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.)

The (Almost) Last Great-great Grandparent in the Tree

While I've been very successful finding some truly ancient ancestors in the family tree, there has been one[1] gaping hole in the maternal branch: who is Célina Boulé (1840 – after 1921), and where are her parents?

She was the wife of Alexandre Guimond (1842–1930), married in 1863 in Saint-Louis-de-Lotbinière.   I've got her Drouin marriage record:

Sadly, legibility wasn't a hallmark of these hand-written records.

Nor apparently was completeness.   The translated text reads (as best as I can make out):

The sixth of July, 1863, after the publication of the three banns of marriage, ... enters Alexandre Guimond, adult son of Narcisse Guimond and (of) Celeste Lemay dit Lefleur of this parish, firstly, and Marie Célina, adult daughter also of this parish, on the other hand, ... (the rest is basically boilerplate language about the diocese)...

The problem is that typically, following "fille majure", it SHOULD say "of (father's name) and (mother's name)", but for some unknown reason it's missing.   At first I wondered if there were some unknown ecclesiastical "drama" involved; that Célina "had a past" as it were and for whatever reason didn't want to be associated with her family (or vice versa).   1860's "Reality Marriage Record" aside, I now believe that whoever copied this just made a boneheaded clerical error.

This error — 150 years later —  has confounded everyone on ancestry.com who has her in their family tree.  Basically, the trail ends here.   Note that her family name isn't even mentioned!  It's not in the text, nor in the margin!   (Some have mistakenly listed her as "Marie Célina" thinking that Célina is a family name.  

That particular mystery isn't hard to solve.   Alexandre and Célina have several children, and their own records clear up that particular matter.   Sort of.   Now we get back into the trials and tribulations associated with those pesky "dit" names, and for (another) unknown reason, Célina can't make up her mind as to what her last name should be on official paperwork.  For each of her nine children, here are the names she gives on their baptismal or marriage records:

1. Alphonse Joseph (1864–1940):   Célina Baudry[2] (baptismal);
2. Edouard (1866–): Célina Boulé (baptismal);
3. Marie-Célina (1869–): Célina Boulé (baptismal);
4. Joseph Elusippe[3] (1871–1926): Célina Boulay (baptismal);
5. Honorine (1873–?): Célina Boulé (marriage);
6. Albert (1877–?): Célina Boulay (baptismal), his (second) marriage record doesn't list the parents, just that he's a widower;
7. Daniel (1879–?): Célina Boulet;
8. Aurèle (1879–?): no record
9. Alvine (1881–?): Célina LaLiberté

Discounting Baudry (because it only appears in this one record) and taking LaLiberté as a "dit" name it appears certain that Célina is a Boulé.   But Boulé isn't an uncommon name (and as you can see it can be spelled in several different ways).   It would be great if we could find her baptismal record, but wading through ancestry.com turns up several Célina Boulé's but none born in 1840, and several potential leads show different husbands than Alexandre Guimond.

So — another dead end?   Not quite.

Looking back through all of those records, two names pop up:  Moïse Boulé (1814–1898) and Anastasie Boulé, and now that we know that Célina is a Boulé, perhaps they'll lead to a better understanding.[4]

Moïse Boulé is a witness to Célina's marriage in 1863, and is a godparent to Edouard in 1866.   Anastasie is a godmother to Daniel (1879).   The Canadian Census does show a Moïse Boulé living with an Anastasie Boulé (1835–?) over several years.   They're listed as uncle/niece, with Anastasie apparently an unmarried spinster.

Moïse is the son of Pierre Boulé (1776–1842) and Marie-Reine Blanchet (1780–1852).   He has four brothers (but Luc only lives one year) and five sisters.   Since Célina is a Boulé, none of the sisters can be a parent[5], that leaves:

1. Pierre (1804 – 1860) has three children, so Célina could be a daughter.  In fact one daughter, born in 1836 is named Marie-Celanire, but I find it odd that Célina's name is constant in all the Drouin records, and while other people in the tree have the name Celanire, Célina is fairly rare: it just seems weird that they'd all get it wrong.
2. Magloire (1809 – 1874) has eight children, including Anastasie (the eldest), but no census records ever list Célina;
3. Moïse (1811 – 1898) has no children listed in records, and has not yet appeared in any census records;
4. Joseph (1820 – 1842) who has no marriage records nor anything else to suggest he fathered a daughter just before he died.

But each of them COULD be the father (cue Jerry Springer!)...

In the end (for now), I picked Moïse as the most-likely candidate, owing to his showing up on the marriage and baptismal records, and his domestic association with Anastasie[6].   Of course he could be an uncle and Pierre could be the father (being dead at the time of Célina's marriage).  

Either way, I'm almost certain that her grandfather is Pierre Boulé.

UPDATE: December 2018

I'm NOW certain that I was completely wrong about almost everything I wrote above.

1. Célina was probably adopted into the Boulé family.   This would explain the lack of name in the marriage certificate, and the weird switching of names to Laliberté (which isn't a Boulé dit name).
   
2. In fact she might not even be Québecois.   She could be an Irish orphan, fleeing the potato famine.  The timing is "right": about 100,000 people came through Québec from Ireland around 1858 (where she'd be about 18).
   
3. My DNA makeup matches better (slightly) if Célina is Irish and not Québecois.   This is somewhat important because I have every other 4th generation ancestor mapped.  So, at that level the ratios SHOULD be pretty close.
   
