Jill's Genealogy Journey

Stories, Discoveries & Tips

Jill Holman

1938 Photo Essay – Gertrude Middendorp & Sulo Laitala

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Gertrude & Sulo in Chisholm 1940

Don’t they look young and happy?


Click here for the audio story of How Gertrude & Sulo Met
Click here for the 1938 Photo Essay

Big thanks to my grandma for giving me the stories and photos she had collected to get me started on my genealogical journey.


P.S. I made these with Keynote, Pixelmator and Audacity.

The Basic Facts:
Sulo Elmer (Shorty) LAITALA
b. 23 Sep 1911, Chisholm, St. Louis, MN
d. 5 Dec 1992, Minneapolis, Hennepin, MN
Gertrude Virginia (Toots) MIDDENDORP
b. 26 Nov 1918, Turtle Lake, Barron, WI
d. 1 Aug 1998, Minneapolis, Hennepin, MN
m. 13 Jan 1940, Duluth, St. Louis, MN

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French Tips for Genealogists (who don’t speak French)

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A lot of the entries in parish registers follow pretty standard patterns and you can pick up what you need without having studied French for years. Also, quite a few of the words are very similar: septembre, marriage, baptise, etc.

For me, the hardest thing is reading the faint handwriting, so I often will take the image into a program like Pixelmator and zoom in and adjust the levels so it is easier to read.

(I should probably mention that I actually did study French for years and still consult my French-English Dictionary once in awhile. I first wrote these tips to help my mother who has not studied French but wanted to slog through many parish registers.)

The General Pattern of Important Information for Birth (Naissance):

  • Date
  • Baptised [name of child]
  • Born from the legitimate marriage of [names of parents]
  • Sometimes you will see occupation
  • Godfather and godmother

The hardest thing is that they spelled out the dates. You need a translation helper for the months, so try this: http://www.girouard.org/cgi-bin/page.pl?file=months&n=6

And numbers are harder because there is this form: http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/ss/numbers.htm

And then you also see them like “deuxieme” which takes the number “2” and makes it “second.”

They wrote long numbers out so 1844 = mil huit cent quarante quatre or broken down:

  • mil = 1000
  • huit cent = 800
  • quarante = 40
  • quatre = 4

If you are unsure about boy v. girl, check the “born of a legitimate marriage” phrase – the word for born is spelled differently for boys and girls. Boys don’t have the extra “e” eg. Jean né v. Angele née.

And also watch for né hier v. né aujourd’hui (born yesterday v. today).

The 1826 Yamaska Birth of Angele Parenteau
The 1826 Yamaska Birth of Angele Parenteau

In this example from Yamaska (parish St. Michel):

  • 6 May 1826
  • Baptised Angele
  • Born yesterday from the legitimate marriage of Regis Parenteau, farmer (agriculteur du lien = farmer of bond?), & Marguerite Lepire
  • Godparents: Paul Feraux or Teraux? (that one is hard to read!) & Marie Lambert

The General Pattern of Important Information for Marriage:

  • Date
  • Marriage of [name of groom], son of [names of parents] on the one part
  • And [name of bride], daughter of [names of parents] on the other part
  • Witnesses
The 1850 Sherbrooke Marriage of Peter Leclerc & Angeline Parenteau
The 1850 Sherbrooke Marriage of Peter Leclerc & Angeline Parenteau

So in this example from Sherbrooke (Cathedrale St. Michel):

  • 20 Sep 1850
  • Peter Leclerc son of Charles Leclerc & Julie Chouinard
  • Angelique Parenteau daughter of Regis Parenteau & Marguerite Lepire from the parish of St. David
  • Witnesses: Charles Leclerc & Alprea Camiere

Also, watch for veuf and veuve (widower and widow) – that tells you who the previous spouse was.

And you will see a lot of “en cette ville” which is “in this town” and “en cette paroisse” which is “in this parish.”

P.S. It is always exciting to find a birth record for an ancestor and this one is from 1826 Quebec! However, this one was also disappointing. If you recall, the whole reason I started on this 20-year-long genealogical journey was that my grandma told me that her great-grandfather, Peter LeClair, was a fur trapper born in Canada and that he had married an Indian maiden. This woman, Angele, was supposed to be the Indian. Looks rather French and Catholic, doesn’t she?

