Sources

• Family Tree Maker

  Individual birth, marriage, and death sources are kept in the Family Tree Maker database — not as footnotes in the narrative.

• Historical references

  A list of important historical references appears at the end of the original document. Cross-document notes below point to related family papers.

• Family Tree Maker (format note)

  Footnotes have not been used to keep the document uncluttered. Information on sources is available in the Family Tree information in Family Tree Maker. A list of the important historical references is included at the end of this document.

Related family papers

• Long Road to the Constitution

  See the “Long Road to the Constitution” a separate paper for information on the history of the Native American people who were and had been living in New England area where the Massachusetts Bay Colony was started by the British Puritans looking for a safer place to practice their new Protestant religion.

• Story of Carolee Afton McCance’s Family

  See the “Story of Carolee Afton McCance’s Family” for more on the history of the Jamestown Colony.

• Story of Morris Rankin Batie’s Family

  See the Story of Carolee Afton McCance’s family, the Story of Morris Rankin Batie’s family for more information on the "French and Indian Wars” between Britain and France and their North American colonies.

Topics

• Salem Witch Trials

  In 1648, the Massachusetts Bay Colony tried and executed an accused witch for the first time. The accused was a midwife (helper of woman giving birth) named from Charlestown who was hanged at Gallows Hill in Boston after she was accused of being a witch by some of her pregnant women patients. Margaret and her husband Thomas Jones were one of the earliest settlers in the town Charlestown. Margaret was an herbalist (used herbs and plants as medicine) and midwife who treated her sick neighbors with various teas and herbal concoctions. People who had the power to heal also have the power to harm, and eventually some of Margaret's patients began to murmur against her. They claimed she said if they refused to buy her medicines they would never get well. Soon some of her neighbors began to openly accuse Margaret of witchcraft, claiming she "was found to have such a “Malignant Touch”, as many persons were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains and sickness." About eighty people throughout New England were accused of practicing witchcraft between 1648 and 1693. Thirteen women and two men were executed.

Archives

• Massachusetts Archives

  On 1 Nov 1692, Martha Sparks's father Thomas Barrett Jr. petitioned the Governor and Council for her release. The petition read as follows from the Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 135 No. 64:

Notes from the original document

143 editorial notes pointing to related papers and historical context.

