of her husband’s will.

Sources

  1. 1861 Census of Canada, Canada West, Hastings County, Hungerford Township, household of James Doonan; Library and Archives Canada.
  2. 1871 Census of Canada, Ontario, Hastings East, Hungerford Township, household of James Doonan; Library and Archives Canada.
  3. Church of Ireland parish register, Clones, County Monaghan, baptism of Mary Morton, 6 April 1809; Family History Library microfilm 897416.
  4. Hastings County Land Registry Office (Ontario), Abstract Index to Deeds, Hungerford Township, Lot 8, Concession 1.
  5. Hastings County Land Registry Office (Ontario), Will of James Doonan, dated 13 August 1873, registered 27 September 1873.
  6. Ontario death registration, James Doonan, 19 September 1873, Hungerford Township, Hastings County.
  7. Hastings County Land Registry Office (Ontario), Mortgage from Edward Doonan and Prudence Doonan to John Taylor, registered 1 November 1875.
  8. Hastings County Land Registry Office (Ontario), Agreement between Edward Doonan and Prudence Doonan respecting her life interest under the will of James Doonan, registered 2 November 1875.

Catherine Forestier

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Catherine Forestier was born in 1637 at La Rochelle in the old province of Aunis, a port city whose departures fed the population of New France throughout the seventeenth century. She was the daughter of Jean Forestier and Julienne Coifée. Her mother died there on 20 April 1650, a loss that occurred while Catherine was still in her early teens.¹

By 19 November 1657 she was in the colony, where she married Jacques Ménard dit Lafontaine at Trois-Rivières.² The timing of the marriage and the origin at La Rochelle place her among the early marriageable women who came before the King’s Daughters program, part of the movement of young women whose arrival helped stabilize family life in the small river settlements.³ Jacques Ménard was already established in the colony, and their marriage is recorded in the parish register that documents the earliest generation of families in that region.²

The first years of their married life were spent at Trois-Rivières, where their earliest children were born. The parish registers record the burial of their daughter Marguerite, born in 1658 and deceased before 1666.⁴ By 1671 the family had moved to Boucherville, part of the seigneurial expansion along the south shore of the St. Lawrence. There Catherine gave birth to the younger children who would grow up in that seigneurial community.⁴

The baptisms at Trois-Rivières and Boucherville trace the growth of the household over nearly two decades:

Marie (1659), Jean-Baptiste (1660), Louis (1662), Maurice (1664), Jean (1666), Marguerite (1668), Jeanne-Françoise (1669), Anne (1671), Catherine (27 September 1673), Marie-Madeleine (1675, buried the same month), Thérèse (1676), and Jacques (1678).⁴

These entries show the familiar rhythm of seventeenth-century colonial life — repeated pregnancies, the loss of small children, and the gradual establishment of a large family that would remain in the Boucherville area.

René Jetté’s reconstruction of the family and the parish records confirm that Catherine spent the rest of her life in that community.⁴ The genealogical notice preserved by Gagné identifies her La Rochelle origin and situates her among the women whose arrival in the 1650s contributed to the permanent settlement of the colony.³

Catherine died at Boucherville on 31 March 1694 and was buried there the same day.⁵ Her husband survived her by more than a decade, dying in 1707.⁴

Her life follows the arc seen in so many of the earliest immigrant women of Canada: departure from a French Atlantic port, marriage soon after arrival, years marked by the cycle of baptisms and burials in the parish register, and permanence in a seigneurial river community that was still new when she first saw it.

Sources

  1. Parish registers of La Rochelle (Aunis), burial of Julienne Coifée, 20 April 1650.
  2. Trois-Rivières parish register, marriage of Jacques Ménard dit Lafontaine and Catherine Forestier, 19 November 1657.
  3. Peter J. Gagné, Before the King’s Daughters: The Filles à marier, 1634–1662 (Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Quintin Publications, 2002), entry for Catherine Forestier.
  4. René Jetté, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec des origines à 1730 (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1983), 823–824; Cyprien Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes (Montréal, 1871–1890), sub Ménard; PRDH, family file of Jacques Ménard and Catherine Forestier; parish registers of Trois-Rivières and Boucherville (Drouin Collection), baptisms and burials of the Ménard children, 1658–1678.
  5. Boucherville parish register, burial of Catherine Forestier, 31 March 1694.

