Genealogy and me

I remember the day I was standing in the gift shop at the Museum of Man and Nature here in Winnipeg, and stumbled upon my great-great grandmother’s name in a history book.  The book was Sylvia Van Kirk’s Many Tender Ties and the name was Margaret Taylor. I knew this was my great-great grandmother’s name only because another cousin, Maurice Hogue, had begun researching our family roots.  What I discovered about Margaret’s life in the pages of that book would mark the beginning of my addiction to genealogy.

Margaret’s story is a fascinating one, but only one of many that demonstrates how intertwined our ancestors have been with Canadian history.  Both of my paternal grandparents can be traced back to the 1600s in New France (Quebec).  We (and I include all relatives here) have connections to the founding of Quebec City, Montreal and Trois Rivières, the fur trade, the Napoleonic wars, the War of 1812, United Empire Loyalists, the Métis nation, and the settlement of Manitoba. This became my focus, to discover and share the stories that make up our family’s truly “Canadian” past.

Thomas Hogue and Emma Girardin

This blog will be my attempt to chronicle the ancestors of my father, Joseph Thomas Modeste Hogue, by tracing the lineage of his parents, Thomas Joseph Hogue (Pépère) and Marie Emma Girardin (Mémère).  For the sake of any cousins, distant or otherwise, who read this account, I will try and be clear about which ancestors are from which line.  All our direct ancestors are in bold type, but this blog will also talk about some interesting brothers, sisters and cousins along the way. We are very fortunate that French-Canadian church records and Métis genealogy records are well-documented.  That does not mean that I can guarantee that I have not made any mistakes here, but I have endeavored to use only reliable sources to verify dates, events and relationships.

In my research I attempted to trace all our ancestors, including the often forgotten female lines, back as far as the first of each family to make the hopeful journey across the ocean. I am using a more or less chronological approach to presenting this information. Unfortunately documentation only exists for our European ancestors, and the stories of our native ancestors remain untold.