Intermarriages: Clouding Consanguinuity

As I'm tying together the last of the Québec direct ancestors, I'm finding several cases where couples are (usually) distant cousins:

Great Grandparents (C:3,0)

Elusippe Guimond (1871-1926) and M.Ernestine Vaudreuil (1875-1916) are 6th cousins with common ancestors René Hubert (1648-1725) and François de la Croix (1640-1711), my 8th great-grandparents.

2nd Great Grandparents (C:4,0)

However, Ernestine's parents, Ferdinand Vaudreuil (1837-1916) and Clarisse Bélanger (1844-1917) are FIRST cousins sharing grandparents (C:6,0 to me), Jean-Baptiste Maillot (1784-) and Marie-Madeline Pérusse (1772-1879); their mothers are sisters. In the 1869 marriage record, the church notes the relationship and notes the dispensation, but doesn't say WHY they let this go.

Here's the relationship diagram:

(Click to enlarge.)

(I know - "Ewwww" - right?)

Ferdinand has the name Vaudreuil while his parents have the family name Tousignant dit Vaudreuil.  I don't know why he moved to the "dit" name (though marrying his cousin might have something to do with it).   Ferdinand and Clarisse had nine children.

Likewise, Elusippe's parents Alexandre Guimond (1842-1930) and Célina Boulé (1840-1928) MIGHT be distant cousins - in this case 7th cousins once removed - with Hélène Desportes (1620-1675) as a common ancestor (my 9th great-grandmother).  She's Elusippe's 8th great-grandmother with her second husband Noël Morin (1616-1680).

I say "might" because we're still not certain about Célina Boulé; it's possible that she's adopted into the Boulé family, which wouldn't make any of the Boulés blood relatives (at least so far).   Provided Célina isn't adopted, her 7th great-grandmother with her first husband Guillaume Fournier (1619-1699).

4th Great Grandparents (C:6,0)

If Célina is actually a natural Boulé, her grandfather, Pierre Boulé (1776-1842) and grandmother Marie-Reine Blanchet (1780-1852) would be my 4th great-grandparents.   In any case, they are 3rd cousins once removed, sharing Guillaume Fournier (1619-1699) and Françoise Hébert (1636-1716) as his 3rd great-grandparents, and her 2nd great-grandparents.   Françoise is also the daughter of Hélène Desportes from her first marriage to Guillaume Hébert (1604-1639).

5th Great Grandparents (C:7,0}

Marie-Reine's parents,  Charles Blanchet II (1757-1833) and Marie-Reine Blais (1751-1824) are 4th cousins, again with Hélène Desportes, and both Noël (for Marie-Reine) and Guillaume (for Charles).

Here's a handy diagram for those last three:

(Click to enlarge.)

If you're paying attention to the dates: yes, Hélène gave birth to Françoise at 18 to a man who was 34 (and who she married at 14 when he was 30), then Françoise married in 1651 (at age 13!) to Guillaume Fournier who was a year older than Françoise's mother.

That's 17th century Québec for you.

Now, Françoise and Guillaume's first child wasn't born until Françoise was almost 16 (he died in infancy); their 2nd child is Marie (1655-1717), is Marie-Reine's 3th great-grandmother.  Pierre's 2nd great-grandmother is Marie's younger sister (by 16 years) Françoise Fourner (1671-1734).

Head swimming yet?   Try this mental image:

Imagine it's Christmas 1673, and the family is all gathered together.  You're 17-month old Pierre-Alphonse Blanchet with his mommy Marie (who is 18) and daddy Pierre (who is 27).   You're in front of the fire playing with Aunt Françoise (who is 2 1/2) and Uncle Louis who is 7 months old.   Sitting around are your other six uncles and aunts - mommy's younger sisters and brothers.   Your oldest aunt, Aunt Agathe (age 16) is very pregnant with your cousin Louis (who will be born in March) with her husband, "uncle" Louis (age 34).   Aunt Jacquette (age 14) just got married to her husband, "uncle" Jean (age 26) in June.    Grand-mère Françoise (age 35) and grand-père Guillaume (age 54) are doting on all you and the other infant children and toddlers (she will still have three more aunts and uncles for you over the next six years).   Great grandmother Hélène (age 53) and step great-grandfather Noël (age 57) are there too.   (Your other grandparents are also 53, Noël and Madeleine but they're in France.)