Madeleine Chrétien

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Madeleine Chrétien was born about 1646 in the parish of Saint-Eustache in Paris, the daughter of Toussaint Chrétien and Françoise Bertault.¹ Both of her parents died in 1670, the same year she left France for Canada.² She was about twenty-four years old.

After her arrival in Montréal, she was lodged at the Maison Saint-Gabriel, the reception house established for the filles du roi while they awaited marriage.³

On 20 October 1670 Madeleine married Pierre Chicoine in Montréal.⁴ The marriage contract had been drawn five days earlier, on 15 October, and is notable because Madeleine signed the document while her husband could not — an indication that she was literate.³ The contract was witnessed by Madeleine-Thérèse Salé and Françoise Goubiliau, with Gabriel Souart also present.³

Pierre Chicoine was born about 1641 at Channay-sur-Lathan in Anjou, the son of Gilles Chicoine and Perrine Boisaubert.³ At the time of the 1667 census he was a servant in Montréal in the household of Mathurin Langevin.³

The couple first settled at Longueuil, where their eldest daughter, Marie-Madeleine, was baptized on 11 March 1672.³ They later moved to land above Verchères when Pierre acquired a concession in the seigneurie of Bellevue in 1678, becoming known as seigneur de Bellevue.³ From there the family established themselves at Contrecœur, where several of their children were born and where they spent the remainder of their lives.

Their children included Marie-Madeleine (1672–1745), Marguerite (1674–1717), Pierre (1676–1736), François (1678–1708), Agnès (1681–1746), Marie-Madeleine (1684–1687), Angélique (1686–1687), Marie-Thérèse (1688–1764), and Paul (1691–1743).³

Two of their young daughters were buried in December 1687, most likely victims of the smallpox epidemic that struck the colony that year.³

Pierre Chicoine died at Verchères between 25 March and 31 May 1698.³

On 19 June 1702 at Contrecœur, Madeleine married Louis-Odet de Piercot, sieur de Baillieu, an officer in the troupes de la Marine and a chevalier of the Order of Saint-Louis.³ They had no children together.

Madeleine died at Contrecœur on 25 February 1709 and was buried there two days later.³

Sources

  1. Peter J. Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663–1673 (Pawtucket, RI: Quintin Publications, 2000), 150.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid., 150–151.
  4. Québec, Registre paroissial de Notre-Dame de Montréal, 20 octobre 1670, mariage de Pierre Chicoine et Madeleine Chrétien (Drouin Collection).
  5. Cyprien Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes, vol. 2 (Montréal: Eusèbe Sénécal, 1871), sub Chicoine.
  6. Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH), fiche familiale Pierre Chicoine – Madeleine Chrétien.
  7. Yves Landry, Les Filles du roi au XVIIe siècle (Montréal: Leméac, 1992).

Temperance Gilson (1823–1851)

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A life in Marion and Morrow Counties, Ohio

Temperance Gilson was born 29 July 1823 in Ohio, the daughter of Samuel Gilson and Dolly Clark.¹ Her early years were spent in a family that was part of the movement from New York into central Ohio, a migration reflected in the birthplace of her sister Sally Jane about 1828.²

Marriage to James Lawhead

On 20 January 1840, Temperance Gilson married James Lawhead in Marion County, Ohio.³ The original marriage entry records that the couple was legally married on 28 January 1840 by Michael Hedges, J.P.⁴

Marriage record of James Lawhead and Temperance Gilson as seen on ancestry.com

A family register page preserves their birth dates and repeats the marriage date, providing an important piece of corroborating evidence.⁵

Five children were born to James and Temperance:

  • Cynthia Alice Lawhead, born 2 September 1840, Marion County, Ohio⁵
  • Margaret Ann Lawhead, born 13 May 1842, Pennsylvania⁵
  • Susannah Gilson Lawhead, born 8 September 1843, Morrow County, Ohio⁵
  • George Washington Lawhead, born 10 February 1845, Westfield Township, Morrow County, Ohio⁵
  • James Lawhead, born 26 October 1846, Morrow County, Ohio⁵

The change in the recorded birthplace of the children from Marion County to Morrow County does not represent a move. In 1848, Morrow County was created from portions of Marion, Richland, Delaware, and Knox Counties. The Lawhead family remained in the same locality — the jurisdiction changed when the new county was formed.