• The Queen Mary of Scotland and the Queen Mary I of England are different individuals who both rule their countries at the same time.
• See the “Long Road to the Constitution” a separate paper for information on the history of the Native American people who were and had been living in New England area where the Massachusetts Bay Colony was started by the British Puritans looking for a safer place to practice their new Protestant religion.
• While the Spanish were busy defeating the New World’s major advance native civilizations, the Aztec and Inca, England’s Queen Elizabeth I, was content in funding privateers to robbed Spanish treasure ships laden with captured gold and silver returning to Spain.
• See the “Long Road to the Constitution” and the “Story of Carolee Afton McCance’s Family” for the history of the Roanoke Colony, England’s first effort to establishes a colony in North America in 1584.
• In the 1600s the last name Green was a very common English last name. There were three different Thomas Greens who all arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony about the same time. The information for the Thomas Green in Edith Powers’ family tree comes from a book written by Samuel S. Green in 1858 in Boston, Massachusetts. One Thomas Green lived in the town Roxbury, another in Ipswich and a third in Malden. There are two more Thomas Green’s living in the Virginia Colony at the same time. The Thomas Green in Edith Powers’ family was the Thomas Green who lived in the town of Malden in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
• See the “Long Road to the Constitution”, the “Story of Carolee Afton McCance’s Family” and the “Story of Frederick Garnet Popham’s Family” for the history of the Popham Colony and Jamestown Colony in North America in 1607.
• See the “Story of Carolee Afton McCance’s Family” for more on the history of the Jamestown Colony.
• In 1609, Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer learned about a telescope built by a Dutch eyeglass maker. Galileo soon developed his own telescope, which he used to observe the moon and the planet Venus. Galileo discovered that Venus went through phases just like the moon, which meant it had to be rotating around the Sun, just like the moon rotates around the Earth. The idea that the Sun not the Earth was the center of the visible night sky was a major challenge to the doctrine of the established Catholic Church, which believed the Earth was the center of the universe.
• After the failure of the Popham Colony questions arose about the survivability of living through a winter on the coast north of Cape Cod. Sir Ferdinando Gorges sent a group of adventures in 1616 to camp at the mouth of the Saco River south of the Popham Colony location on the coast of Maine. The test worked the adventures survive proving the area could be settled.
• In 1616, the Catholic Church placed Nicholas Copernicus’ book “De Revolutionibus,” the first modern scientific argument for a heliocentric (sun-centered) universe, on its index of banned books. Pope Paul V summoned Nicholas Copernicus to Rome and told him he could no longer support his radical ideas publicly, just as had been done seven years earlier to Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer. The reason the Catholic Church took this position was the sun-center universe conflicted with the Church’s interpretation of the Bible, which it believed correctly placed the earth at the center of the universe.
• The settlements the English first established in North America were called “Plantations” not colonies during the 1600’s. The Pilgrims established the “Plimoth Plantation” - not the “Plymouth Colony”. From Maine in the far north to Virginia in the south the men who came to settle in this new land adopted the name “planters”. They were not planters in the agricultural endeavor, but instead were planters seeking to create a new spiritually orientated civilization.
• Only 57 of the 102 Pilgrims that arrived in the Plimoth Plantation in 1620 survived the first winter.
• See the “Long Road to the Constitution” and the “Story of Morris Rankin Batie’s Family” for additional information on the Plimoth Plantation and the later Plymouth Colony.
• The Plimoth Plantation used a system where the families in the settlement share common fields for growing crops and raising animals. After the harvest the crops and animals were shared equally with all the families. The result of the communal system was poor harvests and hard time for the entire Plantation. The sharing of common fields was implemented by the joint-stock company that funded the Plimoth Plantation. The London Merchants Adventures considered themselves the owners of the entire planation effort and were expecting profits from their investments. Governor Bradford, the leader of the Plimoth Plantstion, received a petition from the settlement members complaining about the common field system and he agreed to assign individual families their own field area based on the size of each family. The change resulted larger harvests, happier farmers and improved chances of having profits that could be share with the London investors.
• New England's political and social evolution during the 1600s did not occur under tight centralized control. Vague grants, poorly written charters, a lack of close British supervision, in many cases caused by the English Civil War, created an independent self-reliant attitude within the English colonies. Territorial boundaries of the various colonies underwent later substantial change. The first colonial entity to emerge was Plimoth Plantation (1620), which exercised control over what is today the southeastern portion of State of Massachusetts.
• John Calvin’s beliefs differed from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century, which believed in the real-presence of Christ when one is receiving the Holy Communion (the Christian service, ceremony commemorating Christ’ Last Supper, in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed). The Calvin's reformation did not endorse Christ's body being present during this religious sacrament, but did advocate for the importance of the Holy Communion ritual. Calvin believed Holy Communion aided in the spiritual commune of God and man by allowing man to rise up to God rather than having God descend down. Calvin also rejected worship of images of saints and the presents of an image of the body of Christ on the crosses in churches, but did allow the use of a plain cross and music in church services. He condemned both icon-worship (worshiping man-made objects) and iconoclasm (the rejection or destruction of religious images).
• The relative income of Massachusetts Bay settlers was far more equitable than that of other regions, such as the Virginia Colony. The climate of the Massachusetts Bay did not lend itself to a particular cash crop. There were no large plantations with teams of workers working for a powerful large land owner. Instead, the people of Massachusetts Bay were mostly small family farmers and small fishing, lumber, and fur family businesses. Skill craftsmen set up shops in the new farming towns to provide local services for the town and surrounding farms.
• In 1631 the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law that limiting eligibility for one to become a “freeman” to those men who were members of Orthodox Congregational Churches. (Congregational churches were Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist Church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously rans its own affairs.). Freemen were the only ones eligible to hold township positions and were eligible to vote. Only about 20% of the male colonists at the time were “freemen”.
• The town of Lynn, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was an early center of leather making tanning operations and shoe-making in New England. The boots the worn by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War were made in Lynn.
• In 1632, Galileo published his “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” which proved from Galileo’s observation through his new telescope that mathematically the sun had to be at the center of the universe to explain the movement of the planets. Galileo had also observed that Venus went through phases just like the Earth’s moon, which only could occur if Venus was circling the sun. Galileo was summoned before the Roman Catholic “Inquisition” in 1633 and was convicted of “vehement suspicion of heresy” and under threat of torture Galileo was forced to express sorrow and curse his errors. This was one of the many actions taken by the Catholic Church that weaken its support and strengthen the Protestant’s positions.
• In 1634, a document (book) titled “Wood’s New England’s Prospect” was published that described the contemporary account of life in the New England. The first addition appeared in 1634 and in 1635 & 1637 more volumes followed. The books talked about the weather, the area soils, the wild beasts, birds and fishes on the several “plantations” that had established in New England. It provided a list of what a new colonist should bring with them when they sailed across the ocean. The books were in great demand in England and were responsible for creating excitement for the many looking for a better life. Previously information on life in the New World had been limited to stories from those who wrote letters back to family and friends in England and what had been told to them by their church leaders.
• The American colonies did not invent the practice of “binding out” poor children; they inherited the practice. From the early 1600s, local authorities in both back in England and in America Colonies regarded “pauper apprenticeship” as an acceptable, and even a desirable, way to raise the children of the poor. Communities on both sides of the Atlantic shared similar assumptions about the powers of the local authorities—to decide whether a poor family was able to raise its own children; to identify and to negotiate terms with an appropriate master and then place the child in the master’s home. Orphans’ courts monitored estate administration for the unfortunate and bound out poorer children to caregivers who benefited from the children’s labor.