The Basic Facts:
Peter LECLAIR HOULE
b. 27 Jun 1815, Quebec, Canada
d. 13 Oct 1922, Turtle Lake, Barron, WI

Angeline PARENTEAU
b. 6 May 1826, St. Michel, Yamaska, Quebec, Canada
d. 5 Feb 1911, Turtle Lake Baron Co WI
m. 20 Sep 1850, St. Michel, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

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The Mystery of Peter LeClair – The Cannon City Breakthrough

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Tracking down Peter Leclair has been a big challenge (and the whole reason I started on this 20-year-long genealogical journey, by the way.) My grandma told me that her great-grandfather, Peter LeClair, was a fur trapper born in Canada and that he had married an Indian maiden. I wanted to find out if it was true. (Still don’t quite have an answer on that, so stay tuned here to learn what we discover.)


The other information I had to go on was that he was living in Wisconsin when he died and that he was survived by two daughters, Rose and Angeline. There was also a story that his body may have been shipped to Faribault, MN for burial, but no one knew why.


I had found several census records for Peter’s later years in WI. And one in Quebec in 1851, but I wasn’t sure if it was our Peter because they had all these girls that didn’t match with what I knew about his daughters. And where he was in the years in between was a mystery to me.

1880 Census for Peter Hall in Cannon City, MN
1880 Census Record for Peter Hall in Cannon City, MN


For today, let’s look at some crazy variations in census records. We had several problems with Peter:

  1. There are a lot of variations on his name: English and French versions, lots of spelling variations and imagine my surprise when I discovered that LeClair was a “dit name” – sometimes he went back to using Houle! (And Houde was used by his ancestors as well, but more on that another day.)
  2. We didn’t know where to look. Where was he between 1851 and 1895?
  3. His ages vary a lot (What a nightmare!):
    • between 1870 and 1875 he only aged 1 year
    • between 1875 and 1880 he aged 9 years
    • between 1880 and 1885 he aged 11 years
    • between 1885 and 1900 he aged 19 years
    • between 1900 and 1905 he aged only 2 years
    • between 1905 and 1910 he aged 8 years
    • between 1870 and 1910, he had aged 50 years (in only 40 years, folks).

Most of the markers that are normally used to recognize a person (name, age, place) were unreliable. And there was inconsistency with his spouse and children as well. Yikes.


Then along comes my clever and persistent mother. She is not messing around people! She first made a list of the years of all possible census records (Canada, US and states) and then she started going after them. She also dug into those kids and determined that this was the right family. She found various marriage records and obituaries of the girls saying that Peter LeClair and Angeline Parenteau were their parents.


So now she could use that to identify the family – if there was some form of several of the right names together, it was our family: Peter and Angeline with their children Mary, Nelson, Julie, Clarisse, Angeline, Eugenia, Marie Rosalie and Rosalie.


And she was perfectly willing to use the neighbor trick or even find a likely place and go through the census page by page since we couldn’t be sure of what name would turn up in the indexing. And she found the family in Faribault in 1870 and nearby Cannon City from 1875 to 1885! Good work! And this meshes well with another story – she remembers being told that her grandmother used to go stay with relatives in Faribault. Hooray!


Here is a summary – look at those name variations!:

YearCensusName in AncestryAgeLiving In
1851CanadaPierre Leclere24Sherbrooke, Quebec
1861NANANANA
1870USPeter Aclair44Faribault, MN
1875MNPeter LeClair45Cannon City, MN
1880USPeter Hall54Cannon City, MN
1885MNPeter LaCrane65Cannon City, MN
1895WIPeter LaclareNATurtle Lake, WI
1900USPeter Leclaive84Almena, WI
1905WIPeter La Claire86Turtle Lake, WI
1910USPeter Laclair94Turtle Lake, WI
1920USPeter Leclair104Barron, WI

It is kind of incredible to ponder all the potential problems with the census data . . .

  • They might not know the answer to something
  • English versus French
  • Spelling variations
  • Dit names
  • How someone asks a question can influence the response
  • They might lie to hide something or just because they don’t think it is anyone’s business
  • Not everyone could read or write back then
  • Handwriting problems
  • With each person involved there is a chance for more errors (remember playing telephone when we were little?) and several people are in the process: informant, enumerator, original indexer, microfilm quality, database conversion, etc.
  • Records get destroyed
  • Boundaries change
  • Names and ages were not taken so seriously in the past. No one had a plastic ID card that they carried around with them. Most people didn’t even have a birth certificate!

It makes you wonder how this process works so well so much of the time, doesn’t it?