James Lawhead died 19 July 1846 in Morrow County, leaving Temperance a widow with five young children, the youngest born just three months after his death.¹

Marriage to Charles Conlon

Temperance married again on 7 May 1849 at Cardington, Morrow County, Ohio, to Charles Conlon.¹

The 1850 census shows the blended household in Cardington:

  • Charles Conlon
  • Temperance Conlon
  • Her Lawhead children
  • Their infant son, Charles G. Conlin⁶

Two children were born to Charles and Temperance:

  • Charles G. Conlin, born March 1850⁵
  • Robert Conlon, born 8 May 1851⁵

Death

Temperance (Gilson) (Lawhead) Conlon died 20 May 1851 in Morrow County, Ohio, at only twenty-seven years of age.¹ She was buried at Cardington.¹

Her death came less than two weeks after the birth of her youngest child.

The Conlon Will: Proof of the Lawhead Children

The 1871 probate of Charles Conlon’s will provides explicit, primary-source evidence naming Temperance’s children from her first marriage:

“the children of my late wife Temperance, children of James Lawhead — Cynthia A. Lawhead, George W., Margaret, Susannah and James Lawhead …”⁷

Part of page 1 of Charles Conlon’s will where he names the Lawhead family.

This document firmly ties the Lawhead children to Temperance and James and confirms that she had died prior to the writing of the will.

After Temperance’s Death

Following her death, her widower Charles Conlon later married Hannah Frost in 1853, a fact also recorded on the family register page.⁵

Her children grew to adulthood in Morrow County and beyond, carrying the Lawhead and Conlon lines forward.

Sources

  1. Ancestry, Family Tree profile for Temperance Gilson, with attached Ohio death and burial data.
  2. Ancestry, Family Tree profile for Sally Jane Gilson.
  3. Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774–1993, Marion County, James Lawhead–Temperance Gilson.
  4. Marion County, Ohio, marriage record, 1840, original entry for James Lawhead and Temperance Gilson.
  5. Lawhead–Conlon family register (manuscript), privately held.
  6. 1850 U.S. census, Morrow County, Ohio, Cardington Township, Charles Conlon household.
  7. Morrow County, Ohio, Probate Court, will of Charles Conlon, proved 24 June 1871.

Françoise Curé (c. 1643–1709)

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Françoise Curé was born about 1643 in the parish of Grévillers in Artois (today Pas-de-Calais), the daughter of Pierre Curé and Barbe Charles.¹ The parish registers of Grévillers record the deaths of both of her parents on 19 December 1669, a reminder of the losses that shaped the lives of many of the young women who left France for Canada in the seventeenth century.¹

She came to New France in 1669 as one of the Filles du Roi, the women whose passage was financed by the crown in order to strengthen the colony’s population.² Like the majority of these immigrants, she brought with her a modest dowry provided by the king, generally valued at about 200 livres, intended to help establish a household in the new colony.³

On 19 December 1669, shortly after her arrival, she signed a marriage contract before the Montréal notary Bénigne Basset with Lucas Loiseau, a settler originally from France.⁴ The marriage followed soon after. Together they established their family at Boucherville, one of the seigneurial communities along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River.

Their children were baptized in the parish of Sainte-Famille de Boucherville:

  • Marie-Madeleine, baptized 25 April 1671
  • Joachim, baptized 28 February 1673
  • Jeanne, baptized 31 January 1675, buried 5 November 1687
  • Roger, baptized 30 April 1677, buried 4 January 1689
  • Marie, baptized 7 June 1680
  • Françoise (recorded in the parish registers)⁵

These parish entries place Françoise firmly within the rhythm of colonial life: repeated pregnancies, the baptism of infants within days of birth, and the burial of children lost young.