• On 7 Jun 1635, Rev. Joseph Hull arrived in Dorchester in the Massachusett Bay Colony with a congregation of 104 church members from Weymouth, England. Rev. Hull's willingness to preach without approval from Church of England church officials and his efforts to chart a middle course between Anglicans and Puritans resulted in repeated conflicts with religious and colonial authorities. On 8 Jul 1635 Rev. Joseph Hull and twenty-one family followers were given permission by the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s General Court to establish the Wessagusset Plantation 15 miles south of Boston. Almost all of the Native Americans Wessagusset tribal members who had lived in the area had recently died in a smallpox epidemic. On 2 Sep 1635, the plantation was renamed Weymouth after the town in England where most of the new arrivals had left from.
• In 1635, the first settlers sailed up through Plum Island Sound and up the Quascacunquen River, which was later renamed the Parker River, to arrive in the new Newbury settlement location. There had been a few fishermen occupying the banks of the Merrimack and Quascacunquen Rivers before this, but they were not permanent settlers. On 6 May 1635, before the settlers had moved from Ipswich to Newbury, the Massachusetts General Court passed a resolution that Quascacunquen was to be established as a plantation and its name was to be changed to Newbury. The settlers of Newbury, Massachusetts Bay Colony were not religious enthusiasts or pilgrims who fled from religious persecution in England. They were substantial, law abiding, loyal English tradesmen, of the staunch middle class that were the backbone of England society. The new settlers arrived in Newbury Plantation in May and June of 1635. Governor Winthrop Sr., in his history of New England under the date of June 3, 1635, records the arrival of two ships full of Dutch cattle along with a third ship the "James", from Southampton, England bringing new settlers. Newbury settlement was begun as a stock raising enterprise and the settlers came to raise cattle and to establish homes for themselves. In total fifteen ships came in June and one each in August, November and December bringing still more families to the growing Newbury settlement in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. See the map on the next page of the Plum Island and the town of Newbury:
• The name Rhode Island came from the name of "Aquidneck Island" derived from the name for the island “aquidnet”. was an authority on the Narragansett language and said: "Aquethneck shall be henceforth called the Ile of Rods." See map below of the new Rhode Island Colony. The city of Newport is on the Aquidneck Island.
• On 13 Dec 1636, the National Guard started when the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered the colony's militia companies into three regiments: the North, South and East Regiments. The colonists had adopted the English militia system which obligated all males, between the ages of 16 and 60, to possess arms and participate in the defense of the community. The early colonial militias drilled once a week and provided guardsmen for details each evening to stand watch and sound the alarm in the event of an attack.
• Private initiative and capital had always been involved in the operations of the British colonies, and the colonists were expected to provide for their own defense. By 1636, ten “Train Bands” (volunteer military companies) were formed in Boston and nearby towns. In 1637 the “Military Company of the Massachusetts” was organized to provide training for the officers in the volunteer military companies. In 1638, a charter of incorporation was issued under the authority of Governor John Winthrop and the colony’s General Council. Many of the original colonial members of the military training company had been members in England of the ‘Honorable Artillery Company of London” (chartered by King Henry VIII in 1537 as the “Fraternity of St. George”). Around the time of the American Revolution, the “Military Company of the Massachusetts” change of name to the “Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts.” The company still exists today and is the oldest military organization on the North American continent.
• On 1 Sep 1638, Governor John Winthrop stopped recording information on the passengers arriving in ships in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. That year over twenty ships arrive in the colony. The greatest success of the New England colonies was their achievement in attracting a continuous flow of settlers to their shores. The Dutch and French colonies both suffered from a lack of new arriving settlers causing them to fall behind England in establishing their new colonies.
• In the 1600’s one’s latitude was determined by measuring the angle between the horizon and the North Star. An instrument called an “astrolabe” had been invented that consisted of a large brass ring fitted with an alidade (sighting ruler). The user held the astrolabe from a loop at the top and then turned the alidade so that one could see the North star along its length, and then read the altitude off the scale engraved on the ring. The North Star, however, was often obscured by clouds, fog, or daylight so navigators and surveyors learned to use the astrolabe with quadrant (quarter-circle made of wood or brass), and across-staff (square staff of wood 4 feet long with scales on each side. A piece of smoked glass was frequently used to keep the user from blinding oneself when looking at the sun. Highly prized and valuable declination tables and astronomical charts were next used to convert the angle that was determined to the distance of one’s current location from the Earth’s equator in miles so one’s North/South location could be found on a map. The other East/West location “longitude” that is needed to determine one’s location east and west was not available until much later when accurate clocks were developed. See a photo of an astrolabe on the left and an astrolabe with quadrant on the right on the next page:
• A book “Edmund Rice and his Family” by Elsie Hawes Smith describes the life Edmund Rice and Thomasine (Frost) faced when they arrived in America. King Charles I, had recently become king of England. The new king was viewed as selfish and ill-advised and made life for the English an unhappy experience for most people. Taxes were high and opportunities to better one’s self were practically non-existent. A few of the more adventurist souls looking for better opportunities chose to take a long hazardous voyage to the New World hoping for a new start and a better life. Edmund Rice, wife Thomasine and their children set sail in 1638 for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The ship they sailed on had limited space for baggage and Edmund’s family was limited to only taking a few head of cattle, goats and some farm tools. They also brought guns and ammunition and seeds for growing crops. Thomasine brought a carved chest filled with blankets, linens, extra clothing and utensils. They arrived with other families with similar belongings ready to make their new home in America. Most of their home family furniture had to be left in England. English Puritans had been arriving the Massachusetts Bay Colony since 1630 and Edmund and Thomasine had friends in the colony, they were able to stayed with until they had their own home to live in. Edmund noticed new fortifications around the towns of Dorchester and Charlestown had recently been built to defend against a military invasion by England, which King Charles I might launch, to gain control over the Protestant Puritan colony. At this time the Massachusetts Bay Colony was operating under its own self-government that was busy handing out land to new arrivals and putting down Native American warriors’ attacks.
• By 1640, over 40,000 English colonists were living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
• The word “corn” has various meanings depending upon different geographical regions. It stands for any local grains that are safe to eat and harvested in large areas. In English, the word “corn” pertains to any cereal grain crop. The Latin the word “grain” and the Germanic word “corn” represent any edible plant-seed like millet, barley, rye, wheat, maize, oats etc. For the British people, corn was “wheat” the chief grain that was most available in their county as a food crop. When the English entered the New World, they attributed the term corn to the local grain namely, “Zea mays” or “Indian corn”. Indian corn does not grow wild anywhere in the world. It is a domesticated plant that evolved sometime in the last 10,000 years, through human intervention, from “teosinte”, a form of wild Mexican grass. Originally cultivated in the Americas, corn was brought back to Europe by Christopher Columbus.
• The period between 1645 and 1715 was the coldest period of the “Little Ice Age”. This cold period impacted farming and made life challenging for the people living in New England.
• In 1648, the Massachusetts Bay Colony tried and executed an accused witch for the first time. The accused was a midwife (helper of woman giving birth) named from Charlestown who was hanged at Gallows Hill in Boston after she was accused of being a witch by some of her pregnant women patients. Margaret and her husband Thomas Jones were one of the earliest settlers in the town Charlestown. Margaret was an herbalist (used herbs and plants as medicine) and midwife who treated her sick neighbors with various teas and herbal concoctions. People who had the power to heal also have the power to harm, and eventually some of Margaret's patients began to murmur against her. They claimed she said if they refused to buy her medicines they would never get well. Soon some of her neighbors began to openly accuse Margaret of witchcraft, claiming she "was found to have such a “Malignant Touch”, as many persons were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains and sickness." About eighty people throughout New England were accused of practicing witchcraft between 1648 and 1693. Thirteen women and two men were executed.
• Even with the lack of large number of new emigrants after the removal of King Charles I, the equal balance of males and females living in New England, and the healthy environment led to longer life spans and the trend of couples to marry at a young age, resulted in the population boom in New England. The average family typically had seven to eight children, with at least six surviving to adulthood.
