I’ve lost a few more hours of my life looking up Houles. Here are the descendants of Pierre Houle (who is, I believe, the first Houle to arrive in Dover Township). The chart’s not complete, by any means, but there are a coupl’a interesting aspects to it.
Toward the top of the chart, Pierre’s oldest daughter, Marie Houle, marries Calixte (“Alex”) Bechard and has a large number of children. One son, Jacob Bechard, marries Therese Daniel, but Jacob dies in 1889, and Therese remarries Jacob’s brother Henri Narcisse Bechard in 1896. (I suspect that Therese is more correctly spelled Thérèse, but I have no documentation to go on, there).
More interestingly, Therese is the sister of my great-great-grandmother, Archangette Daniel (“Archange” for short). Dover Township in the mid 1800s can’t have had too many people living there, and I suspect that the French-speaking residents probably socialized more with other French-speaking residents, so it only stands to reason that there’d be overlaps between families.
It’s a bit tricksy to catch these cases when compiling the family tree data.
Post Script: Ah-ha! Peter Ganyon is supposed to be Peter Gagnon — Don’s lack of knowledge of anything French is showing again. That’s probably why Don’s notes about the “Ganyon” family are so weak.