Lucas Loiseau died at Boucherville on 4 March 1704.⁵ Françoise survived him by nearly five years. She was buried at Boucherville on 19 January 1709.⁵

Her life traces the path of many of the king’s daughters: from a small parish in northern France to the growing rural settlements of the St. Lawrence valley, where marriage, land, and family created the permanent foundations of New France.

Sources

  1. Parish registers of Saint-Martin de Grévillers (Artois), burial entries for Pierre Curé and Barbe Charles, 19 December 1669.
  2. Peter J. Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663–1673 (Pawtucket, RI: Quintin Publications, 2000), 165–166.
  3. Yves Landry, Les Filles du roi au XVIIe siècle (Montréal: Leméac, 1992).
  4. Bénigne Basset, notary, marriage contract of Lucas Loiseau and Françoise Curé, 19 December 1669, greffe de Montréal.
  5. Registres paroissiaux de Sainte-Famille de Boucherville (baptisms of the Loiseau children; burial of Lucas Loiseau, 4 March 1704; burial of Françoise Curé, 19 January 1709), Drouin Collection; Cyprien Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes, Loiseau family.

Emaline Goff (Groff) Jones (1824–1897)

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Mrs. Emaline Jones died in Saginaw on 21 September 1897 at the age of seventy-three, her obituary noting that she had been born in New York on 3 April 1824 and had made her home in Michigan for most of her adult life.¹ Her death record gives a more sobering picture, stating that she died of asthenia, with poverty, lack of care, and old age listed as contributing causes.² Together, these records frame the story of a woman whose life followed the familiar nineteenth-century path from New York to the developing communities of central Michigan—and whose final years were marked by hardship.

Her name appears in the records in more than one form. While she is most often Emaline or Emeline Goff, some sources render the surname as Groff, a variation that likely reflects pronunciation rather than a true change of identity.³

Emaline was born in New York, the daughter of George Groff.⁴ Like many young women of her generation, she was in Michigan by her late teens. Her first known child, Sarah Thursa Hibbner, was born in Michigan in 1842, indicating an early migration westward.⁵ This movement fits the larger pattern of settlement into the interior counties of the state during the 1830s and 1840s.

By the early 1850s she had married Thomas J. Jones, and together they built their family in Genesee, Shiawassee, and Clinton Counties before eventually moving into Saginaw County. Their son Isaac was born at Flushing in 1853, followed by additional children over the next decade: George, Aaron, Elizabeth Ann, and Matthew Francis.⁶

The federal census traces the family through these years of growth and relocation. In 1860 they were in Middlebury Township, Shiawassee County.⁷ By 1870 and again in 1880 they were living at Ovid in Clinton County, where Thomas worked and the children grew to adulthood.⁸ These were years when Ovid was a small but active agricultural community, and the Jones family’s presence there places them among the settlers who transformed the region from frontier to established farmland.

Thomas died in 1893 in Spaulding Township, Saginaw County.⁹ His death marked a turning point. Within four years Emaline herself was gone, and the language of her death record suggests that widowhood brought real economic difficulty.

Her obituary nevertheless emphasized the family she left behind: sons Isaac, Aaron, and Matthew, and two daughters, identified as Mrs. Lester and Mrs. Showers.¹ This brief list reflects a common practice of the time—married daughters were named by their husbands’ surnames—yet it also shows that most of her children survived her, a significant fact in an era when child mortality was high.

She was buried on 22 September 1897 in Spaulding Township, beside her husband.¹⁰

Emaline’s life spans a period of enormous change. Born in New York in the 1820s, she came to Michigan when it was still a young state, raised her children as its towns and farms took shape, and died in the closing years of the nineteenth century in the industrializing Saginaw Valley. Her story is one of migration, family building, repeated moves in search of stability, and, at the end, the vulnerability that so often accompanied old age when family support or financial resources were limited.