• By 1650, the clashing of the Native Americans people, living in the New England area, with the Europeans settlers and their new advanced technologies and their deadly European diseases, totally disrupted Native American people’s way-of-life that had maintained fairly a stable population as an advanced hunter-gather society for thousands of years. The number of Native American People living in the New England area had falling from an original estimated 60,000 people down to only about 6,000, a 90% loss in numbers by 1650. The native population had no immunity to diseases such as: (, , , , , , , , , , , , and). The sharing of advanced European weapons with the Native people also increased the number of native people who were killed in wars between Native tribes themselves and wars against the advancing European settlers.
• Without modern medicines that were not developed until hundreds of years later, the catastrophe that occurred to the Native American people, who had no immunity to the old-world diseases was going to occur no matter which old-world explorers they came in contact with first. The old-world explorers and settlers had immunities to the old-world diseases only because their ancestors had survived and live through the plagues that had sweep across Europe again and again for thousands of years. The surviving old-world people then passed on their immunities on to their children.
• In 1658, the English Parliament passed an ‘Act of Uniformity’ defining anyone not belonging to the Anglican Church (Church of England) as being a nonconformist.
• At the same time diseases were decimating the Native American people in the English American colonies, a breakout of ”Bubonic Plague” occurred in 1665 in England. The disease quickly spread from parish to parish across England killing thousands of people. Bubonic Plague was known as the “Black Death” and had been known in Europe for centuries. It was a ghastly disease. The victim’s skin turned black in patches and inflamed glands or ‘buboes’ in the groin, combined with compulsive vomiting, swollen tongue and splitting headaches made it a horrible, agonizing killer.
• In the 1680’s a few wealthy and respectable businessmen in the Boston area began to purchase large tracts of unsettled land out west of the existing established colonial settlements. The areas purchased were large, containing a number of square miles of land, with loosely defined boundaries. Once the purchase was completed the new owner(s) would approach the Massachusett Bay Colony’s Colonial Governor and the General Court to confirm the title on the purchased land. Most of the time the title was granted based on the condition that a certain number of families within a specified number of years would settle in the new land and a portion of the new settlement would be set aside for church and school lands and town buildings.
• The colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey all had towns named “Roxbury”.
• In 1702, King William III died and Anne the second daughter of King James II and a staunch supporter of Protestant beliefs became Queen Anne of England.
• On 1 May 1707, the “Kingdom of Great Britain” was established and Queen Ann becomes its first monarch. Great Britain now included England, Wales and Scotland.
• Around 1712, the “Industrial Revolution” started in Great Britain. At this time most people Britain resided in small, rural communities where their daily existences revolved around farming. Life was difficult, incomes were meager and malnourishment and disease were common. People produced the bulk of their own food, clothing, furniture and tools. Manufacturing was done in homes or small, rural shops using hand tools or simple machines. The change started in agriculture where improved tools and early machines increased the amount of food that could be produced using less manual labor. Most of the power used in doing farm tasks had come from human power or animal power. Where available, water power (water wheels) and wind power (windmills) had been used to power small early factories. In 1712 Thomas Newcomen, unveiled his steam-driven piston engine, and everything began to change. Steam engines improved rapidly as the century advanced, and were put to greater and greater use. More efficient and powerful engines were employed in coalmines, textile mills and dozens of other heavy industries.
• By 1732, all the British American colonies had put in place the requirement of either owning substantial amount of personal property or paying taxes to be eligible for a man to vote in elections in their colony.
• In the 1750s, many landlords in the Scottish Highlands, who were facing bankruptcy over crippling debts, began to forcibly remove their farm working tenants from their open grazing fields. The Scottish open pastures were then fenced allowing the creation of pastoral farms stocked with sheep, which were more profitable and required fewer farm workers. The change resulted many Scottish families losing their source of income as fewer workers were required in fenced pastoral sheep raising system resulted in whole Highland communities leaving Scotland and immigrating, mostly to the British North America colonies.
• In 1752, Great Britain and its colonies changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. The first day of the year changed from March 25 to January 1.
• The date of 775 for the “L'Anse aux Meadows” settlement has been determined by using a new science. In the year 775, a supermassive solar flare erupted on the Sun that was recorded in scientific papers of-the-day that were left by European observers who were following Sun’s sunspot activates. The supermassive solar flare that occurred created 1.2% more carbon-14 than usual leaving the Sun that reached the Earth and was absorbed into living trees. The increase in carbon-14 was stored in the tree rings of trees growing at the time. Recently wood that has been found in the wood of trees that were cut down and used in the building of the Vikings “L'Anse aux Meadows” settlement have been studied and the tree rings of the year 775 have been found to have higher carbon-14 indicating the impacted tree ring was grown in 775 when the supermassive solar flare occurred. See a photo below of a reconstructed structure at the National Historic Site in Newfoundland, Canada.
• The word “Indian”, given to the people living in the New World, originated when Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after his first trip and described the indigenous people he found to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on the first island he visited. Unfortunately, there is no clear record of what island in the Bahamas was the island Columbus first landed on he called San Salvador. The island that has that name today was called Watlings Island prior to 1920. The description given to the King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of the indigenous people living on the island was “Los Ninos de’la’endeo” or “children of god” a term later corrupted to los nineos de la Indio” that, later became “Indian”. The term “children of god” was used to describe the well-mannered, praiseworthiness, straight-forwardness and honesty of the indigenous people that Columbus found in the New World. The word “Indian” was meant as a complementary term for describing the native people of the New World.
• The locations of places where individuals were born and married are identified in terms of modern French Cities and Regions to make the places easy to find on a map or Web app. Locations identified as being in Perche are the exception. Perche was a region that no longer exists and is mostly now in the Region of Normandy.
• French Canadians had an unusual naming process call “dit name”. The dit names were commonly used by early French Canadians until the 1800s. The dit names pose challenges to genealogists and anyone searching the French-Canadian family trees. A dit name can or cannot be used for the same individual. Dit name translate as "called". A French name such as Adolphe Guillet dit Tourangeau can translate as "Adolphe Guillet, called Tourangeau", where both "Guillet" and "Tourangeau" are used as surnames, sometimes together and sometimes individually in different situations. The dit name carried the same legal weight as the original family name with regard to land transfers and the naming of children. Dit names developed for a variety of reasons, such as distinguishing one family from another nearby family with the same surname, or allowing an adopted child to retain both their birth and adopted family names. In some cases, both the original name and the dit name are retained. A family's dit name often derived from a personal attribute, such as: Leblond, Leblanc or Leroux, a place of origin, or as a profession such as: Chartier, Meunier or Vanier. Children often adopted a dit name, sometimes dropping their original family name. As is obvious dit names make it more challenging to identify different individual using the same dit name. In this paper, when possible, “dit names” are not used.
• The French language adds accent marks to some letters of the alphabet to help explain how to pronounce words in a system called International Phonetic Alphabet. Louis Hébert’s and Mathieu Abraham Côsté last names contains two of the five possible pronunciations of the letter e. The others are è é ê ë. Where possible the accent letters are used in this paper.
• In 1578, eighty-six years after Columbus discovered North America, the English finally started their own efforts in exploring and establishing settlements in the New World. The monarchy and the early parliament government of England had been distracted by wars in Scotland, Ireland and France. Additionally in England, the Protestant vs Catholic fighting followed by the Church of England vs Puritan fighting, left little time and energy to pursue efforts in the New World.
• France is divided into thirteen Administrative Regions, much like States. See the map below showing the French Administrative Regions:
• As has already been mentioned Perche was a former province in France that now is in the southeast corner of the Administrative Region of Normandy.
