Genealogy

BBC RADIO 4 – “This is the Shipping Forecast”

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This piece of music is called “Sailing By” composed by Ronald Binge in 1963, and performed by the Alan Perry/William Gardner Orchestra, and is the version used by the BBC for its late-night early-morning shipping forecasts,

It signals the beginning of the Shipping Forecast, an important part of living on an island and it dates back over 150 years. The Shipping Forecast was established by Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy the first professional weather forecaster, and captain of the HMS Beagle, on which Charles Darwin sailed to South America. (1)

Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy.

Born 5 July 1805, Suffolk, England

Died 30 April 1865 Norwood, England.

In October 1859, the steam clipper Royal Charter was wrecked in a strong storm off Anglesey, Wales 450 people lost their lives. In response to this loss, FitzRoy introduced a warning service for shipping in February 1861, using telegraph communications.

Sadly, FitzRoy didn’t live to see his ideas become a permanent fixture of British life; he killed himself in 1865, in part because of his frustration at failing to set up a regular service. (2)

The shipping service was only discontinued during and following WW1 between 1914 and June 1921. During WW2, it was discontinued between 1939 and 1945.

The shipping forecast is heard by local fishermen all over the British Iles, Scotland Wales and further afield and Its tune is repetitive, assisting in its role of serving as a signal for sailors tuning in to be able to easily identify the radio station.

This delightful music above brings back happy memories for me, listening to the radio as a child in Plymouth Devon England, where I was born. “Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, North Utsire and South Utsire” – coastal regions near Norway – although I had no idea where these exotic names were, it was wonderful to imagine. 

Just look at some of the unusual names on the map, it was always a thrill to hear ‘Plymouth’ mentioned.

The sea areas match the forecast areas used by other North Sea countries, though some names differ. The Dutch KNMI and Norwegian counterpart, names the Forties “Fladen Ground”, while Météo-France uses “Pas-de-Calais” for Dover, “Antifer” for Wight “Casquests” for Portland and “Ouessant” or ‘Ushant” for my home town, Plymouth. Because of the unusual name for Plymouth, I also learned a fascinating piece of French history.

The Ouessant (or Ushant) is a breed of domestic sheep (Could that be a French insult?) from the island of Ouessant off the coast of Brittany but also the name of a French Submarine). Ushant is a French island at the southwestern end of the English Channel which marks the westernmost point of metropolitan France.  

It belongs to Brittany and in medieval times, Léon. In lower tiers of government, it is a commune in the Finistère department. It is the only place in Brittany, save for Brittany itself, with a separate name in English.

Even today, if I cannot sleep, I still listen to BBC Radio 4 in the early hours of the day and catch the Shipping Forecast as it lulls me to sleep.

Unfortunately, from this year, 2024, it is expected that the Shipping Forecast will no longer be broadcast on long wave (LW) due to the closure of the LW platform. This announcement was updated on the 4th of April 2023 due to the BBC amending their original announcement on the future of the LW Shipping Forecast. The LW broadcasts are expected to end in 2024, but a final decision has not yet been made. (4)

Listeners are reassured by the thought that, somewhere out at sea, British fishers are patiently waiting by their radios to find out whether there is a gale warning in Rockall or Cromarty. However, the slightly less romantic reality, according to Mike Cohen of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, is that his members have not needed Radio 4 for decades.

Modern fishers have far more accurate devices to warn them about the wind and rain: “Even the small 15-metre boats in Bridlington have satellite internet these days. I’ve had video calls from people in the middle of the sea.” (5)

Some interesting quotes below about the shipping forecast: 

“The Shipping Forecast is immensely popular with the British public; it attracts listeners in the hundreds of thousands daily – far more than actually require it.[18]

In 1995, a plan to move the late-night broadcast by 12 minutes triggered angry newspaper editorials and debates in the UK Parliament and was ultimately scrapped.[19]

Similar outcry greeted the Met Office’s decision to rename Finisterre to FitzRoy, but in that case, the decision was carried through.[20]

Peter Jefferson, who read the Forecast for 40 years until 2009, says that he received letters from listeners across the UK saying that the 0048 broadcast helped them get to sleep after a long day.[4]

The Controller of BBC Radio 4, Mark Damazer, attempted to explain its popularity: 