Sources

  1. “Mrs. Emeline Jones,” obituary, The Saginaw News, 21 September 1897.
  2. Michigan death certificate, Emaline Jones, 21 September 1897, Saginaw, Saginaw County.
  3. Name variants as recorded in census and vital records, 1860–1897.
  4. Parent identified in compiled genealogical material and supported by surname usage in early records.
  5. Birth of Sarah Thursa Hibbner, Michigan, 1842.
  6. Michigan birth and marriage records for the children of Thomas J. and Emaline Jones.
  7. 1860 U.S. census, Middlebury Township, Shiawassee County, Michigan.
  8. 1870 and 1880 U.S. censuses, Ovid, Clinton County, Michigan.
  9. Michigan death record, Thomas J. Jones, 19 October 1893, Spaulding Township, Saginaw County.
  10. Burial record, Spaulding Township, Saginaw County, Michigan, 22 September 1897.

Françoise-Marthe Barton (1651–1699)

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Françoise-Marthe Barton was baptized on 10 January 1651 in the parish of Saint-Michel at Poitiers in the old province of Poitou, the daughter of Jacques Barton and Renée Pestre.¹ Her mother died when she was still very young.¹

Her father belonged to the administrative elite of seventeenth-century France. He was described as a chevalier — a member of the minor nobility — and seigneur of Montaiguillon and Villenaux, meaning that he held feudal rights over landed estates. He also served as a conseiller ordinaire du roi, a royal councilor who sat in the king’s governing councils, and as an intendant in several provinces, the Crown’s chief administrative officer responsible for justice, finance, and policing.²

Despite this privileged background, Françoise-Marthe left France for Canada in 1670 as one of the filles du roi, the young women whose passage was financed by the Crown to encourage marriage and settlement in New France.³ After her arrival she stayed for a time at the Maison Saint-Gabriel in Montréal, where many of the king’s daughters were received and lodged while their marriages were arranged.³

On 7 October 1670 she married Joseph Chevalier at Notre-Dame de Montréal.⁴ Their marriage contract, drawn up the previous day sous seing privé (a private agreement rather than one passed before a notary), was prepared by the priest Gilles Perrot.³ Several other king’s daughters were present as witnesses.³ Neither bride nor groom signed the document.²

Joseph Chevalier, a maître menuisier (master carpenter), had been born about 1644 in the parish of Saint-Jacques at Dieppe in Normandy, the son of Jean Chevalier and Madeleine L’Heureux.³ He had been in Canada since about 1662 and later served as marguillier (churchwarden) of the parish in 1682.²

The parish registers of Notre-Dame de Montréal record the baptisms of the thirteen children born to the couple between 1671 and 1695:

Marie-Françoise (1671), Pierre (1674), Jean (1675), Jean-Baptiste (1677), Élisabeth (1679), Anne-Angélique (1682), Geneviève (1683), Barbe (1685), Paul (1687), Marguerite (1688), Madeleine (1690), Thérèse (1692), and Joseph (1695).⁴

Several of these children died young. Paul was buried on 7 June 1687, Pierre on 1 June 1694, and the younger Joseph on 1 January 1696.⁴

Françoise-Marthe died at Montréal on 13 August 1699 and was buried the same day.⁴ Her death occurred in a year marked by disease in the colony, and the immediate burial reflects the urgency that often accompanied such losses. Joseph Chevalier survived her by more than twenty years and died on 26 May 1721 at the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal.⁴

From her baptism in Poitiers to her burial at Montréal, the surviving records trace the life of a woman born into a family of rank in France who became in Canada the wife of a skilled artisan and the mother of a large colonial household.

Sources

  1. Poitiers (Vienne), paroisse Saint-Michel, registre des baptêmes, 10 janvier 1651, baptême de Françoise-Marthe Barton.
  2. Peter J. Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663–1673 (Pawtucket, R.I.: Quintin Publications, 2000), 73–74.
  3. Yves Landry, Les filles du roi au XVIIe siècle (Montréal: Leméac, 1992), notice de Françoise-Marthe Barton.
  4. Québec, Registres paroissiaux (Collection Drouin), Notre-Dame de Montréal:
    – mariage de Joseph Chevalier et Françoise-Marthe Barton, 7 octobre 1670;
    – baptêmes des enfants Chevalier, 1671–1695;
    – sépulture de Françoise-Marthe Barton, 13 août 1699;
    – sépulture de Joseph Chevalier, 26 mai 1721.
  5. Cyprien Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes, s.v. “Chevalier.”
  6. Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, entrée pour l’arrivée de Françoise-Marthe Barton, 1670.

