4. INTRODUCTION to the French Canadian families

A family history is never finished. A searcher for family roots is always optimistic that another root can always be found just below the surface that has already been searched. One is reminded of digging for potatoes with a small spade when one is never sure whether the biggest potato has been left behind. Then, of course, there are always the demands of the living family, children, wives, brothers-in-law, physics, etc., who often make the present (that fleeting moment) and the future seem more important than the fusty, musty past. I suppose compromise is one of the names of the game: a game which, for the searcher in the past, clearly has only a finite length of time to play. So, let's stop here (for a little while) and draw up the accounts, as we know them now, at this instant, of the French-Canadian ancestors of that worthy couple, Merton Emerson HYNES and Arleen McCARTY.

The following story should put things into perspective: Apparently, two genealogists once met to boast of their exploits: the first claimed that he had traced his ancestors back to the amoebae of paleontologic times. The second imperturbably replied that his were traceable back to the nitrogen molecules in the air. I shall not make such a claim, but I did (for real) hear a lady explaining loudly in the genealogical library of the Latter Day Saints in Wilmette, Chicago, how she had traced her ancestors back to the family of Jesus Christ: one of his uncles, I believe it was. The principal listener nodded and said she was trying to do the same. Unfortunately, she was finding the Roman period quite difficult, and she still had a few small gaps...

This is the incomplete story of sixteen generations, from Antoine ARCHAMBAULT and Renée OUVRARD of Dompierre in South-Western France to the five young lady-cousins Mireille, Savannah, Ava, Tyra and Simone Berry. It covers a period of almost exactly 400 years from 1580 to 2007.

To search for ancestors before this period becomes a very difficult task. In most European countries, and in particular, in France and England, laws were passed in 1560-80 requiring church parishes to keep records of all baptisms, marriages and burials. It took about a hundred years before all parishes kept regular registers, and clearly many early records were quite incomplete. The registers have meanwhile been exposed to the will of God and acts of man. The French revolution (1789), the Irish revolution, the English civil war (1642-50) and the many German invasions of France were particularly rough on Parish records; as also at various times and places have been floods, fires, and well-meaning lets-clean-up-the-place and burn-the-rubbish "friends". It's just like parents throwing away those boxes full of old broken lead soldiers, 78 r.p.m. records, primary school reading books etc...

Some European cities or dioceses still have land purchase records dating from the Middle Ages, but the feudal system meant that only the Kings and Bishops (the Pope) really owned land. Therefore, very few such records exist before 1580. The minutes of the King's council meetings continue back to about 1200 A.D. in England (initiated by King John) and in France (King Philip, who was in the process of combining the various dukedoms of , etc. into the country of France as we know it today). But, only nobles are mentioned there. You may be pleased to know that none of your ancestors mentioned here are traceable to a noble family in France or England. The Irish connection may be different, but I'll come to that later. Before the age of printing (early 1500's), most of the peasants and lower classes did not have last names. They were known as "John the butcher", "Peter the ploughman", "Francois le tailleur", etc. Even the nobles only began to slowly adopt last names in the Middle Ages as the hereditary succession became more stable and as family lands became localized.

The reader may be interested to know the nationalities of the ancestors of Emerson and Arleen: of Arleen's four grandparents, three were born in Ireland and the fourth, Elizabeth Morgan, had an Irish mother, Eliza Quigley, but born in Pennsylvania. Elizabeth's father, James Morgan, was at least a quarter Irish, possibly half, but undoubtedly has some ancestors from Wales, lets say half. Emerson's ancestry is a little more uncertain and more varied. His grandfather Dennis Hynes is from Ireland. Two grandparents, Mitchell and Marceline appear to be of pure French origin. An exception may be the claim that one family came to France from Ireland before 1580, but the evidence is minimal. The fourth grandparent, Lucy Brissette, is half French. Her mother was at least half English, and very probably completely English.

Applying a little arithmetic to the above produces children of Arleen and Emerson who are 19/32 Irish, 5/16 French, 1/16 English and 1/32 Welsh. Emerson and his siblings are 1/4 Irish, 5/8 French and 1/8 English, while Arleen and her siblings are 15/16 Irish and 1/16 Welsh. It all adds up to a lot of Celtic and Viking blood, especially as most of the French come from Normandy, Brittany and the South-Western coast of France.

