The old Edmonton newspaper clipping doesn’t include a clear date, but was written sometime well after January 1942 and prior to September 27, 1944.

Its title “Airman Shot Down Twice But ‘Nothing Much to Tell’ emphasizes the key point of the story.

The nutgraph reads “Like nearly all of the fighting men who return after serving in battle, WO. Hurtubise had little to say about his adventures in the air.” It goes on to say:

The airman had been shot down over friendly territory. He crashlanded both times. He admitted he had been wounded slightly but said “it was nothing at all. You’d never know it now.” [1]

The soldier of few words was a distant cousin—the son of my great-grandfather’s brother and my great grandmother’s sister. His name was Paul Emile Hurtubise. At the time of the newspaper article quoted above, he served as a Warrant Officer and pilot in the Royal Air Force.

Hurtubise was interviewed for the story at his 99 Avenue home in Edmonton (address 111204). The unnamed newspaper reporter writes that Hurtubise was shot down twice in North Africa and also served in raids over Sicily and Italy.

His father Gus was still alive at the time of the article, but his mother Ida died sometime prior to the article date, but after the 1921 census .[2] There was one mention on an ancestry family tree that she died in 1922, when he was only three years old, but that isn’t yet confirmed. Another newspaper clipping in French from an unnamed and undated source cites the family as formerly living in Peace River, Alberta.

Hurtubise attended Jesuit College in Edmonton and enlisted with the air force in January 1941. After training with the air force in Ontario, he got his wings in Dunnville, Ontario and went overseas in January 1942.

At the time of the article, he had returned to Canada to serve as a flying instructor, but at some point, he went back to the front.

On September 27, 1944, he crashed a third time in a Spitfire NH while serving with 412 Squadron.

The third time, he died. His remains are buried in plot 2B12 in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany.[3]  He is listed as a pilot officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Service Files of the Second World War Dead.[4] He’s also commemorated on page 341 in the Second World War Book of Remembrance.

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[1] “Airman Shot Down Twice But ‘Nothing Much to Tell’,” Edmonton Journal or Bulletin in its Forty-First Year, but the article describes January 1942 as the distant past.

[2] Alberta Province, Bow River District #2,Enumerated subdistrict 25, uncategorized district 218, section number 7, township 22, range 21, meridian 4, lines 28 to 31, family #69, page 5, Sixth Census of Canada, 1921. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Library and Archives Canada, 2013. Series RG31. Statistics Canada Fonds.

[3] Canadian Virtual War Memorial by Veterans Affairs Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2015, from http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/detail/2055721.

[4] Library and Archives Canada, Service Files of the Second World War – War Dead, 1939-1947, RG 24, Volume 27803, Item 16884, Service number J45927.

Great news for family history writers. Lynn Palermo, the creator behind the Armchair Genealogist and the annual Family History Writing Challenge has created a virtual website for all of us.

The Simcoe Ontario-based genealogist and author has just launched The Family History Writing Studio, a multi-media website with workbooks, webinars, and personal coaching from Palermo.

One can spend a lot of time floundering around trying to sort it all out,” Palermo wrote in a press release distributed earlier today. “Our goal is to help writers break it down into manageable tasks. We also want to help take the fear out of writing and provide family historians with knowledge and self-confidence.”

Her popular newsletter, “Storylines” will be relaunched as part of the Studio next month.

It will have a fresh look but with the same great how-to articles along with tips and tools to help you become a more efficient family history writer,” says the press release. “The new Storylines will reflect the popular Daily Dose newsletter from The Family History Writing Challenge. Storylines will also keep members up to date on all the newest workshops, webinars and courses coming out of the FHWriting Studio.

A series of writing courses will be launched from the studio next September.

Here is how Palermo describes the many products that form part of her studio:

Workbooks –  A series of Family History Writing e-Workbooks designed to build on one another. Each ebook looks at one aspect of writing a family history narrative. Filled with worksheets, they will help writers apply the various elements of creative nonfiction to narratives.

Webinars – On-demand webinars are designed to complement the workbooks. Lynn personally guides writers through exercises and examples to expand on the workbook content. These on-demand webinars are designed to watch over and again at your convenience.

Courses – Coming this September, a variety of online courses,  designed for writers who want to take a more in-depth look at a particular aspect of writing in a more intimate setting will begin. Lessons are delivered in a variety of formats including downloadable worksheets, workbooks, and videos. All courses include private groups and forums to bring the class together for discussions and critiques with the teacher. Classes are small to provide a more personal learning environment.

Personal Coaching – If you’re nervous about sharing in a group environment then personal coaching might be more your style. In the personal coaching section, Lynn offers a couple of options to work privately together, whether it be to brainstorm your stories or book or for a critique of your written narrative.