4.  Some people have her father listed as Célestin Laliberté.  This is entirely wrong.

Footnotes:

[1] — there are two other great-great grandmothers I don't have conclusive identified:

1. Mortimer Donahue's (c. 1848?) wife.   According to my uncle's records, this should be Ellen Murphy, and for a while I thought I had found her, but according to another ancestry.com user, the Ellen Murphy I had identified was a different person entirely.   So, I had to "prune" that part of the tree, and I haven't had any leads since;
2. Joseph(?) Bradish (c. 1836) whose son John Patrick was an English soldier stationed in India, might have been married to an Emily Creighton, but I'm still not sure.   (Update: someone sent me John Patrick's medical records which had a LOT of personal information.  His profile has been updated extensively.)

[2] — This is the ONLY time this surname EVER shows up.  Given that it's the year after the marriage, and in the same parish, I have to wonder about the priest doing the recording.   Alzheimers plus hard-of-hearing?   

[3] — Great grandfather.

[4] — OK it IS technically possible, but very unlikely that Moïse and Anastasie are Boulés that just happen to be witnesses and godparents, but completely unrelated (or very distantly related) to Célina, but given the time period and that these people stay near the same location for decades, I'm betting that they are close relations. 

[5] — ... unless one of them married someone whose family name is also Boulé, but that didn't happen.

[6] — Another thing that strikes me odd is that she's living with them in 1871, but her father is still alive.  He appears to be living with his grandmother's relatives (her maiden name is Blais) (or vice versa) and there is a Célina Blais in that family who would be born in 1847 which is probably too young to be our Célina.

So My Nephew Asked Me...

... about the family tree.

Specifically, he's covering immigration in school (4th grade) and his teacher wanted the kids to sort out who the first immigrant in the family was, and when.

That's sort of an interesting challenge for this family tree!

So - where do we even start?   Or end for that matter?

(For the purposes of privacy, we'll call the nephew "B".)

In the simplest case, we're looking at the migration to (roughly) Lawrence MA from Ireland (on his grandfather's side) or Québec (on his grandmother's side), and back between 3 and 5 generations (for him).

OK - here are my nephew's great-great grandparents on his maternal father's line:

1, 2) Jeffrey Donahue (1875-1967) who arrived from Limerick, Ireland somewhere between 1896-1898.   Ellen Fitzgerald (1879-1974) who arrived from Limerick, Ireland in 1899.  They married in Lawrence in 1902.

3, 4) Herbert L. Hall (1877-1929) was born in Lawrence, so the immigrant is his 3rd great-grandparents, Edwin Hall born in England, and Bridget McLaughlin, but I don't have any other information about them (dates, or when they arrived).    Herbert's wife, Rebecca Lewington also was born in Lawrence, so the immigrants are her parents (B's 3rd great-grandparents) Thomas Lewington (1838-?) born in England, and arriving here in 1870.   His wife, Anne Scanlon (1838-?) was born in Ireland, and (presumably) came here with her husband in 1870 because by then they have at least two children.

Things get VERY interesting on B's mother's maternal line!

5, 6) B's great-great grandfather John Patrick Bradish (1868-1942) arrived in the US in 1878.   But he was actually born in India!  His father - Joseph Bradish (1836-) was a serviceman from England stationed there with his family when he was born.   They settled near Buffalo, NY.   His wife, Florence Murphy (1860-1941) grew up on a farm in NY, but wanted to live in the city.  Her parents, (B's 3rd great-grandparents)  James Elias Murphy (1822-1896) and Bridget Burke (1822-1898) both grew up in Ireland, and moved to the US in 1849.

7, 8) Finally, the last set of great-great grandparents came from Québec.   Elusippe Guimond (1871-1926) moved to Lawrence from Lotbinière, Québec around 1905 (there's other information to suggest that he might have actually first come down here on his own in 1884 at the age of 13, but I'm not sure about that) with his wife, Ernestine Vandreuil (1875-1916) and family.

What did these people do?    Jeffrey Donahue owned a tavern in South Lawrence.   Elusippe Guimond worked in the textile mills.   John Patrick Bradish was (for some time) a stage actor.   James Elias Murphy was a farmer.

But what about earlier immigration?   In the case of the Québec ancestry it's not a simple question because there were definitely border crossings into the "US" sometimes before it was part of the US.  There are several branches of the Guimond family that lived in the Détroit encampment which was originally part of New France until the Louisiana Purchase.   Likewise, our ancestors also lived in the "French" towns of Saint Louis (now Missouri) and New Orleans.   Peter Guimond dit Demo lived in Vermont just over the border (after spending almost 30 years with the Native Americans) in the 1820s.

Of course in terms of "stories about immigration" one need only look 4-5 generations FURTHER back, not in the US but in Québec.    B's ancestors include ALL of the major families that first settled Québec:  the Desportes, Martin, Langlois, Hébert, Morin and other families coming from France in the first years of the 1600s (before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth).

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.

Geolocation back from the four grandparents...

Where do you end up (geographically) if you follow the families of my four grandparents?

Carroll Bradish

He came from Buffalo, NY.    His father,  John Patrick Bradish, was born in India while his father (Joseph Bradish) was stationed there by the British.

So, the Bradish Line ends up in England, mid-19th century.

Anne Guimond

My maternal grandmother was born around Lotbinère (across and upriver from Québec).  The Guimonds were one of the premiere settling families of "New France" going back to the early 1600s.   Other relations in this line include Hélène des Portes - the first child born in Québec to European parents (so the Canadian equivalent to Virginia Dare).

Probably the most notable Guimond, Louis Guimond, was a builder of the Basilica of St. Anne de Beaupré and supposedly the first recipient of a miraculous cure (rheumatism).

From there, you go to Bretagne in France.

Mortimer Donahue

The Irish immigrant side of the family settled in Lawrence, owning taverns.   They hailed from Roscommon county in Ireland.

Ellen Fitzgerald

I think the Fitzgeralds came from County Clare.