When I began to have a strong interest in the information a close cousin passed down to me about my Great Grandmother Catherine Jones (Dufour) I took each element word for word. That is to say no independent fact checking before running head first into the Drouin Collection of records on the Dufour Family in Quebec.Last night I received a response from the Vice-President of the Dufour families association of North America. He was nonetheless not to happy about a midnight message I had sent last year complaining about the merging of two first cousins into one record.
Mind you I was suffering Sepsis from a liver abscess and blocked gallbladder so I doubt I wrote my comments to the webmaster very tactfully.
According to Guy Charpentier, the Pierre Parfiat Dufour of St, Anne parish changed his name and relocated to Missouri where he married, twice.
Due to his actions during the American Revolution, in 1778, Parfait assumed temporarily a false identity, calling himself Antoine during the hostilities, most likely to avoid retaliation by the British against his siblings living in the Detroit area. Once the war of independence had ended, and Detroit had been handed over to the U.S.A., he reassumed his true Christian name - Parfait. He used indifferently or jointly the names of Antoine and Parfait thereafter.Now while I should be incredibly happy with this since I have recently considered a generation younger to most likely contain Catherine's father by a son of Joahim Dufour... Mr. President states that through firsthand research he can find no document proving these men: Antonie Dufour born in Montreal and Pierre Parfiat born in Quebec are separate individuals.
The hilarity here is that with divided interest I recently filled out the siblings tree's looking for another Pierre Dufour who could have passed down the name. This led me to review the marriages of women into the Dufour family of which those attributed to Pierre incognito are clearly documented elsewhere with younger men. Now if Pierre Parfiat was my Grandmother's father then he would have been 51 when he conceived her. My Grandmother's obituary says that she never moved from the Detroit river region and her father was with her all of her youth.
"Jonesfield Township History Traced to 1812: Mrs. Edward Jones, A.ea's First Resident, Lived to be 107." "In Detroit August 16, 1812, American General William Hull ... gave up the fort...a 6 year old half French half Indian girl named Catherine DuForce ... was at the fort. She had been born September 15, 1805, the daughter of Peter DuForce and his Indian wife, and had lived all her life along the Detroit River." ~ through death "Catherine's death notice came in the Big Rapids Bulletin Herald September 6, 1912. She died September 5, just 10 days short of her 107th birthday. The notice said: "In the death yesterday afternoon at Mercy Hospital of Mrs. Katherine (Catherine) Jones, the State of Michigan lost its oldest Native inhabitant. She was 106 years, 11 months and 17 days (actually 20 days), and despite the ravages of time, she retained a remarkable physical vitality and a wonderfully clear memory. The body was shipped to Hungerford this afternoon and the funeral services will be held at the Hungerford Church. Internment will be in Hungerford." She was buried in Hunkleford Cemetery near Woodville, about seven miles west of Big Rapids."
Source: The Saginaw News, Sunday May 29, 1966 (section B, Page 3) & USGENWEB
Oh and Mr. president you are about to publish that Pierre Dufour Born April 1754 married his nephew's wife who was almost 30 years younger. Good luck with that...
Now onto the more interesting ideas. If Pierre did go into hiding in Missouri than that places him in the Red Reedies area to which another mystery Dufour/Dufault family exists. Therese Dufault maybe another child and lays creedence to the family tales of a mixed heritage. (Clues to ancestry of Therese Dufault)
If Pierre Dufour, Jr. did leave the Great lakes region than why is he listed as a founding member of Wayne County (Historical Publications of Wayne County)
Oh Pierre you Dirty Bird...!