Writing Groups – The Family History Writing Studio is designed to meet the needs of individuals and writing groups. The Studio offers options  for small genealogical societies that cannot afford an in-house speaker or the cost of a webinar. Information for writing groups and societies can be found here.

Click here, to learn more about the inspiration behind The Family History Writing Studio.

When asked to express why she decided to launch the studio now, Palermo wrote:

Genealogists come to family history writing with a variety of skills and generally with an overwhelming fear of writing. Because there are multiple aspects to writing stories and producing a family history book, we saw a need to create educational tools to address genealogist’s  individual needs on their journey to becoming a writer.

“We also wanted to provide flexibility, because we understand that we all have busy lives and finding time to write is not an easy task to add to one’s schedule,” continued Palermo.

As one of the 1000 genealogists who participate in Palermo’s annual writing challenge, I’m very happy that she’s developing this new tool for all of us.

Congratulations on producing another great resource, Lynn.

Lotbinière

Rediscovering St. John the Evangelist Cemetery

St. John the Evangelist Cemetery dates back to 1845, but over the years, its exact location was lost and the site largely forgotten. Canon Harold Brazel went searching for the cemetery in the 1980s, but never found the spot. Steve Cameron, co-founder of the Irish heritage and history group Coirneal Cealteach, recently took up the search and found exactly where it was located, on St. Margaret’s Range. He took our Rachelle Solomon there to see what remains and to talk about the history of Irish settlers in the region

The family researchers, historians, writers of Quebec who are making a distinct effort to preserve the heritage of the English language families of Quebec.

This week, my choice is: Stephen L. Cameron

There is a short audio sound bite that accompanies the above brief article that  requires Adobe Flash.

http://www.cbc.ca/breakaway/lotbiniere/

Stephen can be reached at Coirneal Cealteach at; tirnanogsa@gmail.com

By Janice Hamilton

Last year, I posted an article on my family history blog (writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca) about Polly Bagg Bush, an American whose brothers Stanley and Abner Bagg were well-known merchants in Montreal in the 1820s and 1830s. You can read it at http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2014/05/polly-bagg-bush-surprise-sister.html. Now, here is the story of Polly’s daughter Mary Sophia Roy Bush, who married into the Lambert Dumont family, owners of vast stretches of forest and farmland in the Saint-Eustache region of Quebec, northwest of Montreal.

It must have been a happy wedding. For a girl from relatively humble American roots to marry the owner of one of Quebec’s vast seigneuries, this must have seemed like a wonderful match. And the groom had recently lost his parents, so family members were no doubt pleased to see him marry.

Unfortunately, there was no fairy-tale ending to this story.

The bride was Sophia Mary Roy Bush. She was born Sophia Mary Bush around 1815, the daughter of William Bush, farmer, of West Haven, Vermont, and Polly Bagg Bush. (Sophia’s grandfather, Phineas Bagg (c. 1750-1823), was our common ancestor.) Her family struggled financially, so Sophia had come to Montreal to live with her aunt and uncle, Sophia Bagg and Gabriel Roy, who had no children of their own.

The groom was Louis Charles Lambert Dumont, born in 1806, the son of Eustache Nicolas Lambert Dumont. Eustache Nicolas had been co-seigneur of Milles-Îles, a judge, militia officer and politician, but he had accumulated crippling debts running the seigneury, and had fallen out with his sister because their father had left them unequal shares of the seigneury.

The Dumont family had been seigneurs of Milles-Îles since 1743. They owned a vast area of wilderness and fertile farmland northwest of Montreal. According to traditions that went back to the time of New France, the habitants, or farmers, paid rent annually to the seigneur, cleared the land and grew their crops. The seigneur built grist mills, saw mills and roads. In 1770, the Dumonts donated land for the construction of a Catholic church and the village of Saint-Eustache grew up next to it. They later built their seigneurial manor house near the church.

Louis Charles’ and Sophia’s wedding did not take place in Saint-Eustache; it was held at the parish church in Saint-Laurent, where the Roy family lived, on September 22, 1835. Saint-Laurent is now a suburb of Montreal, but at that time it was a rural area on the Island of Montreal.

On the bride’s side, no less than eight family members signed the parish record book. Her parents’ names did not appear, so they had probably been unable to come to Montreal for the wedding, but Sophia Bagg and Gabriel Roy signed, as did the bride’s uncle Stanley Bagg, his 15-year-old son, Stanley Clark Bagg, and his mother-in-law, Mary Mitcheson Clark. Sophia’s and Polly’s other brother, Abner Bagg, seems to have been absent, but his wife, Mary Ann Mittleberger, did sign the register.