• Brittany is a unique area with its own and culture and language. The people of Brittany left from Cornwall, England in 600 AD and migrated to the peninsula in the Frankish kingdom to escape the invading Anglo-Saxons. See the map below showing the Brittany peninsula:
• The climate of the St. Lawrence River valley involved a long harsh winter and a warm short summer. Cold winds, came with the first snow fall usually about the first week of November that lasted through May the next spring. The rivers in the great valley, including the large St. Lawrence River itself, iced over in November and stayed frozen until warming weather arrives in late spring. The five warm months of summer and early fall had to be used to grow the food the settlers needed for the entire year. The northern latitude of the area resulted in long summer days when everyone needed to work from first light until dusk to completed as much work as possible. There was plenty of time in the long dark cold winter to rest. The warm summers, however, brought out hordes’ mosquitoes, biting black flies and stinging insects which greatly tormented the colony’s settlers. See a photo below of black flies sundering someone in a hooded jacket that occurred in a current Canadian canoe expedition:
• Bread was the staple of the French-Canadian diet. The grains used to make bread were barley, oats, millet, rye and wheat. A French peasant family could spend half their income buying flour and bread. Soups and porridges were the staple food items eaten in the morning, noon and evening. Vegetables were added to the soups and porridge from the family gardens that included peas, cabbage, carrots, turnips, leeks and radishes. Mushrooms from the forests, and a bit of fish or meat made up the rest of the diet of the early French people living in Canada.
• The French who arrived in North America discovered the American Native people had dogs in their camps that were descended from wild wolves; who were the only animal domesticated in North American before the arrival of the Europeans.
• The livre (French for "pound") was the currency of Kingdom of France. The livre was established by King Charlemagne as a unit equal to one pound of silver. It was subdivided into 20 sous per livre and 12 deniers per sous.
• From 1613 to 1620, the “Compagnie des Marchands“ was a monopoly company supported by the French government that operated in Canada but failed to fulfill their contractual obligations and therefore lost their monopoly rights in 1621 to the “ Compagnie de Montmorency”. Six years later in 1627, French Cardinal Richelieu, the real leader of France withdrew the monopoly of the “Compagnie de Montmorency”, and established in its place the Compagnie de la Nouvelle France” as part of a plan to develop and expand trade in Canada. Throughout all of this period the monopoly holders were frequently troubled with rogue traders (from France and other nations) in North America on one side, and politically connected opponents of their monopoly in France on the other side. Many of the directors of these companies were more interested in trade than in colonization, which was usually a drain on the company's finances. Samuel de Champlain, who championed the colonization efforts, worked tirelessly to make sure the French colonies survived amid political and corporate changes of power.
• In the 1600s and 1700s, the inhabitants in Canada in the Saint Lawrence River Valley were subject to the laws and customs of France. Each person had a family name and a given name. Children had the family name of their father. Married women kept their family name from birth, on official documents, although they were commonly known by their husband’s family name.
• Many of the early French fur trappers and traders took native women as wives/partners. A number had two families, one in the French settlements where the union was blessed by the Catholic church and their children were duly baptized and another second native family living in and around the French trading posts and forts around of the Great Lakes. The children of all mixed French/Native families were known as “Métis children”.
• The restrictions that were put in place in the new Québec colony by the French government through monopolist French trading companies greatly hinder the Québec colony’s growth. The French government desire to seek short term profits from trading with the Native American tribes to acquire valuable fur pelts to sell in Europe, while limiting the expenses of supporting a growing French colonists in New France, will later result in the loss of New France to England. France was looking for quick wealth in the New World like Spain had recently achieved.
• In 1619, the Quebec settlement had a total of sixty individuals of which only six were women.
• By 1620, the French, along with Basques, Spanish, English and Portuguese had all been making regular trips across the North Atlantic Ocean to the North American coast for more than one hundred years. Beginning early in the 1500s, French fishermen sailed from the ports of Dieppe, Le Havre, La Rochelle and Saint-Malo, in the late spring of each year. They fished for Atlantic cod, mainly on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and also off the coast of North America. By 1580, 10,000 European fishermen in 500 boats were making annual voyage across the Atlantic each summer. In addition to the fish, the fishermen also brought valuable North American animal fur pelts back to Europe.
• Samuel de Champlain and many other earlier explorers kept looking for a northern sea rout to Asia. Initially the St Lawrence River had looked promising as early explorers soon found the large river was connected to the Great Lakes. There is no evidence the discovery of Hudson Bay was known to Samuel Champlain and the French at this time.
• Early before daylight on 6 June 1944, during the Second World War, the Pegasus Bridge was taken from the Germans by a small elite glider-borne American force of 6th Airborne Division. Once captured, the bridge was held against repeated attacks by a much larger German force, preventing the Germans from launching a large counterattack on the Allied troops on the Normandy beaches.
• In 1625, the population of the new Québec settlement was only 56 people.
• The France, England, Dutch and Spanish who were exploring and colonizing North America and fishing in the North Atlantic Ocean were all constantly in fear of being captured by Muslim pirates associated with the Ottoman empire. Between 1612 and 1620 more than one thousand fishermen were captured off the Newfoundland’s fishing banks and forced into galley slaves (a death sentence) by the Muslim pirates. See the “Story of Carolee Afton McCance’s Family” for more information on the history and impact of the Muslim pirates on Europe and North America.
• The initial Canada settlements were set up as a part of a proprietary colony granted by the French Crown (King) to various corporations (companies) to rule, provided they fulfilled the terms of their royal charters, like supporting the missionary work of the Roman Catholic Church amongst the Native people.
• Seventeen members of Winifred Elois Coss family tree were born of lived in La Rochelle before leaving for Canada.
• Today “Cap Tourmente” is an National Wildlife Area located on the north shore of the in the of Québec. It is one of the critical habitats for the during their annual migrations. Flocks of tens of thousands of the birds stop over to feed on the bullrushes in the spring and fall. The was recognized as a wetland of international significance in 1981, making it the first North American site to receive that designation.
• The Perche area was located 100 miles west of Paris. Perche was a country that had been created back in 1115 and was later united with France in 1525. Later in 1792, in a major reorganization of the French county system occurred and Perche was lost and absorbed into the region of Normandy.
• Arpent is an old French unit of land. One arpent is equal to .85 acres and was the standard measure of land in France until the 1970s.
• From the beginning of the Québec settlement, tensions existed between the Roman Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots settlers in Canada. Back in France the Huguenots were generally better off financially and were hated for their economic successes. The seaports of Dieppe and La Rochelle were Huguenot strongholds. The protestant seafarers from these French ports enjoyed a life of freedom and independence not available to the rest of the French Catholic people.
• The French people that sailed to the New World wanted to transplant the legacy of their own civilization. The French settlers organized their colonies under the French King’s sponsorship filled with the spirit of order and guided by rigid norms French culture. The settlers’ imported models and practices into Canada with no thought of adapting to the local conditions. Instead of using logs to build log cabins, the French cut squared lumber poles connected with wooden dowels. The French built a better home than the English, but spent much greater effort in the construction process.
• The map on the next page of Wisconsin shows the interconnecting rivers systems in the area. The left side of the map is the Mississippi River that separates Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Mississippi River travels south down to the Gulf of Mexico. On the way it merges with the Missouri River that flows from the Rocky Mountains out in Montana. Looking closely at the Wisconsin River map one can see how close the Fox River and the Wisconsin River come to each other just above Lake Mendota. By carrying a canoe over the short mile and half marshy gap between the two rivers one can travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico or up the Missouri River out to the Rocky Mountains by boat. Before the development of roads travel by boat was the only way one could carry any amount of goods from one place to another. Jean Nicolet discovery of the interconnecting river systems was the key to France’s explorations of North America. The Arrow on the map points to the short gap at Portage Wisconsin.
