The latest history book I’ve read was From Barrow to Boothia: The Arctic Journal of Chief Factor Peter Warren Dease, 1836-1839, edited by William Barr. It involves three of my ancestors.
The most famous one is Peter Warren Dease, my third great-granduncle. Dease had previously been seconded to help with John Franklin’s first searches for the Northwest Passage from 1824 to 1827. It was this experience, plus years of being in charge of various trading posts, that led Governor George Simpson of the Hudson’s Bay Company to choose Dease to co-chair further expeditions with Thomas Simpson (cousin of the Governor). Barr’s book tells the story of these Arctic expeditions whose purpose was to finish mapping the Arctic coast of North America.
from Google maps (Barrow is now called Utqiagvik)
After its successful completion, Thomas Simpson wrote an account of the expedition, which was published posthumously as Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America, effected by the Officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, during the years 1836—39. This publication portrayed the success of the voyages as being almost entirely due to Simpson’s efforts alone!
In Barr’s book we are presented with not only background information, biographies of the people involved, and original correspondence between HBC figures, but Peter’s actual diary and field notes. As a result it becomes evident to the reader that, as Barr says:
“Dease’s journal…reveals him to be a competent organizer, a perceptive observer, and a careful diarist, and in general gives the lie to Simpson’s jaundiced and self-promoting comments.”
“Dease’s logistical abilities in organizing supplies, recruiting and maintaining discipline among his men, keeping peace among the natives, and managing the swift movement with a simplicity of equipment while living off the land in so far as possible assured the success of these arduous expeditions”.
Dease retired to Montreal, having turned down a knighthood, and died in 1863.
Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/108912323/peter_warren-dease: accessed April 17, 2024), memorial page for Peter Warren Dease (1 Jan 1788–17 Jan 1863), Find a Grave Memorial ID 108912323, citing Cimetière Mont-Royal, Outremont, Montreal Region, Quebec, Canada; Maintained by J BlaisBenoit (contributor 47394209).
As for Thomas Simpson, he met a very suspicious death in 1840 while travelling from Red River through the United States. He either murdered two of his companions then committed suicide, or was killed by his companions. A Google search will give you more, and varied, details.
The second ancestor who appears in this book is Peter Taylor, my great-great-granduncle (sister of Marguerite Taylor, my great-great grandmother). He was the son of Captain George Taylor of Hudson’s Bay Company and had worked for HBC since 1826. He was one of the labourers on the Dease/Simpson expedition and died on December 12, 1837, while carrying mail to Great Slave Lake. In a letter dated 22 January 1838, from Dease and Simpson to the governor, chief factors, and chief traders of the Northern Department, we read:
“At the same time it is our melancholy duty to report the death of one of the bearers – Peter Taylor –, occasioned by a pulmonary complaint of old standing; and accelerated, perhaps, by the fatigue of the journey. He lingered a long time after he became unable to advance further, during which he was carefully attended by his companion (a Maskegon Indian named “Le Sourd”), who shot several deer around their encampment, and on the poor fellow’s decease interred his body.”
A third relative is mentioned very briefly in this book, but not by his full name. When Thomas Simpson was first getting ready for the expedition, he travelled to Red River for a very specific purpose. A letter from George Simpson to Alexander Christie dated 20 Jun 1836 states:
“Mr. Thos. Simpson will therefore return to Red River soon after my departure hence, in order to practise the use of the Instruments with Mr. Taylor”.
On 31 August 1836, Thomas Simpson writes from New Fort Garry [what we now call Lower Fort Garry]:
I vacated my quarters at the Forks…and came down here last week with Mr. Taylor, to prosecute our starry Studies in the tranquil seclusion of the Stone hermitage.
The Mr. Taylor providing surveying and navigating instructions to Simpson was none other than George Taylor, Jr., brother to Peter and Margaret! Simpson was a highly educated man, but there must have been a very good reason for the Governor to request that Thomas spend time with George Taylor before the expedition started. George was a surveyor by training (probably in Scotland or England) who had worked for HBC for many years. Here’s a link to a wonderful video from Canada’s History that shows his most famous map of the Red River Colony.
So many books…so little time…so many great stories!
On April 1, 1924 the Royal Canadian Air Force was officially established when the Canadian Air Force, created after the end of World War One, was rechristened by King George V.