Among Louis Charles’ relatives who signed the book were his sister Elmire, her husband, Pierre Laviolette, and seven other members of the Laviolette family. The groom’s brother, Louis Sévère Dumont, was also present. Their father had died that April, their mother the previous year, and their twelve other siblings were deceased.

The newlyweds went to live in the seigneurial manor house in Saint-Eustache, but their life was not easy. Louis Charles was learning how to administer the debt-ridden seigneury, arguing over money with his brother and fighting off court challenges over the property by his aunt. Then the couple’s first-born child, a daughter, died in 1837, shortly after her first birthday.

Meanwhile, social and political tensions had been increasing in Lower Canada. When the government refused to approve reforms, an armed rebellion broke out. On December 14, 1837, some 2000 government troops attacked the Patriotes, or rebels, barricaded inside the church at Saint-Eustache, killing some 60 people. The troops burned the church, the convent and much of the village, including the Dumont manor house.

Fearing trouble, the Louis Charles and Sophia had left Saint-Eustache for Montreal in November. When they returned in the spring, they moved into a smaller house down the road. Their second child, Marguerite Virginie Lambert Dumont, was born there on August 21, 1838.

On June 27, 1841 Sophia died suddenly, age 26. The body of Louis Charles, 36, was discovered in his house on November 1. His brother, Louis Sévère, died eight weeks later, age 31. None of the accounts of this family’s history explains these deaths, and several historians seem to suggest that these events were suspicious. Three-year-old Virginie was now an orphan and a future heiress.

What happened to Sophia’s orphaned daughter? Read about Marguerite Virginie Globensky at http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2015/01/the-story-of-marguerite-virginie.html

Notes

I do not know Mary Sophia’s exact birth date, but the priest who buried her on July 1, 1841 wrote that she was age 26 years, three months at the time of death, so she must have been born around the beginning of April, 1815.

Written accounts refer to Sophia Mary as Gabriel Roy’s adopted daughter. So far I have not found legal adoption records, though there may be some. The parish marriage record simply refers to her as the daughter of William Bush and Polly Bagg. Sophia’s birth parents were Protestant, so in 1827, Sophia was baptized Catholic. That church records says she added the name Roy at that time, and it refers to Gabriel Roy and Sophia Bagg as her sponsors. She was age 12 at the time and signed the parish record book herself.

Polly, Sophia, Stanley and Abner Bagg were born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in the 1780s to Phineas Bagg and his wife Pamela Stanley. The Bagg and the Stanley families had lived in Massachusetts and Connecticut since the mid-1600s.

Saint-Laurent parish records show that Sophia Bagg and Gabriel Roy did have one child: Edouard Gabriel Roi, born in 1812, died in 1815.

On the Bagg side, one important family member was missing from the marriage register: Mary Ann Clark, wife of Stanley Bagg, had died the previous year. The Mary Ann Bagg who was present was Abner Bagg`s daughter. Another name on the marriage record was Mary Maugham, who was related to Mary Mitcheson Clark.

There are BMD records for these families in the Drouin Collection on Ancestry.ca, but indexing mistakes and legibility issues make them hard to find. Search for Dush instead of Bush, and for Dumont, not Lambert Dumont. Also, Sophia’s name appears in the records as both Mary Sophia and Sophia Mary, though in French-speaking Quebec she would have been called Marie Sophie.

There are many websites and books concerned with the individuals and events of the Battle of Saint- Eustache. Among those I consulted were the entry on Nicolas-Eustache Lambert Dumont in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (www.biographi.ca/); Elinor Kyte Senior’s Redcoats and Patriotes, The Rebellions in Lower Canada 1837-38, Stittsville, ON: Canada’s Wings, Inc. 1985; André Giroux, Histoire du territoire de la ville de Saint-Eustache, tome 1, L’époque seigneuriale 1683-1854, Québec: Les Éditions GID, 2009; an article about the Dumont house written by the Société de généalogie de Saint-Eustache, http://www.sgse.org/maisons/chron/a00226.html; and an online article by André Giroux, Les héritiers d’Eustache-Nicolas, http://www.patriotes.cc/portal/fr/docs/revuedm/06/revuedm06_6.pdf.

Members of the both the Dumont and Globensky families fought on the government side at the Battle of Saint-Eustache. Sophia`s relations were also involved in putting down the rebellion. Her uncle Stanley Bagg was a major in the 1st Battalion Loyal Montreal Volunteers, and according to a family story, his son, Stanley Clark Bagg, age 17, was an ensign bearer at the Battle of Saint-Eustache, but I have not yet confirmed that.

photo credits: Ancestry.com; Janice Hamilton