• In 1634 the first recorded case of the disease of “measle”, occurred in a Native Huron village. It is believed the deadly disease arrived with the new French settlers’ children.
• On 25 Dec 1635, (Christmas Day) Samuel de Champlain died. Samuel had led the Canada colonial effort from the beginning and he was now gone.
• In 1636, Charles Huault de Montmagny arrived in the Québec settlement replacing Samuel de Champlain as the new Governor of the Canada Colony.
• On 15 Jan 1636, the “Company of One-hundred Associates” granted seigneury (property of a Lord) of the Îie Jésus Island to Jesuit Fathers. The Jesuit’s soon lost interest in the Îie Jésus Island and focuses their work on establishing the Ville-Marie settlement on the larger Île de Montréal Island.
• In 1637, the smallpox disease arrived in the Native Huron village. Smallpox was the most destructive disease brought to North American by Europeans. There were a variety of infectious diseases existing in North America prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus, however the fact that the native people were a single race, limited in total number and there was only a small number of domestic animals living with the Native people, which could carry diseases, had limited the Native population contact with major disease epidemics. The fact that there was also a limited interactions between the Native American native populations (as compared to areas of Europe and Asia (Eurasia), help limit the spread in disease in North America. Eurasia (Europe and Asia) on the other hand was a crossroads among many distant, different races of peoples separated by hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles. Repeated warfare by invading populations and trade between different distant groups of people throughout the Eurasia lead to a wide spread infectious diseases. As a result of chronic exposure to the various diseases, the of people in Eurasia who survived gradually developed natural immunity (protection) for the diseases. The early Europeans that came to the New World carried their deadly endemic diseases with them, which killed an estimated 80 to 90% of the North American native people . This impact of the deadly Old-World diseases on the people in the New World people was inevitable, if it had not come from Europe, it would have come from Asia. The New World could not have stay isolated once sea going ship were developed.
• The French had been generally successful in establishing good relations with the Native American population starting with their first settlements in Acadia in back in 1604 and Québec in 1608. The French sought out the native people with missionary efforts and trading posts. The French worked to learn the native languages and customs that allowed them to effectively communicate with the native people. The small number of French settlers compared to the large waves of English immigrants that were arriving in the English colonies made the French appear to be a much smaller threat to the native people’s way of life. The French formed long-lasting alliances with the native peoples of Acadia, the St. Lawrence River Valley, the Ottawa Valley and the Great Lakes. Often the French were called upon to help manage disputes among their native allies, and they were frequently successful. The process, however, became entangled in a series of wars with the Native Iroquois Confederation. The Iroquois were longtime adversaries of several of the French Native American allied tribes and also sought to control of the North American fur trade. Between 1640 and 1701, the French and the Iroquois Confederation were at war much of the time.
• In 1650, the Québec settlement had grown about thirty homes.
• A French “Minot” is a unit of measure that is equal to 39.154 liters or 10.34 gallons.
• The Sillery settlement was named for Noël Brûlart de Sillery, a famous Hospitaller knight who died in 1640. Noël had been a wealthy and successful French diplomat, who had renounced all worldly goods and became a Catholic priest. In 1637, he gave funds for the establishment of a settlement for First Nation people in Canada to convert them to Catholicism. A community called “Sillery” was established at a cove in the St Lawrence River where the Algonquin native people gathered in the summer to catch spawning eels and salmons. Forty Algonquin Christian families move into the new settlement where they lived most of the year, except for the fall hunting season. The new settlement residents included Algonquins from as far away as the Ottawa River Valley. French Missionaries came to Sillery to study with the indigenous resident people to learn their languages before going to more distant settlements. By 1640, the Augustinian Catholic sisters had established a convent in the Sillery community, which hosted non-permanent residents of the community, especially refugees of the “Beaver War”. However, the Sillery native indigenous community failed when of the community's native people fell victims to European introduced infectious diseases like smallpox.
• The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré was located along the St. Lawrence River 19-miles east of Québec City and today is one of eight national shrines of Canada. The basilica has been credited by the Catholic Church with performing many miracles of curing the sick and disabled people. The basilica is an important Catholic sanctuary, which is visited by about a half-million pilgrims each year. The basilica was initially built as a shrine to honor Saint Ann. On 8 Mar 1658, settler Étienne de Lessard donated two frontal acres from the west end of his property to the Catholic Church, so that a chapel could be built. The first reported miracle at the site happened during the shrine's construction when a man named Louis Guimont was hired to help build the shrine even though he suffered from rheumatism. After placing three stones upon the shrine's foundation, Louis Guimont was cured of all his rheumatism ailment. This was followed by other testimonies of healed people, and the shrine soon grew in popularity. In 1876, the basilica opened for worship. See below the current Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré:
• Fourteen members of Mary Ann Goodwater’s branch of Winifred Eloise Coss’s tree were part of the three hundred Founding Families on the Île d'Orléans Island.
• Two-thirds of the immigrants that came to the Canada Colony between 1632 and 1659 for various reasons returned to France, limiting the growth of the new French colony.
• In 1663, the establishment of a Conseil Souverain, officially restructured the Canada colony and turned the colony into a Royal Province of France ended the Company of the “One Hundred-Associates” involvement in Canada. From this time on Canada was control by a Governor appointed by the King of France, who was the ceremonial and military head of the French colony.
• The Ursuline Sisters were a religious order founded in the sixteenth century for the education of young girls. In the early part of the seventeenth century an urgent appeal came from the Canada Colony for religious women to undertake the arduous task of training native Indian girls in Christian habits of life. Madame de la Peltrie, a French widow, offered herself and all that she had to fund a mission in Canada. In May, 1639, Madame de la Peltrie sailed from the French port of Dieppe France in company with three Ursuline Sisters and three Catholic nuns. In the Québec settlement, she founded the first institution of learning for the Native people the French had come in contact with.
• Historically, a saunier, (French salt merchant) harvested salt from salt marshes. Because of the high taxes levied on salt in France, salt merchants faced intense competition from contraband sellers of salt. The contraband traffickers traded in salt without paying the government tax. French had put in place a high salt that affected all citizens (salt was used for cooking, preserving food, making cheese and raising livestock), the salt tax was one of the most hated taxes in France’s history. Hundreds of French convicted salt contraband salt traffickers were deported to Canada to work as “forced labourers”. The salt tax was repealed during the French Revolution and reinstated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806, the salt tax was finally abolished in France in 1945.
• Exorcism was a process used to cast out demons from someone. The Christians exorcism process was performed by a member of a Christian Church thought to be graced with special powers or skills. The exorcist used prayers and religious material, such as set formulas gestures, symbols, icons, amulets, etc. The exorcist often invokes God Jesus or several different angels to intervene with the exorcism.
• Back in 1609, Samuel de Champlain passed through an area that later became the site of the town of Chambly. Samuel wrote the following in his journal: “The approach to the rapids is a sort of lake into which the water flows down, and it is about three leagues in circumference. Nearby are meadows where no Natives people live, by reason of recent wars. At the rapids there is very little water, but it flows with great swiftness, and there are many rocks and boulders, so that the Native people cannot go up by water; but on the way back they run them very nicely. All this region is very level and full of forests, vines and butternut trees. No European Christian have ever visited this land and we had all the misery of the world trying to paddle the river upstream.”
• In 1669, King Louis XIV (the Sun King) of France made a considerable effort to populate Canada. He ordered 64,000 livres be given to the Canada colony to recruit 500 men and women and sent twelve mares, two stallions and fifty sheep to the colony.
• A “pit-saw” is a dugout pit over which a trunk of a tree is positioned to be sawed with a long two-handled whipsaw pulled and pushed by men holding handles on the end of the saw.
• The governor of Canada in the 1670s was an ex-military man named Louis de Baude de Frontenac, who was said to be contentious and arrogant. Governor Frontenac took charge of the French colonies in 1672, having spent much of his life in the French royal court. He had certain demands for protocol when he became the governor in Canada, and he often clashed with the people around him, including the Canada’s Sovereign Court, which handled all judicial matters.