The RCAF consisted of a permanent full-time air element, a Non-Permanent Active Air Force (NPAAF) intended to train for a few weeks each year, and a Reserve Air Force to be called upon during national emergencies.
I have written before about my Dad’s time in the R.C.A.F. during World War Two. You can read that post here.
Canada’s History magazine, formerly known as The Beaver, has a regular back-page section they call Album. They request submissions of a “photograph that captures a moment, important or ordinary, in Canada’s history.”
I was honoured to have a photo of my Dad with a write-up featured in the April/May 2024 issue. You can view it here.
My 3X great-grandfather, Captain George Taylor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, of whom I wrote about here, has been a mystery. He was listed as age 28 on his first contract with HBC, signed May 17, 1787, so that would put his birth year as either 1758 or 59. His residence was listed as Berwick (Berwick-Upon-Tweed) in Northumberland, England. That was the only documentation we had for him, besides his HBC Biographical Sheet found here.
Several years ago, when Christine Welsh and Maurice Hogue were working on the documentary Women of the Shadows about George’s daughter Marguerite, they hired a genealogist in England to see if a birth record could be found for the Captain. After extensive research, it was concluded that the Captain was the George Taylor Jr. baptized on August 19, 1759, in the parish of Balmbrough (now called Bambrough), the only child of George Taylor Sr. and Margaret Grieve.
“England, Northumberland, Parish Registers, 1538-1950”, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGLJ-NFH6 : Fri Nov 10 14:25:25 UTC 2023), Entry for George Taylor and George Taylor, 19 August 1759.
The marriage record for his parents’ marriage in June 1757, as well as wills for his father and grandfather were found. The will of the father, George Taylor of Fleatham, was written April 27, 1758, and states that
“whereas as my Dear Wife is supposed to be enceinte or with child”
It then goes on to make specific instructions depending on whether his wife gave birth to more than one child, and if that child/children were boys or girls. If no children lived to the age of twenty-one,
“Then and in such case I give and bequeath all my said leasehold and the right or benefit of [?] thereof and also all my Goods Chattels personal Estate and Effects/ chargeable as aforesaid unto my brother Thomas Taylor“
Source: North East Inheritance database (pre-1858 Durham Probate Records) George TAYLOR, gentleman, of Fleatham in the county of Northumberland [Bamburgh, Northumberland] Date of probate: 1759, will, 27 April 1758
Unfortunately George Taylor, Sr. died November 11, 1758. You will note that the baptism of his child occurs several months after his death. No date of birth was determined for the child, and no further research was done to find a date of death for George Taylor Jr., who is presumed to be our Captain.
Captain George’s career with HBC ended in 1818. We know from church records for his children that he was deceased by February 1838 when his daughter Ann was married at Red River and listed as the “daughter of Captain Taylor, deceased”.
Source: HBC Archives, Extracts from registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials in Rupert’s Land 1820-1841, E.4/1a fo.149d
All of this information seemed very clear cut…UNTIL…
A researcher, Barbara Johnston at Borders Family History Society in Scotland, was recently working on a Taylor family for a client. Borders is in the southern part of Scotland. She noticed a couple of baptismal records that included the words Captain George Taylor of HBC. Intrigued, as all good researchers would be, she did some googling and happened upon my blog. Reaching out, she sent me the two records, which were from Hutton Parish, Scotland. Hutton is a small village in the Borders area of Scotland that is two miles west of the border with Northumberland, England.
Capt. George Taylor of the Brig Beaver belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company, London, had his natural son George baptized at Clarabad in this parish, January 11th 1805…The Uncle Robt. Taylor was Sponsor in the Father’s absence. He was born in March 1799.
Robert, illegitimate Son of Capt. Geo. Taylor of the Brig Beaver belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company, was baptized at Clarabad January 15th 1808…He was born [blank space]. N.B. His Uncle R. Taylor was Sponsor in the absence of his father.
Uncle Robert? Captain George had a brother? Hmm, this raises many questions. The son born to George Taylor of Fleatham and his wife Margaret Grieve, was an only child. Therefore, that George can’t be our Captain, can he???
Ellen Paul, another Taylor descendent, and I were very excited by this new information, and decided to investigate further. With assistance from Barbara in Scotland, and Gillian Booker from Berwick Archives in England, we were able to put together a family sheet for Robert Taylor, the uncle. Based on the British naming patterns, in which the first born son is named after the paternal grandfather, it is likely that the father of the Captain and his brother was named Robert Taylor.