There will be lots of genealogical tables containing thousands of related people in this “treatise (?)”, and so I have arranged them in chapters according to each family line. The first part (five to six generations) of the general chart of the direct ancestors shows these family lines.

4.(a) The French-Canadian Connection

Emerson HYNES' mother, Mary Perrizo, was born in Winnebago on July 15th 1871, but her parents were both born in French Canada. Her father Mitchell (or Michel in French) came from Varennes, just across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. Many Perrizos and related families still live in Varennes and the surrounding area today. Her mother was Marceline Hebert, whos family came from the same region of Canada: we have recently verified (early 2007) that her parents and several of her siblings also stayed briefly in Fond du Lac, but soon moved on to Iowa and thence to places further west. Most of these families arrived in Canada in the 1600s and were the primary settlers of the Montreal region.

Fortunately for the genealogist, the church records of these French-Canadian settlements are essentially complete from the founding of the churches in 1650 and later till the present day. In addition, many of these parish marriage records have been assembled in alphabetical order of the names, and published as photo-offset paperbacks. The nearby public library in Fort Wayne, Indiana has most of these in its excellent collection of French-Canadian genealogical material. In addition, the Newberry Library in Chicago has an excellent, easily-accessible genealogical collection, with many references concerning the French-Canadians and especially, their migrations to the United States. Naturally, the State Libraries of Wisconsin, in Madison, and of Minnesota, in St. Paul, are rich resources for tracking French-Canadians in their respective States. In the nineteenth century, Father (Abbé) René Tanguay extracted from the Parish records and elsewhere the genealogies of all the early French-Canadian families. His first volume covers the families up to about 1700, and the following six volumes continue the genealogies through to about 1750. This "history of the Canadian people" was his life's work. It is an often-acknowledged masterpiece which has no equivalence in any other country. Four small volumes of corrections and additions have since been published. In addition, the Drouin Institute of Quebec has covered a similar period (up to about 1770) with a four volume catalog of French-Canadian marriages.

With the help of these sources and trips to Canada and France, we have been able to form a rather complete genealogy of the 6 or 7 generations of ancestors living in Canada for about 200 years.

We begin with a brief historical introduction to life in France and Canada during these times and then discuss what we know about each family line in turn.

4(b) Origins in France: Early History of Quebec and Montreal

The French first explored the St. Lawrence River in the early fifteen-hundreds when other European nations such as the English, Dutch and Spanish were beginning their explorations of the New World. The first person to map the coast continuously from Spanish Florida to British NewFoundland was Verrazano in 1524. His voyage from Rouen, in Northern France, initiated by the silk merchants of , showed that no clear passage to China was available. America was in the way, and thus the Lyonnais lost interest. The explorations of Jacques Cartier in 1535-42 followed, principally in the St. Lawrence regions, and were sponsored by other merchants of Northern France.

Some of the French attempted settlements in "Acadie" (the country north of on the south side of the St. Lawrence River) and in "Terre Neuve" (NewFoundland) but they were unsuccessful because of the extreme cold. Then came the period of religious wars in France, when trade and exploration came to a halt - the Protestants massacred the Catholic nobles, who with the Guises and Catherine de Medici got their revenge at the St. Bartholomew's day massacre (24 August 1572). In the end, Henry of Navarre decided that "Paris was worth a mass" and brought peace to France about 1590. The Edict of Nantes (1598) allowed the Huguenots to worship in peace.

It has recently been discovered that some Basque trading settlements on the north side of the St. Lawrence had remained at least partially occupied and busy with fur-trading in the intervening years. French exploration began anew with the voyages of Champlain to Canada in 1603, 1608 and 1612. Champlain obtained the writ of Henry IV (Navarre) to found the city of Quebec in 1608 with 20 or so inhabitants. Only half survived the first winter. In his voyage of 1612 he explored further up the St.Lawrence, taking two other Frenchmen with him. He followed the river up to what is now Montreal, where he went north up the Ottawa river past the present capital (Ottawa) into the land of the Huron Indians. One of his companions was a boy of about twelve, Nicolas Marsolet, who learned many of the Indian languages and later he became an interpreter. He is an ancestor of Mary Lavinia PERRIZO through three different lines of descent. He was the first of her ancestors to arrive in the New World.

However, very few French came to Canada, and very few of the French who came became permanent settlers, clearing the land, and starting farms and villages. They mostly preferred exploring and collecting furs which had more immediate financial rewards. Quebec City had only 50 to 100 inhabitants most of the time up to 1640, except, for example, in 1628-9 when an additional 500 British soldiers under General Kirke were in charge of the city.