• Starting in 1673, the process of disposing human waste in Québec City by throwing it from the windows and doorways of homes and cottages into the city’s streets, which was the custom back in France was finally stopped in Québec City. In 1673, legislation was put in place making it the law that new homes had to be built with latrines (Indoors) or privies (outdoors) on the property. Older homes, where there was no room for a latrine, required the owner to clean the street in front of their home every day. The practice in the Lower Town in Québec City of allowing pigs to roam freely was also stopped. French King Louis XIV’s grand Palace of Versailles had no bathrooms and those who were there without personal servants with chamber pots were force to use the stairways as their bathroom in the palace.
• Exploration of the lands west of the Great Lakes started by adventures like Jean Nicolet was interrupted by the Iroquois Wars against the French and other Native American tribes. Now that the Iroquois were no longer a major obstacle to exploration in the west men like Pierre Charles Le Sueur were free to explore the areas in the middle of the North America.
• By 1681, Québec had grown into a city with over 1,300 people and a census was taken.
• The” Laurentian Highlands” in western Quebec are the largest exposures of Precambrian rocks (oldest Earth rocks) in the world. They are two-billion-year-old relics of metamorphosed granite and gneiss (pronounced “nis”) that have been subjected to heat and pressure, uplifted and eroded by time and the effects of glaciation. Drainage in the region was affected, resulting in the maze of large and small lakes, marshy hollows, dramatic cliffs, rocky outcroppings, winding streams and swift-flowing rivers with rapids and waterfalls. Within this scoured bedrock and uninterrupted boreal forests is living in a cool damp climate which makes up most of the area’s primal landscape. The aerial view below shows a dense panorama of dark evergreen interspersed with lighter green deciduous trees such as sugar maple and beech, brownish-yellow bogs and gray rocks. The ancient landscape has two huge meteor craters, the Manicouagan and the Malbaie, that dent the land with circular depressions. Rich mineral deposits of silica, lime, dolomite, copper, gold and nickel are present in the area resulting a prosperous mining industry in the area. See an aerial view of the Manicouagan crater below:
• For the British/American Colonies full prospective on the four “French and Indian wars” see the Edith Powers’ Family Tree Story back at the beginning of this document.
• In 1700, around 10,000 people of French origin were living and farming in the lower St. Lawrence River valley in Canada. By comparison over 250,000 people were living in the English American colonies at the same time.
• Josué Dubois de Beaucours was a military officer and the chief engineer of Canada and governor of the towns of Trois-Rivières and Montréal City. He joined the French navy when his was twenty. In 1684, he was named a midshipman (first rank of French officer). In 1687, he was discharged from the naval service and the following year became a lieutenant (second rank of officer) in the colonial regular troops of Canada. In 1689, he was charged with improving the defenses of the town of Trois-Rivières due to the threat of attacks by Iroquois warriors. In 1692, Lt. Beaucours led a successful expedition against the Iroquois Nation. Later that year, he drew up plans for the fortification of Québec City against a possible English attack. In 1701, he was promoted to captain and, in 1702, went to work on building forts in the Montréal City area. In 1704 and 1705, he led a group of 120 French men which took part in an expedition against the English in Newfoundland that culminated in the failed Siege of St. John’s. On his return, Captain Beaucours continued to work on fortifications in the Montréal and Québec cities and in 1712, he was awarded the French “cross of Saint-Louis” and named chief engineer for Canada.
• Back in 1142, the Iroquois (“People of the Longhouse") were a powerful northeast Native American Nation. They formed the “Iroquois Confederacy” or “Five Nations”, comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes. In 1722, they later added the Tuscarora tribe from the Southeast into their confederacy, as they were also Iroquoian-speaking, and the expanded confederation became known as the “Six Nations Confederacy”.
• Petite-Rivière is located on the river from which it takes its name. Samuel de Champlain gave the river its name “little River”, Petite-Rivière in French. The river was called the “Simkook”, by the Native Mi’kmaq people living in the area. The small settlement was founded by Pierre du Gua de Monts back in 1632.
• York Factory was a settlement Hudson Bay Company trading post located on the southwestern shore of the Hudson Bay in northeastern Manitoba, Canada, at the mouth of the Hayes River. York Factory was one of the first fur-trading posts established in 1684 by the Hudson Bay Company and used in the fur-trading business for more than 270 years. Manitoba is a Cree word meaning “Spiritual and fundamental Life Force”. See a later 1925 photo of York Factory and map of Rupert’s Land controlled by the Hudson Bay Company below:
• See the Story of Carolee Afton McCance’s family, the Story of Morris Rankin Batie’s family for more information on the "French and Indian Wars” between Britain and France and their North American colonies.
• The “Cree” were a North American Indigenous people and one of the largest “First Nations” tribes that lived west of Lake Superior in the current Canadian Provinces of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. In the 2016 Canada census there were 356,655 Native Cree people living in Canada. See below a photo of Cree camp taken in 1893:
• As have been noted in the history so far of the Native Americans who were living in North America when the European explores, traders and eventual settlers arrived did not go well. The more technically advanced Europeans with their old-world diseases eventually force the native Americans to change their traditional ways of living or eventually live controlled Indian reservations. By far the most successful Native Americans were the ones that adopted the European ways of living and joined in with the Europeans in merging the two cultures by parenting children Native/European children. Frenchman Thomas Dion and his Cree Métis daughter Marie Angelique Dion and Jean Nicolet’s and his Nipissing partner Jeanne Bahmahmaadjimiwin Giisis and their Euphrosine Madeleine Nicolet Métis daughter are examples where to Native Americans were able to merge with the new Europeans and thrive, passing their genes to future generations.
• In 1789, the French Revolution occurred and the King of France and was removed and a Republic was established resulting in political turmoil in the country that led to a dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte.
• In 1790, the United States conducted its first census of the whole country’s population.
• In the Scottish town of Forres, which is located 25 miles east of Inverness Scotland, is the Falconer Museum. The Falconer Museum is named after two brothers, Hugh and Alexander Falconer, who were born and lived in the town of Forres. Hugh Falconer who lived from1808 to 1865 became prominent within the Scottish scientific community. A real Victorian polymath (walking encyclopedia), Hugh was a contemporary of Charles Darwin, spending much of his scientific career in the country of India. His work led to new ideas about the antiquity of man. He introduced tea as a cash crop to India. Older brother Alexander Falconer who lived from 1797 to 1856, became a merchant in Calcutta but later returned to his homeland. In his will Alexander bequeathed £1000 for the establishment of a museum in Forres Scotland of objects of art and science he had gathered. Hugh and Alexander Falconer lived at the same time James Falconer, but no connection has been found between the brother and James.
• The Falconer family name derived from the Scottish name of one who breeds and trains falcons for hunting. Many of the great houses of Scotland had their own falconer. The principal ‘Falconer’ family clan claimed to be falconers of King William the Lion (1165-1214) beginning with Ranulph the Falconer, son of Walter of Loutrop.
• The 1810 U. S. Census was problematic, many of the census records were destroyed in a fire.
• The Richelieu River was an important river that connected the City of Montréal, which is located on the north side of the St. Lawrence River, down to Lake Champlain in the northern portion of the current State of New York. Cities like St-Mathias, Sur-Richelieu, Mont-Saint-Hilaire and Chambly in the Province of Québec are located on the Richelieu River providing a convenient transportation route between the French Province of Québec Canada down to New England States in the United States. See a map below of the Richelieu River that flows from the United States north into Québec Canada:
• See the Story of Morris Rankin Batie’s Family, and the Story of Carolee, Afton McCance’s Family for more details on the “War of 1812”.
• The marriage of Warren Coss and Edith Powers joined the very short Coss family tree branch and the very long Powers family tree branch of Winifred Eloise Coss’s family tree.
• In 1828, the U. S. president election was the first-time non-property-holding white males were allowed to vote in the majority of States in the United States.
• The French family name of Bonneau was perverted to Bono (easer to say and spell) when Benjamin Bonneau III was living in Québec City. The French name Bonneau translates to “Good water” in English and Benjamin adopted the English translation of his name, and it appeared as Benjamin’s last name on the 1850 Census in Wheelock, Caledonia Co., Vermont. Mrs. Delina Bonneau wife of Vitral Bonneau, not related to Benjamin, had also used Goodwater as an alias name when she completed her request in 1880 for U.S. Civil Was Pension upon the death of her husband, indicating other Bonneau’s also ran into issues with the Bonneau French name.