The Basic Facts:
Peter LECLAIR HOULE
b. 27 Jun 1815, Quebec, Canada
d. 13 Oct 1922, Turtle Lake, Barron, WI
Angeline PARENTEAU
b. 6 May 1826, St. Michel, Yamaska, Quebec, Canada
d. 5 Feb 1911, Turtle Lake Baron Co WI
m. 20 Sep 1850, St. Michel, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

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Great Old Photograph of George Holman & Nellie Benschoter

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Pic of George & Nellie Holman Family
l-r: Earl, Nellie, Charles, Zela, Sarah, George, Fay circa 1902 IA or MN


Don’t you love this old photograph!? This is one of my favorites. They look so well-scrubbed and dressed up! And it was over a hundred years ago! I am guessing this photo was taken in turn of the century Minnesota – maybe 1902?


I vaguely remember my great-grandfather Fay. I was only 2 when he died. It is hard to imagine that old man used to be that sweet-looking boy on the right in the photo.
It was fun to learn about this family in early frontier Iowa.

Some more Tidbits:
(This isn’t all verified, these notes are from family stories and obits.)

  • George was a pioneer in Kossuth County IA. He was quoted as saying he thought he broke more prairie in Kossuth than any other living man.
  • He flew through the air with a steer in the cyclone of 1894. Buildings were destroyed. They had to buy another farm and rebuild. The family was scattered among various friends and family until the new house was complete. He traded his land for “160 unproven” in the Red River valley, then decided it was too far to move so rented it out. Bought 160 NW of Swea City IA in 1899. Some family came and offered lots of money, so they sold that farm.
  • They moved among several farms in Iowa and then to Ortonville, MN in 1901. They were pretty prosperous, with lots of buildings and several horse teams. In 1914, George and Nellie moved with Zela, Ruth, and Earl to Roundup, Montana to a large homestead known as Devil’s Basin.
  • George was visiting brother Zina in the hospital and then died of appendicitis or obstruction of the bowels or on his death certificate it says toxemia following thrombosis.
  • Not a lot is known about George’s father Charles and none of us seem to be able to find his parents. He was a cabinet and coffin maker. It says he’s a farmer from Jamaica [VT] on Fred’s birth certificate. Known as a Green Mountain boy. Charles moved to “Indian Country” (Kossouth County IA, north of Algona) in 1866 in a covered wagon. He settled on a homestead on Plum Creek and went to Fort Dodge, 40 miles away, for groceries and supplies (with a handsled in winter).

Thanks to Marlin Albert McGaughey and Dorothy Lee Swanberg for putting together the binder on the Holman-Benschoter Family in 1996 and also for sharing photos with me. That was really fun and helpful back when I was just starting on this genealogical journey.

The Basic Facts:
George Allen HOLMAN
b. 7 Sep 1863, Rockford, Winnebago, Illinois
d. 17 Nov 1923, Algona, Kossuth, IA
Nellie BENSCHOTER
b. 5 May 1867, Algona, Kossuth, IA
d. 22 Nov 1944, Park Rapids, Hubbard, MN
m. 25 Oct 1885, Portland, Kossuth, IA

And George’s Parents:
Charles Thomas HOLMAN
b. 21 Aug 1830, Windham, VT
d. 30 Sep 1881, Algona, Plumcreek, IA
Abigail (Abbott) HARRINGTON
b. 26 Jul 1831, Rutland, Windham, VT
d. 6 Feb 1926, Algona, Plumcreek, IA
m. 23 Feb 1854


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Heritage Pages – Or What to Do with all that Research

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I was getting bored with computer charts and I wanted to create something fun to share, sort of an electronic scrapbook that doesn’t damage any original records or photos. I went searching for early Iowa images online and put these together using Pages on a Mac.

A Few Tips

  • Search for early maps for your place – there are a lot of great old maps online (if Google isn’t working try Cyndislist.com)
  • Brainstorm keywords that apply eg. in this case: frontier iowa, covered wagon, log cabin, prairie
  • Crop the images with a graphics program such as my new favorite: Pixelmator
  • If something isn’t in a good format for your program, take a screenshot (command-shift-3) and then you can crop the screenshot

 

George Holman Heritage thumbnail
George Holman was a pioneer in frontier Iowa (Kossuth)
Charles Holman Heritage Thumbnail
Charles Holman was a pioneer in frontier Iowa (Kossuth)