Back in France, interest in Canada had disappeared. Henry IV was assassinated in 1610 and the thirty years war of 1618-48 kept most of the nobles busy. France's loss was England's gain and the English settled much of the North American coastline during this time. It is this period which determined the size and shape of the area of French settlement. The French were confined to the narrow strip of territory on either side of the St.Lawrence River. There were never sufficient people to need more land or to challenge the expanding settlements of the British colonies further south.

Even after 1650 in France, Louis XIV did not encourage new settlers for Canada and kept a tight control of various trading monopolies and the granting of new lands. As part of the feudal system, the King would grant land for the use of the "seigneurs" (lords of the manor) who would then grant land to the peasants or serfs ("habitants", as they became known in Canada). However,the land still officially belonged to the King who could give it to a new seigneur if, for example, none of the land had been cleared (a frequent requirement in these contracts). The seigneur, of course, treated the peasants similarly. In addition, the seigneur and peasant had further duties in payment to their masters, such as service in local defence, work of a few days per year in the seigneur's field and payment of a certain fraction of the harvest.

This class structure was hard on the guy at the bottom of the totem pole. Conditions depended strongly on the humanity of the "seigneur". In France, the many absent landlords who preferred life in Paris and at the Court, plus the imposition of additional taxes to pay for the many expensive wars, led to a miserable life for the peasants. They were not even protected from roving armies of bandits. These were often soldiers given the spoils of the land in lieu of their pay. The French Revolution of 1789 finally brought an end to the Feudal system in France.

The feudal life of the "habitants" in Canada was better. The seigneurs were generally interested in improving the land, and many of the extra taxes were not collected in Canada. However, this system lasted longer in Canada than anywhere else in the world except Russia. It was not abolished till 1854, only 6 years before the Russian serfs were freed. It is difficult for us today, when ownership of land really does mean it is our own, to realize that those early settlers could work at clearing the land and making farms when the land did not really belong to them. Perhaps that is why the French preferred exploring and fur-trading.

When the English took over Canada in 1763, after the defeat of Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec, they did not change the basic governing system within the French area. They encouraged cooperation wherever possible, with the major change being that appeals, instead of going to France, went to the English courts. Life in the villages went on much the same, with often the same seigneurs. After the French Revolution, there was an increasing push to abolish the feudal system. The wheels of the British Government turned too slowly, however, and the slowness led to a short-lived revolution by the French-speaking people in the area south of Montreal. The dissatisfaction of the French colonists led to a large fraction, possibly half of them, (about 30,000) leaving Canada in the years before 1850. Among them were many future settlers of Winnebago, Minnesota, including one branch of the Perrizo family.

It is remarkable how few French people lived in Canada during most of this time, and there was never a great influx of people, even after 1700. It took 25 years for Quebec to reach a population of 100 people, and by 1640 there were only a few scattered settlements on both sides of the St. Lawrence River up to Trois Rivières (Three Rivers), plus settlements in Acadie and Newfoundland. Other cities grew at similar rates and the population growth was principally because of the very large families of almost all the settlers. This extreme isolation of the whole country, especially in terms of very few people either immigrating or emigrating has led to a large number of studies of such a closed society (and is a popular subject for PhD theses etc.). Because of this isolation, almost all families in America with any French-Canadian heritage, are related to each other through marriages which took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is true in these families, where the DesRochers and the Perrizos have intermarried many times.

Montreal was founded in 1642: Jérome de Roger de la Dauversiere of La Flèche (near Angers, central France) set up the Société de Notre Dame de Montreal 1635-39 for conversion of the "sauvages" as a company of 100 Associates (who paid the money). The expedition was led by Monsieur de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance. The latter must have been quite a formidable woman who gave up a midwife practice to become midwife at the birth of a new city in a far off land. She took an active part in promoting numerous projects for years after in Montreal. Forty people reached Quebec in August 1641, wintered there. They and a few other Quebecois arrived in Montreal 17 May 1642. Fifty five people stayed through the first winter. Progress in building the city was slow, and defense against the Indians was necessary on a continuous basis till 1653. Thus, the first French marriage was in 1647 (presumably some "sauvages" were converted and married before then) and 22 births and 23 burials occurred in the 10 year period till 1652.