I'm My Own Grandfather II: Guillaume Langlois (1566-1634)

I found another case of multiple lines splitting apart and re-connecting several generations later.

In this case, we actually have THREE siblings who are all great-grandparents.   But depending on which line you travel, two are 10th great grandparents, and the other is a 12th great-grandparent.   They also reconnect at three different points:

Click for a larger view.

We start with three of Guillaume Langlois and Jeanne Millet's children (out of eight that I'm aware of):

1. Marguerite (born: about 1595), the eldest;
2. Françoise (born 1599), middle child (4th of 8);
3. Noël (born 1606), the youngest.

There's only about 10 years between them but in order to reach my 3rd-great grandparents, they take very different routes!

1. Marguerite marries into the Martin family: her husband is Abraham Martin dit l'Écossais (for whom the Plains of Abraham in Québec are named), one of the original settlers.  From there we immediately meet up with another fundamental family - the Cloutiers - and through the Fortins get to the Guimonds (François-Joseph is the grandson of Louis Guimond, the founder of the cult of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré).  Four generations of Guimonds later, we have Narcisse Guimond (1810-1884) who marries Marie-Céleste Sévigny (1809-1870).
2. Middle sister Françoise also marries into a famous Québec family, the Desportes and is the mother of the first French child born in Québec, Hélène Desportes.    Here the family tree takes the a more circuitous route, needing two extra generations to get to Marie-Céleste Sévigny.
3. Finally, youngest brother Noël's line reconnects a generation sooner: his 4th great-grandaughter is Marie-Céleste's mother, Marie.

Where this becomes confusing for me is how to label the relationships:   Are the other Langlois siblings 10th great grand aunts/uncles or 12th?   I suppose 10th because that's the "closer" relationship, but what about Françoise's family?   It's weird to have a 11th great grandfather whose daughter is a 12th great grandmother (and also a 10th great-grand aunt).

It gets even weirder further down the tree, because if you take the "grand aunt route" over the "grandmother" route, then when you get down 12 generations, you have 12th cousins who are also 12th cousins 2x removed.  

I've been trying to label all the blood relatives in the tree (to make it easier to identify possible duplicates as well as to make it clear who is an in-law).   So far I've found a few instances where a "7,2" (first cousin 5x removed) marries a "8,3" (2nd cousin 5x removed), but as you go further back - given the intermarrying of the Québec population, the "entanglements" become a little more interesting.   So, I have to sort out the relationships.   I THINK the right answer is "go with the fewest hops" and in case of a tie, the closest to the root...   We'll see.

The First Immigrants to New France - Introduction

For the past several weeks, I've been delving into the topic of relationships to the first French settlers.   This is especially FUN because SO much emphasis is placed in America on who can trace their ancestors back to voyagers on the Mayflower.   As it turns out, while the Pilgrims might make an interesting TV Movie, their French cousins (who had already been in the New World for 15 years before the Pilgrims arrived) I think would make for an entire Dramatic Series!   (Anyone know anyone at HBO or Showtime?  Now's your chance!)

While the first excursions to Canada by the French go all the way back to John Cabot, who like Columbus was trying to find passage to the exotic Asian lands in order to set up trade routes that were (hopefully) faster than the ones established (and largely controlled by others: Spain, Venice, etc.).   His initial expedition in 1497 brought him to (probably) Cape Breton in Nova Scotia; from there he sailed down the coast all the way to Chesapeake Bay by 1498.   To this end it's Cabot who REALLY discovered America since Columbus' journeys took him into the Caribbean and not to the North American mainland!

The discovery of vast tracts of land and resources sparked widespread reconnaissance, not for colonization but for fishing.   It wasn't until the Jacques Cartier, who in 1534 on an official expedition sponsored by the French government, made the initial mapping of Newfoundland, with the subsequent discovery of the St. Lawrence River in 1535.   On that latter voyage, he traveled upriver as far as the location of modern Montréal.  