Robert Taylor, presumed brother to our Captain George was born around 1749. There is a record of baptism for a Robert Taylor, son of Robert, on May 2, 1748 in Cornhill, a parish in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Also in Cornhill records there is a baptism on February 14, 1759 for a George Taylor, but parents aren’t recorded. Robert married Allison Weir in Ford, Northumberland in 1778 and they had children in Spittal until at least 1795. Spittal is seaside village located on the south side of the River Tweed, just opposite Berwick-upon-Tweed. By 1805 the family is in Hutton, Scotland. Robert died in 1832 and Allison in 1837.
We knew that the at least some of the Captain’s sons were educated in either Scotland or England, but the Hutton records are the first actual documentation that he had brought George and Robert over. We had a search done for tutelage records at the National Archives of Scotland, but none were found. Likely the arrangements were simply done within the family.
Using Google Books, I happened upon a reference to Margaret Grieve Taylor in a book called Six North Country Diaries which gave the date of her will (December 23, 1779) and her death (February 25, 1786).
Subsequently we ordered a copy of her will from Borthwick Archives at York University. Margaret Grieve Taylor never remarried, and there are NO CHILDREN in her will, only nieces and nephews!
Source: Prerogative & Exchequer Courts of York Probate Index 1688-1858, vol. 1330, f.92, Will of Margaret Taylor
So many questions! Did Margaret actually give birth, or did she perhaps miscarry? Is the child baptized in 1759 as the son of George Taylor actually her child? The baptismal records of the time period only give father’s name, although George Taylor’s burial and the baptism of George Jr. are at the same parish. Or did her son die young? There’s a George Taylor buried in 1760 in the same parish, but his parents and age are not listed on the record.
Unfortunately this research did not result in a definitive answer as to exactly when the Captain was born or when he died. We’ve been unable to find a will for the Captain…yet.
At this point the only thing we can be sure of is that George Taylor and Margaret Grieve are NOT the parents of our Captain George Taylor.
“The more your read, the more things you will know.”
I often tell people that I’ve read more Canadian history since becoming a genealogy researcher, than I ever did in school or university. Any book review of an item having to do with Canadian/Manitoban/Indigenous issues is immediately put on hold at the Winnipeg Public Library (or purchased at McNally Robinson Booksellers if someone gives me a gift certificate). So it was that I came across the book The Premier and His Grandmother: Peter Lougheed, Lady Belle, and the Legacy of Métis Identity by Doris Jeanne MacKinnon, and borrowed it from the library.
I lived in Calgary for 9 years, and I had never heard that Premier Lougheed had Métis roots. Turns out his paternal Grandmother, Isabelle Hardisty was the daughter of William Lucas Hardisty, a Hudson’s Bay Company trader who became chief factor and Mary Anne Allen, possibly from the Chinook people of the Pacific Northwest.
Lady Belle, as she was known after marrying James Lougheed (Peter’s grandfather), was an interesting woman. You can read the book, and these links to find out more.
I have no connection to the Hardisty or Lougheed families,
BUT….
when reading the book I discovered that James Lougheed, who later became a Senator, was in business in Calgary with Edmund Taylor. Hmm, that name rang a bell!
So who was Edmund Taylor? His great grandfather was George Taylor sloopmaster for Hudson’s Bay Company. His grandfather was Thomas Taylor Sr. who worked for HBC in several positions, including as a personal servant to Sir George Simpson. His father was Thomas Taylor, Jr. who rose to become a Chief Trader with HBC.
Born in Manitoba in 1871, he followed the path of his ancestors, and joined HBC at the age of 14 as an apprentice clerk. He rose in the ranks of the company to become manager of the Calgary HBC store, and later the Winnipeg location. In 1906 he left the Company and moved to Toronto, where he had a successful financial career.
In 1911 Edmund once again moved to Calgary where he partnered with James Lougheed to form Lougheed and Taylor Investments. He and his wife had a home built in the exclusive area of Mount Royal. They were part of the social elite, very involved in different organizations in the city. Edmund was the first president of the Alberta Stock Exchange.
Edmund had married Edna Florence Smith in Toronto in 1904. They had two sons. He died 2 Oct 1929 in Calgary. An obituary published in the Winnipeg Tribune stated:
“In recent years his capabilities and sound judgment, shown in the Lougheed and Taylor’s financial business, caused him to be regard with highest esteem and he was considered one of the wealthiest young men resident in Western Canada.“
And that’s the story of Edmund Taylor, my second cousin twice removed.
