Under the Beret

Genealogy things:

1. It’s interesting to be able to finally say, “Oh, so that’s where Aunt Bonnie fits in the overall family!” There are all these relatives that I finally understand in context.
2. Because old records are more available than recent records I have, in some ways, a clearer picture of great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents than I have of aunts and uncles.
3. I have a few memories of my father’s father. He died in 1968, when I was just under two years old. That kinda boggles my mind.
4. Every time I encounter a never-married relative, I wonder if they were queer. I’m sure that most of them probably weren’t, but I see the world through queer-coloured glasses, and I wonder what kind of evidence I’d ever find to confirm one way or the other.
5. Don’s mother (whom I remember as “Grandma Smith”) had a brother, William Bantam, who married a woman named Hattie (Harriet) Rose. According to Don’s notes, family legend has it that Hattie ran off with an American fisherman/boater and no one in the family ever heard from her again. I, of course, read too much true crime and can’t help but wonder if she’s buried in a back yard somewhere. It doesn’t help that I can find five other family trees in Ancestry.ca, and none of those trees have any details about what happens to Hattie. No date of death. No records of any kind. Just gone.

On the weekend, I started to suspect that one of the key family tree connections in the Houle line was based on extremely weak evidence. At this point, I’m pretty sure that connection is wrong.

This whole process feels, in odd ways, like programming. I’m reading a document that I didn’t produce, and I’m having to glean from it what the original author was thinking. It’s a lot like reading someone else’s code. “Why did you put that there? What made you think it was important?”

The problem goes back, again, to Pierre Houle. It’s pretty crucial to understand who his parents are. Once he arrives in Dover Township, he and his family are fairly well documented. There are certain circumstantial hints about his parentage available in the documentation:

Read more

I think I’ve reached the point of needing an Ancestry.ca subscription. All the good data is in there.

Gervais Houde. Oh, how I hate you. All of you.

My grandmother is a Houle — a name variation of Houde, which happens to be a particularly old family name in Quebec. Apparently Houde is in the top 50 most-common surnames in Quebec, and there’s a particular ancestor, Louis Houde, who came over to New France (aka Lower Canada, aka Quebec) in 1647. (Interesting aside: Wikipedia says that in 1653, the population of New France was 2000, so he was an early settler) He’s a mason by trade and in 1655 he married Madeleine Boucher. Let’s not talk about the fact that he was 37 and she was 13. No good can come of dwelling.

Louis Houde has a son named Gervais Houde (born in 1664) who married Anne Catherine Denevers (that name might derive from a noble title — the Count de Nevers/Count of Nevers. w00t! I might secretly be all noble or something!)

Read more