A Tanguay Snafu: When cousins have the same name and get married around the same time.

I'm trying to document all of the blood relatives with their baptism, marriage, and burial records from Drouin.   Up until now I've been mostly relying on Tanguay for information (it's far easier to digest since it's printed), but I've found several situations where Tanguay appears to get his facts wrong.

A user on ancestry.com pointed me to the http://www.genealogiequebec.com/ web site that has been going through the entire Drouin collection, identifying people mentioned in events which has been helpful, despite the extra expense (about $10/month).   The nice thing about this is that for the marriage records, they show the identification of the parents, making following trees easier to do.

Last night I came across this conundrum:  while looking up the children of 1st cousin 9x removed Marie-Françoise Guimond (1685-1725) and her (second) husband Joseph DeLavoye (1678-1727) I found that her son Augustin's marriage didn't agree with what's listed in Tanguay.   He's listed as marrying Marguerite Michaud sometime in the late 1720's.   But the LaFrance/Drouin record shows him marrying Angélique Duchesne (7 Feb 1729).   Some more poking around in Tanguay (because the DeLavoye/Michaud marriage doesn't seem to have a Drouin record) finds the Duchesne marriage to an Augustin DeLavoye, but with Augustin's father as Jean,  not Joseph, and Augustin as a widower, having married Angélique Mignier in 1728.

Now, Jean and Joseph are both sons of René DeLavoye (1628-1696) and Anne Gaudin (1639-1678), so the two Augustin's are cousins.   So - this much is true:

We know there are three marriages mentioned in Tanguay, two of which we have Drouin records:

1. 7 Jan 1728 to Angélique Mignier;
2. 7 Feb 1729 to Angélique Duchesne;
3. (date unknown, probably in 1729) to Marguerite Michaud.

According to Tanguay, it's Augustin, son of Jean who has marriages #1 and #2 (presumably Angélique Mignier dies soon after the marriage, and thus, when he marries Angélique Duchesne he is a widower).   Meanwhile, Augustin, son of Joseph marries Marguerite Michaud.

But the Drouin records say differently.   For marriage #2, it's Augustin son of Joseph who marries Angélique Duchesne in 1729:

 

It's right there at the end of the third line of barely legible scribbling: "fils de feu Joseph Lavoye et de Françoise Guimond" ("feu" indicating that Joseph died before the marriage).    OK - so Tanguay got it wrong and has his Augustin's swapped.

Oh - were it THAT simple.   But usually the marriage records indicate when someone is a widow or a widower, and here that's not the case.   Augustin's marital status is single.    Now we have to go back to the first marriage listed in Tanguay, to Angélique Mignier in 1728:

OK - here I'm relying on the people at the Québec Genealogy site to have done the transcription because I cannot for the life of my READ this.   But according to them, this says that Augustin's father is Jean, and - like in the other marriage record - Augustin is single at the time of this marriage.

So, Tanguay has it right - for THIS marriage - but is wrong about the second marriage.  

What about marriage #3?   There isn't a Drouin microfiche image to go blind trying to decipher, but there is another clue.   Marguerite Michaud has her birth and death dates:  1707–1784.   Her first child is Joseph-Marie baptised on 18 Feb 1730 (and that record is in Drouin) with a whole set of children born out to 1750.   So if she got pregnant immediately after marriage, that means this marriage had to have taken place no later than May 1729.   If the records are correct in that both the Jan 1728 and Feb 1729 marriages were to Augustins who were not widowers, than the only arrangements of things that makes sense has to be:

1. On 7 Jan 1728, Augustin — son of Jean and Madeleine Boucher — marries Angélique Mignier;
   
2. Angélique Mignier dies within the next 12 to 15 months.  No children.
   
3. On 7 Feb 1729, Augustin — son of Joseph and Françoise Guimond — marries Angélique Duchesne.
   
4. Sometime in the spring of 1729, the widower Augustin — son of Jean and Madeleine Boucher — marries Marguerite Michaud.
   

So - there are three errors in Tanguay:

1. Augustin (son of Joseph) does not marry Madeleine Boucher;
    
2. Augustin (son of Jean) does not marry Angélique Duchesne;
    
3. Augustin (son of Jean) does marry twice, but it's to Madeleine Boucher, not Angélique Duchesne. 

Whew!  I'm glad we've straightened this out.