Readers know that my passion is finding the sweet spot where genealogy and history connect. I’m interested in understanding the historical and social events, big and small, that surrounded my ancestors’ lives. Not just my direct ancestors, but their extended families as well. I love to find stories, even snippets of stories, that help provide colour and context to the large database of names and dates that make up my genealogical research.
Recently I have gone back to the Taylor family of George Taylor (1760-?) and his wife Jane (1780-1844) to research their children in more depth. Previously I had concentrated on the Hogue line of Amable Hogue (1796-1858) and Marguerite Taylor (1805-1885) who are my 3X great-grandparents. I had only looked briefly at the rest of the Taylor family and wrote about them here.
One of George and Jane’s sons was Thomas Taylor, born around 1797, likely at Fort Severn where his father was stationed at the time. He first entered into service with the Hudson Bay Company in 1815 as an apprentice at Qu’Appelle River post in the York Factory District. From 1822 to 1830 he was a personal servant to Governor George Simpson, accompanying him to the Columbia District in 1824, to England in 1825, and to the Columbia again in 1828. He then served as a Postmaster in various locations, retiring as a Clerk-in-Charge from the Fort Coulonge Post on the Ottawa River in 1855. At retirement H.B.C. sold him the store which was all that remained of the original Fort establishment, the surrounding farmland having already been sold.
George Simpson kept a “Character Book” in which he notes his assessments of many of the HBC employees. Of Thomas he says:
“Taylor, Thomas a half-breed about 35 years of Age. Was a Labouring apprentice for 7 years was my own body servant for 10 years, and has for the past 3 years been one of the most effective Postmasters in the County. Speaks several of the Native Languages, is a great favorite with Indians is a “Jack of all Trades” and altogether a very useful man in his line.”
Thomas had married Mary Keith in 1831 at the Red River Settlement. She was the Métis daughter of James Keith, a Scottish fur trader who became a Chief Factor with H.B.C. . Thomas and Mary had ten children. Thomas died at Pemboke, Ontario in 1879. His wife had died in 1866.
One of their children was Thomas Taylor Jr. (1831-1903). Like his father and grandfather, Thomas entered the service of H.B.C. He started as an apprentice, rising to become a Chief Trader, mostly in the Saskatchewan and Swan River Districts. He retired in 1899 and died in 1903 in Edmonton. This Thomas Taylor married Elizabeth Margaret Kennedy.
Aha! Here’s the connection. Elizabeth Margaret Kennedy turns out to be the niece of Captain William Kennedy. Who’s he you ask?
Captain William Kennedy (1814-1890), Métis son of Alexander Kennedy and Aggathas Bear, was an Arctic explorer, a missionary, and for a time an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He had an exciting life that you can read about here. Although he had many siblings, he inherited the river lot on the Red River in St. Andrews upon his mother’s death. He replaced the log cabin there with a stone house that was originally called Maple Grove.
“The Kennedy House, a provincially-designated historic site in the Rural Municipality of St. Andrews, was built in 1866 for Captain William Kennedy using stones quarried from the Red River banks at nearby St. Andrews Rapids.“
Kennedy House from Wikimedia Commons
The Kennedy House use to be one of my favourite places for a summer lunch. Just a short drive from Winnipeg, it was both a museum and a tea room with a gorgeous garden, situated on the Red River. Sadly, both the museum and restaurant closed, and the building itself has been undergoing drastically needed structural repairs. For more information see https://heritagewinnipeg.com/news/advocacy-in-action-saving-maple-grove-the-captain-william-kennedy-house/
I look forward to the day when Kennedy House reopens, and I can sip tea again, happy in the knowledge I’ve found a personal connection, however slight.
I thought today would be a good day to post an article of mine that was first published in Sent by the King, the journal published by La Société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan.
A Fille du Roi and a Métis Country Wife: My Truly Canadian Story
On the 15th of February 1637, in the parish of St-Éloi in Rouen, France, a baby girl named Louise was baptized. Sometime around 1805, near “the Polar Sea” (Hudson Bay) in what is now northern Manitoba, a girl named Margaret was born. What connects these women’s stories? A look at their lives, and the roles they played, gives us a glimpse into the importance of women throughout Canada’s history.