One hundred new people arrived in 1653 in Montreal ("Ville Marie" as it was then called), several of them being our ancestors. Most were part of the "Grande Recrue" - recruited soldiers who, after serving some years in defense against the Indians, were promised land and money to settle in the neighborhood. A smaller group arrived in 1659 mostly from La Rochelle and the surrounding area, again including several ancestors. Most of the families arriving in Canada were poor and their passages were paid by the communities from which they came. The costs were to be reimbursed gradually in kind (e.g. furs) and money.

About 24 companies of the Carrignan-Salières Regiment arrived in Canada in 1665, with five companies being assigned to the defense of the Montreal area. All but 400 of the soldiers returned to France and the latter presumably settled in Canada. One among the 31 in Montreal was Jean Delpue dit Pariso, Emerson Hynes' (great)5 grandfather.

Montreal was gradually becoming more than a fort, but the Indians frequently forced the settlers back inside the fortifications. For example, in 1652, the Governor of Trois Rivières and 15 soldiers were killed while on a search party. The fort contained just 46 men when it was surrounded by 600 Indians - only fire from the cannon persuaded the Indians to make peace.

A great problem in these times was the lack of women. For example, in 1663, there were 769 unmarried men and only 100 unmarried women (1 in 6), but only 1 in 24 of the ages of 20-34. Montreal in 1666 had 126 bachelors and no single woman of eligible age. One solution to the problem was the importation of women and 360 "filles de la Pitié" were sent to the colony in the years 1669-73. The unusual experiment (arranged by the Governor General of Canada and King Louis XIV) seems to have been a general success: thus, 165 women sent to Quebec in 1670 were married before the winter, (several within a few weeks of arrival!) and the remainder by the following summer. Although it has been questioned whether they were "filles de joie ou filles du roi" (ladies of joy” or “ladies of the king”), only one was found to be "débauchée" (enceinte, pregant) on arrival in Canada. She (Roberte Gadois, a family name, but not an apparent relative) was reproached, fined 20 pounds and sent home after a doctor's examination found her to be pregnant. At least one ancestor was a member of this group (see story in chapter xx).

Here are just a few more numbers which indicate the small populations of those early Canadian days: Montreal had 200 people by 1660, 110 families in 1666 and 1389 people in 1681. Canada as a whole had 4000 people in 1667, while the census of 1681 indicated: 9710 people, 1810 rifles, 6936 cattle, 600 sheep and lambs, 78 horses, 16 asses and 18 goats, with about 20,000 acres under cultivation.

The trappers gradually moved more to the forests further west and north of Montreal. In addition, the farmers often took off some months each year to go trapping to supplement their incomes. The farms were mostly very small in terms of modern sizes. Typical areas were 6 to 20 arpents. This latter is a typical measure of feudal times, which varied in time and place and could be either an area or a length. In most areas and times in Canada, 1 arpent is an area of 100 perches long by 18 feet wide, and is about 34 acres. As a length, 1 arpent is 10 perches or 180 feet or 58.4 meters. You might want to try and remember this information - it was very difficult to find!

The recruits, military and otherwise, who came to Canada (e.g. in 1653, 1659 and 1665 to Montreal, and earlier to Quebec, 1608 onwards) were often selected because of their useful skills such as stone masons, blacksmiths, weavers, etc and many of our ancestors were tradesmen of this type. Their skills were used both as recruited soldiers, and later in life in the development of the cities of Montreal and Quebec. Families Dalpé dit Perrizo Brien Desrochers

Generation

0 P0-1 to P0-132 D0-1 to D0-132

1 P1-1 to P1-64 D1-1 to D1-64

2 P2-1 to P2-32 D2-1 to D2-32

3 P3-1 to P3-16 D3-1 to D3-16

4 P4-1 to P4-8 D4-1 to D4-8

5 P5-1 to P5-4 D5-1 to D5-4

6 P6-1 and P6-2 D6-1 and D6-2

7 P7-1 D7-1

Table: The numbering system used below in identifying the families of our French-Canadian ancestors; P for Pariseau, D for Desroschers. (Note added: the Chalifou ancestors are treated in a similar numbering format C0-1 to C7-1, etc)