• Between 1840 and 1930, roughly 900,000 French Canadians left the Québec Province in Lower Canada and immigrated to the United States. They poured into the New England states in droves, entire families consisting of parents with over a half dozen children. Most spoke only French and were met at train depots throughout New England by kin who arrived months, or years earlier. Jobs were waiting for them--even the children as young as eight-year-olds could easily find employment. Why did so many leave the Québec Province , it was simply the fact that the farm lands in Lower Québec could no longer support the growing population. Between 1784 and 1844, Québec's population had increased by about 400%, while the agricultural acreage had risen only by 275%, creating a large food deficit in the area. As a result, there were thousands of landless farmers searching for a way to feed their family and they left for better opportunities in New England.
• The first countrywide census in Great Britain occurred in 1841. The first national census in Canada started in 1871. Individual Canadian provinces census did take place on irregularly bases prior to 1871.
• In 1841 the terms Upper Canada and Lower Canada were changed to Canada West, previous Upper Canada and Canada East previous Lower Canada.
• Winneshiek County, Iowa was organized in 1847 and open to settlers in 1848. The county was located in the top Northeast corner of Iowa. Winneshiek County has a rich cultural history as a number different European immigrants settled and established farms within its boundaries. The county was named after a Native chief of the Winnebago tribe in the area.
• The small town of Wheelock, located 35 miles south of the border with Canada, was named after Eleazar Wheelock, the founder of Dartmouth College. Through a provision setup in 1830 by Eleazar, any full-time resident of Wheelock who was accepted as an undergraduate in Dartmouth College could attend the college entirely free of tuition.
• "The Township of Houghton was located in the southwest corner of Norfolk County in Ontario Canada. It was triangular in shape, its northern portion forming an acute point running up between the Townships of Walsingham and Middleton on the east, and the Township of Bayham on the west. The base of the triangle was on the northern shore of Lake Erie. The first settlers in the area were British loyalist that left the United States in 1789 after the end of the American Revolutionary War. Today Houghton is a neighborhood Port Burwell, Norfolk Co. Ontario Canada.
• The 1854, immigration to the State of Iowa was unparalleled at the time. In 1854, News Papers throughout the United States contained long accounts, full of exclamation points, telling their readers about the opportunities to own land in Iowa. The roads leading to open farmland in Iowa were crowed with families in canvas topped wagons. The new land open to settlement was quickly filled with people living in white canvas tents. Ferries over the Mississippi River were busy both day and night conveying pioneer families from Illinois to Iowa. New family cabins began to be built like magic.
• The Hebron, Wisconsin community was started back in 1835 as a lumber milling town. A large saw mill was built to convert the abundant forest of trees into lumber for building materials. On 4 Nov 1844 Joseph Powers (no connection to Edith Powers) purchased the saw mill. The town named after the Palestinian city on the west bank of the Jordan River, grew rapidly and soon had six saw mills and 300 people living in the area. Hebron was located 8 miles northwest of the town Palmyra, Wisconsin another town named after bible references, where David Johnson Powers built a saw mill in 1849. The closeness Hebron and Palmyra in Wisconsin brought the Powers and Coss families together. See a current photo below of the Prince’s Point Wildlife area that is located between the small towns of Hebron and Palmyra in Wisconsin:
• Beginning about mid 1800s many of the Winifred Eloise Coss family began to give and use nick names, such as Ed, Sadie, Hannah, Annie, Wini. The nick names sometime appeared in historical records and other time were omitted. Generally, the name that appeared on the record being reference have been used.
• Today the town of Saint Nobert is a bilingual (French and English) community located on the southern edge of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where the Red River Colony was located. In 1869, the Saint Nobert village was at the center of the “Red River Rebellion” that was a sequence of events that led up to the establishment of a new provisional government led by Métis leader Louis Riel. The “Red River Rebellion” was the first major crisis the new federal Canadian government had to address when the three British North American provinces: Province of Canada, Province of Nova Scotia and the Proving of New Brunswick were united into the “Dominion of Canada”.
• In 1867, the “British North American Act” created the Dominion of Canada, a confederation of Ontario, Québec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
• Canada has a long history of using different forms of money. Prior to the arrival of the first Europeans the Native American people in the area used wampum made from North Atlantic channeled whelk shells and white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clams and animal furs as money for trading, which both continued to be used when trade with Europeans began. During the period of the French colonization, French coins were introduced, as well as the first paper currency in the New World. During the later British colonization period, new British coins and banknote were introduced and used as money. In 1867, with the formation of Canadian Confederation, the Canadian dollar was established, which was linked to the value of the United States dollar.
• On 25/26 Jun 1876, the “Battle of the Little Bighorn” or “Custer’s Last Stand” took place along the Little Bighorn River in southeaster Montana Territory.
• Grand Forks is the oldest major city in the Dakotas. Prior to French explorers’ arrivals, the area where the city now sits (at the forks of the Red River and the Red Lake River) was an important meeting and trading point for Native American tribes in the area. The early French explorers and fur-trappers called the area "Les Grandes Fourches" (meaning "The Grand Forks"). By the 1740s, Grand Forks was an important rendezvous point for French fur trappers, which continued until the “French and Indian War” gave the area to Britain. In 1800, British fur trader Alexander Henry, an agent for the North West Company of Montreal, located a temporary camp at Grand Forks and by 1808 a permanent British post was established. The United States acquired the whole Dakota territory from Great Britain in the “Treaty of 1818”. See below an early photo of Grand Forks town business center:
• The information for the story of the events that occurred when Edgar Putnam “Ed” Coss and Sarah Mary Collingwood met on the stage to Grand Forks comes from the information Lorraine Powers Geiger (Coss) wrote in her family history. Lorraine was unclear about who Sara Mary’s parents were, but she does refer to both of them which implies there were two parents indicating Mary Collingwood had remarried after the death of her first husband William Pearson. No birth record has been found for Sarah Mary Collingwood and English and United States census have been used to determine Sarah’s birth and emigration date.
• By the end of the 1700s inoculation against smallpox had become a popular preventive process in Europe. Yet, epidemics of smallpox continued to affect the people in Canada and Montréal City was hit particularly hard in the 1880s . The epidemic of 1885 was especially dramatic; its scale persuaded municipal authorities to make smallpox vaccination mandatory, but medical opinion was divided into pro and anti-vaccination camps, with the latter accusing the former of spreading the deadly disease. Many in Canada refused to be vaccinated. In Sep 1885, a riot broke out in the Montréal City and some protesters tore down pro-vaccination posters and ransacked the homes of the official medical vaccinators, attacked the city hall, the city’s pharmacies stores and the homes of municipal government magistrates. The extent of the smallpox epidemic took 3,164 lives with 2,117 of them being children. The fear of reoccurring epidemics in Canada persuaded many Canadian families to move south into the United States where vaccinations were commonly given to everyone.
• On 2 Nov 1889, North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th States in the United States.
• Back on 14 Jul 1862, the U.S. Congress passed the “An Act to grant Pensions “. The act awarded pensions to injured soldiers in the Civil War and to surviving widows and minor children of soldiers killed in the war. In 1890 the “Disability Act of 1890” was passed that removed the restriction of war-related injuries, allowing pensions to be awarded to solders solely on time of service in the Civil War.
• Edgar Putnam “Ed” Coss and Sara Mary “Sadie”(Collingwood/Pearson) named four of their thirteen children with middle names of older relatives: Pearson, Collingwood, Powers, Warren.
• The United States census of 1890 was taken beginning June 2, 1890, but most of the 1890 census materials were destroyed in 1921 when a building caught fire and in the subsequent disposal of the remaining damaged records.
• The 78th Battalion (Bn) was a Canadian infantry Battalion, maned with recruits from Winnipeg, Manitoba. During the 9 thru 12 Apr 1917,attack on Vimy Ridge in France the 78th Bn was a follow-up battalion to the 38th, 72nd, and 73rd Battalions and was given the mission of exploiting the gains made in the initial attack of the other three battalions. Unfortunately, an intact German trench of soldiers held up to the attack and the 78th was hit by a German counterattack. The78th Battalion lost 75 men killed, 261 wounded and 159 missing in action. See on the next page photo a tank being used by the 2nd Canadian Division and Machine gunner operation during the fighting of the Viny Ridge battle:
• The Great Depression affected almost everyone living in North Dakota. The practice of taking in roomers (renters) in one’s home help cover one’s living costs was common and help both the renter and the roomer survive the desperate times.