While there's lots of intervening history of additional discoveries in northern Canada, we can skip to the beginning of the 17th century and Samuel de Champlain (1574-1635) "The Father of New France".   While he's not on the family tree (as least not yet) he is absolutely integral to the lives of several people who are.  It was his settlement established in 1608 where the founding families of Québec lived for several years. 

The Quebec Settlement : A.—The Warehouse. B.—Pigeon-loft. C.—Detached Buildings where we keep our arms and for Lodging our Workmen. D.—Another Detached Building for the Workmen. E.—Sun-dial. F.—Another Detached Building where is the Smithy and where the Workmen are Lodged. G.—Galleries all around the Lodgings. H.—The Sieur de Champlain's Lodgings. I.—The door of the Settlement with a Draw-bridge. L. — Promenade around the Settlement ten feet in width to the edge of the Moat. M.—Moat the whole way around the Settlement. O.—The Sieur de Champlain's Garden. P.—The Kitchen. Q.—Space in front of the Settlement on the Shore of the River. R.—The great River St. Lawrence.

A model of the (second?) Champlain habitation.   The first building was
constructed in1608 and was replaced with a stone building in 1627.

Champlain set up the first habitation for 28 people staying through the winter, but in that first winter 20 of them died.   Actual colonization happened slowly;  most of the people coming to New France were in the fur trapping or cod fishing industries and weren't interested in putting down roots although a few primitive outposts (e.g., Tadoussac) had been established.   Four Recollect missionaries arrived in 1615 with the intent of converting the ingeneous population.   The first woman to come to New France from Europe, Marguerite Vienne, arrived with her husband, Michel Colin in 1616, but they both died within a year.

So, when the apocathery Louis Hébert[1], his wife, and their three children came to live in Québec in 1617 they were something of a novelty.   Unlike everyone else, Louis established a farm and built the first home in Québec outside the settlement.

A few other families soon followed:  Pierre Desportes[2] arrived with his wife in 1619, and Abraham Martin dit L'Ecossais[3] settled with his wife in 1620.   Both Martin and Hébert had been to New France on earlier voyages as a river pilot and apocathery, respectively.  At this time 60 people were living at the colony, but only six women.

The population reached 100 people in 1627 — almost 20 years later — forty-five of which were colonists (including four Jesuits) — including four families (Hébert, Martin, Desportes, and Couillard[4]).

Meager beginnings...

I'll go into detail about each of these people (and their families) in later posts.

Footnotes:

1. 11th great-grandfather and father-in-law of 10th great-grandmother Hélène Desportes - said to be the first child born of French settlers in Québec;
2. 11th great-grandfather;
3. 10th great-grandfather;
4. As near as I can tell, these would be the four families mentioned in the records.  Guillaume Couillard is a husband to my 10th great-grand aunt (Marie-Guillemette Hébert, 1606–1684).

My favorite Christmas Present in 2013: A Book on Hélène Desportes!

My #1 item on my Christmas Wish List this year was a book on Hélène Desportes, by Susan McNelley:  Hélène's World.

The book doesn't chronicle Hélène's life (since there are very few source of stories about her life), but basically tells the story of the founding of Québec and the overall lives of the original settlers using Hélène as a point of reference wherever possible.   In doing so, one gets an incredibly detailed picture of both life in the early 17th century, and life in a remote frontier land far from home.

Reading this book completely changed my mental image of early Québec.   I knew that the colony was very slow to grow at first, but I now better understand why this was the case; the political and economic influences from Europe, the complete remoteness of the colony and the difficulty of getting supplies from France, piracy, troubles with England, and so on.

One particular aspect of the colony that had a great impact on Hélène and the other families in Québec was its smallness - roughly sixty people lived within the one compound for several years before there was any expansion.   This contrasts greatly with the New England colonies, which spread all over eastern Massachusetts (and beyond) over the same period of time (albeit starting over ten years later).   Ms. McNelley's book does a remarkable job of accomplishing so much.

The book is also heavily sourced and footnoted.   For anyone with an interest in Québec history, or who wants to get a clear perspective of that time period outside of the Pilgrims, etc., this is definitely a resource worth having!