Lucy L. Wellington Wakefield (1801–1879)

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A Vermont mother on the Michigan lumber frontier

Lucy L. Wellington was born in Vermont in 1801, the daughter of Josiah Wellington and Polly Hutchinson. She grew up in Braintree and Randolph in Orange County and married James Wakefield there on 14 December 1820.¹

Their marriage began a family that would span the entire period of New England’s westward migration. Their first children were born in Vermont: George W. Wakefield (1821), Calvin Wakefield (1822), and Jefferson Wakefield (1823). They were followed by Matilda Wakefield (1825) and Luther Wakefield (1826). After a move within Orange County to Randolph, Lucy gave birth to Mary Jane Wakefield (1831), Jasper Wakefield (1833), Augusta Wakefield (1835), Levay Wakefield (1840), and Dana A. Wakefield (1842).² By the time the youngest child was born, Lucy had spent more than twenty years raising a large household in the hill towns of Vermont.

The family remained in Randolph through the 1850 census, but about 1855 Lucy and James joined the movement of many Orange County families to the Saginaw Valley of Michigan, settling in Albee Township.³

The Civil War years brought losses that touched Lucy directly. Her son Levay died in 1862, and her son Dana A. Wakefield died in 1864 while in service in Georgia.⁴

In April 1864, at more than sixty years of age, Lucy made a homestead entry at the United States Land Office in East Saginaw for 120 acres in Section 11 of Grant Township, Iosco County.⁵ Testimony preserved in the later federal land case established that she lived on this tract, built a house, cleared land, and planted an orchard.⁶ The Wakefield farm was remembered locally many years later as a well-known place in the township.

From the land record held at NARA for Lucy Wakefield.

Lucy participated in the development of the community. On 23 December 1868 she signed a petition in support of aid for the Tawas City and Plank Road Company, a project intended to connect the interior settlements with the Lake Huron shore.⁷ In 1870 she was enumerated in Grant Township with her daughter and son-in-law.⁸

Local and land ownership sources associate her property with the Sand Lake Hotel on the State Road. While the federal records describe her as a homesteader, her household stood at a recognized location in a lumbering township where travelers and workers moved between the interior and the shore.⁹

On 3 August 1876 Lucy wrote her will in Grant Township, bringing to a close more than a decade on the homestead she had established in her sixties.¹⁰

She died on 1 June 1879 in Albee Township, Saginaw County, at the age of seventy-eight. The cause of death was consumption.¹¹ In the 1880 mortality schedule she appears as a widowed woman, born in Vermont, whose final residence was in Michigan.¹²

Lucy’s life began in the settled farming towns of Vermont and ended on the edge of the Michigan lumber frontier. Between those two places she raised eleven children, buried two sons lost in the Civil War era, and, in her later years, established a working homestead in a newly opened township.

Children of James and Lucy (Wellington) Wakefield

  • George W. Wakefield, born 7 June 1821, Vermont
  • Calvin Wakefield, born 15 January 1822, Vermont
  • Jefferson Wakefield, born 3 February 1823 – died 1905
  • Matilda Wakefield, born 10 February 1825
  • Luther Wakefield, born 11 October 1826 – died 1895
  • Mary Jane Wakefield, born 10 April 1831 – died 1888
  • Jasper Wakefield, born 6 December 1833 – died 1915
  • Augusta Wakefield, born 7 September 1835 – died 1899
  • Levay Wakefield, born 12 October 1840 – died 8 February 1862
  • Dana A. Wakefield, born 1 May 1842 – died 14 May 1864

Sources

  1. Vermont vital and town records; marriage of James Wakefield and Lucy Wellington, Braintree, 14 December 1820.
  2. Vermont vital records and compiled family histories for Wakefield family births.
  3. 1850 U.S. census, Randolph, Orange County, Vermont; Saginaw County settlement information.
  4. Military death information for Levay Wakefield and Dana A. Wakefield.
  5. U.S. General Land Office, homestead entry, Lucy Wakefield, East Saginaw Land Office, April 1864.
  6. Department of the Interior land case file, witness testimony describing residence, buildings, and orchard on the Wakefield homestead.
  7. Petition supporting aid to the Tawas City and Plank Road Company, Grant Township, 23 December 1868.
  8. 1870 U.S. census, Grant Township, Iosco County, Michigan.
  9. Iosco County early land ownership compilations and local historical sources identifying the Wakefield property with the Sand Lake Hotel site.
  10. Iosco County, Michigan, will of Lucy Wakefield, 3 August 1876.
  11. Michigan death record, Lucy Wakefield, 1 June 1879, Albee Township, Saginaw County; cause of death: consumption.
  12. 1880 U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedule, Saginaw County, Michigan.