Louise was the daughter of Pierre Senécal and Françoise Campion. The family lived in Rouen, a city about 135 km northwest of Paris, in the area of France known as Normandy. Her mother died when she was only eight years old, and she had two older sisters. We don’t know the circumstances of her life in France. Was her family poor? What did her father do for a living? Was she educated?
What we do know is that on the 25th of September 1667, Louise arrived at Québec City on the ship St. Louis de Dieppe. The ship had left Dieppe, a town on the Normandy coast of northern France, in June, then had stopped in La Rochelle, a seaport city on the west coast of France, making a journey of more than three months to Québec.
Louise was a Fille du roi, one of the hundreds of young women who came to New France with the assistance of King Louis XIV under a plan to populate the young colony during the period of 1663-1673. Simply put, there were not enough young women for the men currently in New France to marry and to produce children to populate the colony.
How brave did a young woman have to be to set foot on such a journey? Was the prospect of a life in New France more appealing than her situation in France? Was she yearning for adventure? The women had their trip paid for, and received certain provisions, and often a dowry upon marriage in New France. They were expected to marry but had a personal choice of their mate.
Among the provisions they received before the journey were clothing, sewing needles, knives, and a bonnet. Once they married, they would be given food and livestock.
The ship Louise travelled on, St. Louis de Dieppe, belonged to the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales (East India Company). The company was commissioned by the King to transport the Filles du roi to New France. This particular journey included 90 young women and 100 engagés (men on contract to work in New France). The women, some of whom were from Paris, boarded at Dieppe or La Rochelle. Louise probably boarded in Dieppe, as it was closer to where she lived.
We do know something of the conditions of this voyage, because 20 young women from Paris complained about their treatment! On the 17th of June they appeared before a notary in Dieppe and signed an Acte de Protestation! They complained that upon arriving there they had not received the accommodation they had been promised.
Jean Talon, Intendant of New France when they arrived in the colony, wrote in October to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Ministre de la Marine in France: “The girls assured me that from the momentthat they had set sail, they received neither honesty nor humanity from the officers aboard, who caused them to suffer greatly from hunger, giving them nothing but a light meal in the morning and at night nothing forsupper but a little hard tack and nothingmore.”
Louise was not one of the protestors, but we could assume she endured the same conditions if she had boarded in Dieppe. When the ship arrived in Québec City, 24 engagés and 16 Filles du roi were sick.
It took only five days after arrival for Louise to accept a proposal and agree to a marriage contract in which her dowry was listed as 100 livres. On the 6th of October 1667, at Notre-Dame, the church in Québec City, she married Pierre Guilbault. She claimed to be only 24, although her baptismal record indicates she would have been 30 years old.
As Thomas J. Laforest tells us in his book Our French-Canadian Ancestors, Pierre had been unlucky in love. Twice previously, he had signed marriage contracts, but the marriages never took place. After his marriage to Louise, Pierre and Louise lived in Charlesbourg, a section of Québec City, and raised their four children. It appears that Pierre’s fourth marriage, after Louise died,also ended in an annulment (in 1693).
Of course, we have no way of knowing what their marriage was like. When their youngest child, Elizabeth, was baptized on the 17th of December 1679, Louise stated she was not living with Pierre but that he was the father. However, they must have reconciled as the 1681 census finds them together in Charlesbourg. Their household boasts 30 arpents (about 25 acres) under cultivation, 8 cattle, 2 horses and 1 gun.
The Filles du roi are considered the “Founding Mothers” of Québec. Peter J. Gagné includes a chart in his book, “King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers”, that specifies how many descendants each woman had by the year 1729. Louise Senécal had 61 at that point.
One of her descendants was Marie Anne Labelle (1776-1845) who married Louis Amable Hogue (1769-1801) in 1795 in St-Vincent-de-Paul, the parish in Laval, near Montréal. Her father granted them land and Louis was listed as an “agricultier”, i.e., farmer. Louis died young and he and Marie Anne had only three children.
Their first, born on the 14th of July 1796, was a son, also called Louis Amable. This son, the 3x great-grandson of Louise Senécal, would leave Québec and go out west. After having fought in the War of 1812, Amable, as he was known, went to work as a laborer for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). At that time the Governor of HBC was Sir George Simpson, and Amable became one of his paddlers.