4(c) Families in Canada

The most remarkable attribute of the French Canadian families is not just their great fecundity (of the women) but also the large fractions of the children who survived to adulthood. We shall see this in the large families and large numbers of progeny described below. In the following, the children of each family are given together, followed by a description of what we know about them. Since there are so many families, I have developed a numbering system to help keep track. The families are all part of the ancestry of Pelagie Brien Desrochers on the one hand and Michel Dalpe dit Perrizo on the other. They are the couple who were born and married in Canada, and came with their family and others first to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and then on to Winnebago, Minnesota, where they died. Examples of the numbering system are P5-3 and D1-45. Each generation is labelled by D for Desrochers or P for Perrizo. The first number gives the generation, starting at 1 for the first families in Canada going to 8 for Emerson Hynes' great grandparents Michel Dalpe dit Perrizo and Pelagie Brien Desrochers. Thus, generation 7 has only one family (for each side), generation 6 has 2, generation 5 has 4, generation 4 has 8, generation 3 has 16, generation 2 has 32, generation 1 has 64, and generation 0 (families in France) has 132 different families. Just one couple is known of generation -1, that is Antoine Archambault and Renée Ouvrard. They also belong to generation 0 because of a later marriage of second cousins, just as happened more recently in the case of Patrick Hynes and Mary Hughes, members of the 12th and 13th generations respectively. Note that in the overall genealogical tables the generation numbers go "horizontally", increasing with time (from 1590 to 1990). Within each generation, the numbers go "vertically". These correspond to each second number in the label. The male ancestor (the father) is at the top, only as a matter of convenience, since the last name is conserved, with no chauvinism intended. Perhaps in the future families will be known by the wife's last name and we will have to adjust the identifying system, and possibly also our own chauvinistic tendencies.

Within each family, the direct descent is labelled by boldface and arrows, sometimes for two different children in cases of intermarriage. For example, the Beauchamp/Dardeyne family married into both the Dalpe dit Perrizo and the Brien Desrocher branches. The Dalpe family are descended twice from the Richaume/Arnue family, while the Brien Desrochers are descended twice from the original settler Louis Brien Desrochers and his wife Suzanne Bouvier, and three times from the notorious Nicolas Marsolet de St. Aignan.

Just a short comment on the spelling of names: last names sometimes changed between generations due in part to the numerous aliases used by the French families. Thus, we have the changes from Delpue to Dalpe to Parizo to Perrizo; and the changes from Brien to Desrochers to Durocher to DeRusha to de Russia, etc. Written texts used the name, for example, of Delpue dit Pariso (Delpue, called Pariso), and some of the family's children would use the last name Delpue which became Dalpe, and others the name Pariso. The next generation sometimes used a whole new set of aliases. Both Dalpe and Pariseau are now common names in the Montreal area, while all the Fond du Lac/Winnebago family became Perrizo. The oldest son whose family have remained in the Fond du Lac area, seems to have continued the Dalpe name one extra generation. Likewise only Desrochers (and spelling variants) and no Briens, as far as we know, made the same trip. Their ancestors Brien dit Desrochers. That is: O’Brien of the rocks - from the old family tradition that they were a Celtic Irish family, driven from Ireland in the late middle ages by the English, and forced to settle amongst one of the stonier areas with their fellow Celts in Brittany.

Some of the name changes on arrival in the U.S. are quite surprising. For example, Deaudelin became Dolan or Dolen, Hebert became Ebert, or even Hibbard, Ouillette or Hoelet became Willette or Willet, Maurois became Murry, Cyr became Sears, and Brissette became Brasset, Bresset and Brisset. More surprising ones are: Boisvert became Greenwood, Choiniere became Sweeney, LaJeunesse became Young

First names also changed on arrival in the U.S., at least where English speaking Americans were writing the marriage or census records. Double first names were very common in French Canada and either one or the other would often be used in the written records, sometimes leading to confusion for the innocent genealogist. This was especially true when the same names were used for different children of the same parents! This happened with a common name such as Jean, and with the name Hyacinthe, or was it Jean-Hyacinthe? Marie and Jean were frequently baptismal names, not used in later life.

The following section has been written so that it makes a continuous story as much as possible, so that you need not be confused by the identification numbers for each family, nor in fact do you need to pay any attention to them. The Dalpes are gathered together into 7 groups of generation 4 and their ancestors 4-1, 4-2, ..., with 4-4 and 4-8, who had common ancestors, taken together, followed by generations 5, 6, 7. The Brien Desrochers start with a similar grouping of the third generation 3-1, 3-2, ...., followed by generations 4, 5, 6 and 7.