It’s always great to hear from people interested in family
history, at least that’s what I tell myself. I let my website go stale for some
time now as I was finishing undergraduate school and wasting my free time on video
gaming. I gather that at some point Google updated its service protocols making
my page live in Web searches. Suddenly I have people who were wholly
uninterested to help seeing my document list and deciding they have loud
opinions to share. I ranted some posts ago about people not understanding the
organic nature of self publishing versus professional works. No doubt the comments and demands would eventually fall onto
my favorite topic, Catharine Dufour. I was lucky that the third party relation
who wanted my work indeed contacted Mr. Charpentier of my post “midnights are
not for making friends”. He was kind enough to look into the information our
family has especially as he is in my opinion a specialist in French river
region history. The work has come out most fruitful this time, a majority of
that owning to Mr. Charpentier’s access not mine.
Catharine’s birth date has always been passed down since her
sons based on the interview she gave in 1905. While her husband was alive
however documents including her in his household indicated an 1813 birth year.
The summative works of French genealogy do not have an individual born in 1805
to any of the Dufour, Deveaux couples. The death certificate that I was
provided an image copy of by a 3rd cousin does state Mr. Duforse as
Catharine’s father. Nay, the Duforse name is nonexistent in records of that
period. Adjusting her birth date uncovers a slew of records due the family most
especially while they lived in Canada for some years. Three of the known children now have French catholic baptism
statements. One of these children was of the missing portion of eleven that did
not survive to adulthood. Marie- Agathe Jones died the same year that Edward
Junior’s baptism took place. Indeed it was Catharine’s grandmother, Josephe
Garand, who sponsored his baptism as Edouard Jones at her local parish. The
same parish had baptized Henry John earlier as Honoré Jones. As French culture
in that area was dying out it is not surprising that the children simply lost
sight of their heritage.
Yet what about Catharine’s account in the newspaper, does
this all not invalidate it? Not exactly. Catherine’s parents by document consensus were
Pierre Louis Dufour and Archange Garand married in 1811 as St. Anne Cathedral.
As a family they lived in Frenchtown, a small settlement south of Fort Detroit.
While Catharine was born at the height of the war she could not have witnessed
the surrender. However she may well have been mistaking the final abandonment
of the Frenchtown settlement due to increasing raids and attacks. The emerging
soldiers in uniform may well have been coming to protect the settlement. The
direction as well that she describes her home from the Fort agrees with the
assertion she is recalling Frenchtown. Now while I am ashamed of my third party relative’s reaction
to this data I can also say that my own qualms regarding it are just as silly.
Indeed this would seem to dismiss the assertion that Catharine was a Métis
child. Yet not enough is known of her mother Archange Garand to me yet as well
as Louis Dufour’s mother also being undiscovered. I look forward to finding
more documents to uncover the Dufour/Dautour/ Garand connection. Meanwhile I
have work to update my website to keep me busy!