At this point, we join Margaret’s story. She was born to “Jane”, a Cree woman, and George Taylor, an Englishman, in about 1805. George Taylor was a sloop master for the Hudson’s Bay Company, in charge of some of the ships that sailed between London and Hudson Bay. These wooden sailing ships carried trade items from London and then brought furs back. According to the HBC records, George was in the areas of Churchill, also known as Fort Prince of Wales, and York Factory, both in what is now Manitoba, as well as in Fort Severn in present day Ontario. In 1787 George carved his name on a rock at Sloop Cove near Churchill.
Photo courtesy of Ellen Paul
George Taylor and Jane had a relationship “à la façon du pays” (in the custom of the country) and had nine children. Several of their children would be involved with the HBC and the fur trade. One son, Thomas Taylor, became the personal servant of Sir George Simpson. That is likely how Sir George came to meet young Margaret, Thomas’s sister, and make her his “country wife”. How did she feel when she caught the attention of one of the most powerful men in all of Rupert’s Land, the name given to the vast tract of land controlled by the HBC (which is now one-third of Canada)? Was she flattered, charmed, nervous? Was being his “country wife” a happy experience?
Painting by Stephen Pearce,Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Simpson apparently had had several liaisons with First Nations and Métis women before beginning his relationship with Margaret about 1825. Simpson was known to have acknowledged Margaret’s brother, Thomas, as his “brother-in-law”.
Margaret bore Governor Simpson two sons. Their first son, George Stewart Simpson, was born on the 11th of February 1827. In July of 1828 Margaret accompanied Simpson on a canoe trip from York Factory to New Caledonia (what is now British Columbia). Amable Hogue was part of the crew of this trip. During this voyage, Margaret became pregnant again with Simpson’s child. James Raffan states in Emperor of the North:
“In fact, she had re-crossed through the April snows of the treacherous Athabasca Pass when well into her second trimester. Ninety miles on foot or on horseback slogging over her beloved governor’s muddy winter road between Fort Assiniboine and the North Saskatchewan likely did nothing to improve her feeling of well-being.”
Simpson left her at Fort Edmonton, in what is now Alberta, with instructions to Chief Factor John Rowand to arrange for her to go to Fort Alexander, the HBC fort on the Winnipeg River in northern Manitoba, where Simpson’s second son, John Mckenzie Simpson, was born on the 29th of August 1829. A February 1830 letter from John Stuart, Chief Factor of Fort Alexander, to Simpson praised Margaret:
“…it is but common justice to remark that in her comportment she is both decent and modest far beyond anything I could expect or ever witnessed in any of her country women. She appears to be as content as is possible for one of her sex to be in the absence of their lord and natural protector and as a mother she is most kind and attentive to her children whom she keeps very clean.”
There was a great deal of surprise then, when in May of 1830 Governor Simpson returned from a trip to England with his new wife, his cousin Frances! Colleagues were shocked at Simpson’s cruel and dismissive treatment of Margaret. Simpson’s marriage to Frances is considered by historians to be a turning point in the social customs of the fur trade. Whereas First Nations and Métis wives were at one time considered invaluable for their skills and connections, only European women were now “civilized” enough to be wives for the elite in the expanding settlement.
Governor Simpson belatedly arranged to have Margaret married off to Amable Hogue, his frequent crew member and the 3x great-grandson of the Fille du roi, Louise Senécal. They were married on the 24th of March 1831, at St. John’s church in the Red River settlement, now Winnipeg. Amable worked as a mason on the building of Lower Fort Garry, where Simpson and Frances were going to live… how ironic!
Whatever feelings Marguerite (as she was called after marrying the French-Canadian Hogue) had at this turn in her fortunes we will never know, but we do know that she and Amable made a life for themselves in the Red River Colony and raised 10 children. These Métis children married into other families, many of whose descendants populate Western Canada. Amable died in 1858 and Marguerite in 1885. Marguerite is buried in St. Charles cemetery in Winnipeg.
Louise Senécal, a Fille du roi, and one of the many Founding Mothers of Québec, is my 7x great-grandmother. Marguerite Taylor, a Métis, and one of many Mothers of the Métis Nation, is my great-great-grandmother. Two very different women, two very different eras, yet both played a role in important parts of our history. As Canada struggles on our journey of Truth and Reconciliation with First Nations, we would do well to honor these connections.
