I See Dead People/Je vois des gens morts
This week's post is bought to you by the letters G and A, and the number 9.
Gerty's and Altimas's , and the average number of children Lynda's family seemed to produce before 1900.
You may remember last week I mentioned that I had started looking into Lynda's lineage? Well, I have spent the week down the rabbit hole of that family tree. Getting back as far as 1624AD last week was fun and all, however this week, I started to go more laterally and look into the more recently deceased relatives.
People who someone still remembers.
After eight days of ancestry.ca, I can tell you two things for sure.
Firstly, in the pre-industrial age (1600-1800AD) when people only lived on average 30-40 years, Lynda's family on both sides seems to have survived, and WITHOUT Icebreaker gear I might add, an extraordinary amount of time!
For instance, Marie Rapin was born in 1678, and died in 1758 at the ripe age of 80, after having nine kids. Elizabeth Picard was born in 1718, and also made it to 80, after having thirteen. Marie-Anne Poirier came into the world of Louis XV and Madame Pompadore (1762) and lived until the potato blight hit Ireland (1845 for anyone following that kinda thing!), no doubt happy (?!) her nine children were all born in the not-yet-formed Dominion of Canada. It's hard to find one who died UNDER the average lifespan at the time. I think I remember one who died in childbirth, but even she was like 42!
Secondly, there were apparently only three names available for either sex, and at least one, preferably two, must be used for every child.
Mary, Catherine or Suzanne for women, and Xavier, Francis and Thomas for dudes. Sometimes in combination. Sometimes the same names, in a different order, in the same generation.
There were some fun ones... I mean if you were having nine kids, you had to branch out right? Oh, and I forgot to mention you also had to give every kid at least four names. Just to make sure all the saints/kings/grandfathers/mothers were covered. Oh, and then not use all of them on official documents like a census, or in everyday life, because, well, the four or five names you officially selected were just an example of what they might be called.. they just couldn't fit any more on the baptismal certificate!
My personal favourite is Lynda's great-aunt: Marcelle Marie Renee Hortense Grazilla Decarie. Now THAT's a name to be proud of! Which of those did they choose to put on the census? Well, Grazilla of course, (which I am eternally thankful for because it made her much easier to differentiate from all the Marys!). I mean, who wouldn't use that one! But did they actually call her that?
Noooooooo, a) That would be mean b) I mean, why limit yourself?!
We think maybe she was known as Mimi, because John, (Lynda's father) remembers an Aunt with that name, and all the other Great Aunts match up with more logical iterations of their legal names!
I am now delving into Lynda's Great Aunts on her mother's side, of which three of five (surviving) daughters became nuns. As far as I can tell, this was a wise move on their part. Their mother had had eleven kids over 23 years, four of whom died in childhood. Their older sisters (Kate- Lynda's Great Grandmother and Mary) left home. Their life was likely to repeat their mother's... on some frozen plot on the St Lawrence River, next door to their brothers.
I'm pretty sure if I had been born into that era, the nunnery would have looked like a solid first choice of lifestyle! Food, lodging, and no boys (well apart from the Big Guy) to bother you!
I am now trying to research where they went and what they did, but as they changed their names from Fannie, Annie and May, to Felicitas, Perpetua and Petronella, it might be a hard slog!
Another fun fascinating family fact I have uncovered, is what I like to call "L'affaire Leduc" .
(Yes it sounds like a Mills and Boone novel.. there's a reason!)
Lynda's Great Grandmother (Marie Leduc) married a man who was her daughter's husband's father (Xavier Decarie). Trust me when I say ancestry.ca could not cope with that. I'm not sure it is really as scandalous as it sounds. As far as I can tell, their respective spouses died. And they seemed to live pretty close to each other. So they got married. It was like 1870, what else made sense? Then three years later the step brother Dieudonne (who was only 22) took pity on his old maid step sister, Marie-Louise, and took her off the market (she was 27 - in 1870 that was like 65 today! She should have had at LEAST five kids by then!)
I prefer to think of it as a forbidden romance of the older woman (Marie-Louise, say at 22) and the younger man (17). Stifled when their parents hooked up, and after many longing filled poignant moments in the cow shed, they could stand it no longer and declared their everlasting love. To which their parents probably said, "whatever, have you fed the pigs yet? And please can we have some grandchildren now?" Which they promptly did (five in eight years to be precise), only to have Dieudonne (isn't that a romantic name?!) die at the age of 35, three days before his mother-in-law/step mother!!
I could work in some wicked plot twist about the mother secretly wanting the son, not the father, and some kind of Romeo and Juliet suicide pact, but I would need more time! Plus they probably both just caught the same cold and died!
[Grandma Decarie- not sure which one.. there are 3 possible Marie (a) Decaries over 2 generations?!?]
My last thought before I throw myself back into the online obsession that is ancestry to find those damn nuns, is that Netflix , Crave TV, et.al. have probably prevented the world's population being even more unwieldy than it is now. (Okay, penicillin and doctors starting to wash their hands probably helped too. Can you believe it was 1800 before that was a thing?!) But really, there is a reason birth rates spike after power outages!
You have to stay warm somehow, especially in La Belle Province!!
Until next week, I'll be here:
Bonne Soirée!