Elizabeth “Betsy” (Foster) Munson (1820–1894)

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Elizabeth “Betsy” Foster was born 7 May 1820 in New York, the daughter of Nathaniel Foster and Mary Moore.¹ By the mid-1820s she was in Saginaw County, Michigan, where her father became one of the earliest settlers and built the first sawmill on the Saginaw River.²

She grew up in a pioneer environment as the Foster family established itself along the river in what was then a developing frontier community.

On 1 June 1839, in Bridgeport, she married Henry Munson.³ She was nineteen years old.

A life in the Saginaw Valley

Elizabeth spent her entire married life in Saginaw County. She and Henry first appear together in Bridgeport Township in the 1850 census with their young children.⁴ They remained in the same general area for decades, later settling in Taymouth Township.⁵

She was the mother of a large family:

  • James H. Munson (1840–1881)
  • Mary Emaline Munson (1841–1907)
  • Ransom W. Munson (1843–1853)
  • Frances Jane Munson (1845–1915)
  • Gardner N. Munson
  • Thomas B. Munson (1849–1934)
  • Alice A. Munson (1853–1916)
  • Charles Homer Munson (1855–1928)
  • Sarah E. Munson
  • Henrietta E. Munson (1858–1917)
  • Orrin E. Munson (1861–1929) ⁴⁻⁸

Her son Ransom died in 1853 after drowning in the Cass River, a loss that occurred while the family was still raising younger children.⁹

Through the decades she witnessed the transformation of the Saginaw Valley from a lumber frontier into an established agricultural community.

Daughter of a pioneer

The Foster family’s early arrival in the region was remembered locally. One of her death notices stated:

“She was one of the pioneers of Saginaw county.”²

Another noted her connection to the earliest lumbering history:

“Her father, Mr. Foster, built the first saw mill on the Saginaw river.”³

This identity as a pioneer’s daughter remained part of how she was described at the end of her life.

Later years

Elizabeth was widowed when Henry Munson died 12 December 1886 in Taymouth Township.¹⁰
She continued to live in the township, appearing there in the 1880 census and remaining in the community where she had spent nearly her entire life.⁶

She experienced the deaths of both her husband and her eldest son during her later years.¹⁰⁻¹¹

Death

Elizabeth died 29 March 1894 at Taymouth Township at the home of her son, Charles H. Munson.³ She was 73 years old.²

Her obituary reported that she left:

  • sons Thomas, Orrin, and Charles H. Munson
  • daughters Jane Rivers and Etta Parker

and that she also had a surviving brother, Gardner W. Foster.²

She was buried in Taymouth Township, Saginaw County.¹²

Sources

  1. Birth date calculated from age at death and death record; Michigan death records.
  2. “Fosters,” The Saginaw News, 4 April 1894, p. 5.
  3. “Betsy Munson, wife of the late Henry Munson…,” The Saginaw News, 30 March 1894, p. 6.
  4. 1850 U.S. census, Bridgeport Township, Saginaw County, Michigan.
  5. 1860 U.S. census, Bridgeport Township, Saginaw County, Michigan.
  6. 1880 U.S. census, Taymouth Township, Saginaw County, Michigan.
  7. Michigan vital records for children of Henry and Elizabeth Munson.
  8. Michigan marriage and death records for Munson descendants.
  9. Saginaw County death record, Ransom W. Munson, 1853.
  10. Saginaw County death record, Henry Munson, 1886.
  11. Saginaw County death record, James H. Munson, 1881.
  12. Find a Grave index, Saginaw County, Michigan.