Sources Brown, Jennifer S.H., Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country. UBC Press, 1980. Fichier Origine website https://www.fichierorigine.com/ File: Sir George Simpson.jpg. (2022, June 11). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 18:15, July 2, 2023 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sir_George_Simpson.jpg&oldid=663675172. Gagné, Peter J., King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663-1673, 2 volumes. Quinton Publications, 2001. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Biographical Information Sheets. Winnipeg, Manitoba. LaForest, Thomas J, Our French-Canadian Ancestors, v16. Digital edition available at FamilySearch. Migrations website http://www.migrations.fr/ PRDH Research Programme in Historical Demography (Programme de recherche en démographie historique) website https://www.prdh-igd.com Raffan, James, Emperor of the North: Sir George Simpson and the Remarkable Story of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Phyllis Bruce Books, 2007. Van Kirk, Sylvia, “Many Tender Ties”: Women in Fur-Trade Society in Western Canada, 1670-1870. Watson & Dwyer Publishing Ltd.
I own several local history books for areas of Canada where my ancestors have lived. These tomes, usually lovingly compiled by volunteers, can be goldmines of information. Many of them seem to have been funded by government grants available in 1967 when Canada was celebrating 100 years since Confederation.
These histories can be wonderful for finding the names of elusive family members and spouses and perhaps learning what brought them to the area. If you’re lucky you many find photographs. Of course researchers view these stories as hints, and endeavour to find documentation to prove the names and dates presented.
One thing the books are very good at is giving you the correct spelling of the last names. It was this I had in mind as I kept my trusty copy of THEN to NOW: The History of La Salle, Manitoba next to me as I was browsing the newly released 1931 Census of Canada.
Ancestry was very quick to index this census using “state-of-the-art handwriting recognition technology” but of course we expect there to be some errors. As I browsed the pages for Manitoba, Macdonald, sub-district 1,2 and 3 on the Ancestry.ca website I scanned for names in the index that I recognized from the local history book. It was then a simple task to update the entries.
Some examples of the changes I was able to make were:
Rochon instead of Roshon
Comeau instead of Comean
Girardin instead of Grardin or Gerarden
Cormier instead of Carmier
Lagace instead of Lagoce
I was careful to only make changes for names that were listed in the book and where the household names matched the correct family. There were other names in the index that certainly appear misspelled, but if the family wasn’t mentioned in the book, I made no changes.
I encourage other researchers to do the same thing. If you don’t own a local history book, many of them have been digitized. Check out:
June 1st was an exciting day for genealogists since it was the release day of the 1931 Census by Library and Archives Canada. Canadian law doesn’t release the personal information from any census until 92 years have passed. Since the last federal census was 1921, and there was a 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces, this latest release was anxiously anticipated.
Early on the morning of the 1st I was disappointed to find the the census was NOT available. About an hour later it appeared on Library and Archives Canada. Now we all knew that this census was digitized but not yet indexed, which means you had to browse through the images. I had done my prep work and made a list of those people I wanted to find first, and where I thought they were living in 1931. Since most of my relatives were in western Canada, I made note of the district names and sub-district numbers from the 1926 Census.
I immediately found my Dad’s family Thomas Hogue and Emma Girardin in La Salle, Manitoba. All the family were listed, except for my Dad and his brother Joe. I wasn’t surprised as both of them would have been working for Canadian National Railway. They could have been anywhere in western Canada welding tracks.
But there was a wonderful surprise for me. On the same census page for La Salle, I found my Mom, Madeleine Vaillancourt, with her Mother, Father and one sister. I was never sure when the family had moved from Regina to La Salle.
1931 Census of Canada, Manitoba, Macdonald, sub-district 1, page 6. Library and Archives Canada
And then the day went downhill. Did I mention how excited the genealogical community was to finally have access to this census? So much so that the Library and Archives Canada site started producing “can not load file” messages. Eventually it shut down completely.
Word quickly spread, thanks to researcher Ken McKinlay, that the database was available for free on Ancestry. Eventually, using the Ancestry site, I found my husband’s paternal and maternal grandparents and two of my Mom’s siblings.
Indexing may be finished by this fall and then we will be able to name search the records. Until then I will try and constrain myself from continuing to browse pages in the hope that I may find someone.
On the plus side, after having browsed 21 sub-districts I am delighted to say that all of them were clear copies with legible handwriting!
BTW the Library and Archives site is up and running again.
As Canadian as can be 