“It scans poetically. It’s got a rhythm of its own. It’s eccentric, it’s unique, it’s English. It’s slightly mysterious because nobody really knows where these places are. It takes you into a faraway place that you can’t really comprehend unless you’re one of these people bobbing up and down in the Channel.[18]“

Zeb Soanes, a regular Shipping Forecast reader, described it thus:

“To the non-nautical, it is a nightly litany of the sea. It reinforces a sense of being islanders with a proud seafaring past. Whilst the listener is safely tucked-up in their bed, they can imagine small fishing-boats bobbing about at Plymouth or 170ft waves crashing against Rockall.[21]“

….and many more here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast

SOURCES

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Shipping_Forecast#Coastal_weather_stations_and_inshore_waters

(2) https://www.countrylife.co.uk/out-and-about/10-things-about-the-shipping-forecast-164341

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushant

(4) https://www.pbo.co.uk/news/no-more-shipping-forecast-on-lw-from-2024-75844

(5) https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jun/03/shipping-forecast-radio-4-long-wave-broadcast

Illegitimacy, Scotland

Who is Henry Boggie?

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Henry Boggie is my great-grandfather, but he was never really part of the family.

My grandmother, Elspeth Mill Boggie Orrock was born in 1875 in Arbroath in County Angus, Scotland. Her mother, Annie Linn Orrock, registered the birth and gave Elspeth her surname Orrock but she also gave Elspeth the name Boggie. The registration notes that Elspeth was illegitimate as her parents were not married.1

In 1881, when Elspeth was 6 years old, Annie Linn, still residing at 32 East Mill Wynd where she had given birth to Elspeth, instituted a civil paternity suit against Henry Boggie in the Sheriff Court.  On 11 September 1882, a decree was issued by the Sheriff Court, stating that the birth registration be corrected to include Henry Boggie as Elspeth’s father.2

Paternity cases were usually attempts to make the father pay child support and we can assume that this is probably why Annie Linn sued Henry for paternity.3 There is no evidence that Henry and Annie every lived together.

The censuses show that Henry lived with his mother until at least 1891. He worked as a mason and remained in Arbroath his entire life. He died fairly young, at 53. The registration of his birth says that he was single.4 It is unlikely that he fathered any other children.

The records indicate that Henry led a quiet life, living in the same city all his life. However, Henry did practice an unusual sport, pedestrianism. In the 19th century, he would have been called a ped. At the time, pedestrianism was popular in Scotland and elsewhere. The six-day, 450-mile race usually began on a Sunday at 1:00 a.m. It started after midnight on Sunday because public amusements were prohibited on Sundays. The athletes walked for six days in a row, in a circle and had to complete the 450 miles. They could run, walk, or crawl. They ate, drank, and napped in little tents at the side. 5

Bloomberg, When Walking was a Spectator Sport, 7 August 2015

The walking matches were a spectator sport, with music and refreshments. It was like a fair. Gambling was also part of the attraction. There were lots of possibilities to place bets, such as the first pedestrian to drop out or the first to achieve a set number of miles. At the time, champagne was considered a stimulant. Some of the trainers (yes, they had trainers) would encourage the participants to drink copious amounts of it.6

Henry seems to have participated in several pedestrian tournaments. He was described as one of the “crack” walkers who participated in the Dundee tournament when he joined the Aberdeen Walking Match in December 1879. It took place in Cooke’s Circus, an equestrian establishment so we can assume that the participants walked around the equestrian arena. Prize money totalled £40 (about £6,000 today) and the winner won the champion belt of Scotland.7

On March 8, 1880, Henry competed in the Perth Grand Pedestrian Tournament. The thirty-three participants hailed from England and Scotland. The format of this tournament was that the men would walk or run between eleven o’clock in the morning and stop at eleven o’clock in the evening. First prize was £25 (about £3,800 today). Jostling, hindering another participant, or using bad language would result in disqualification.  Reserved seats were two shillings, second seats were one shilling, and third seats were a sixpence. A musical band was in attendance. Gambling was prohibited.8

The newspaper articles that list Henry’s participation in the Dundee, Perth, and Aberdeen tournaments are just a glimpse into this interesting sport. Not only did the participants travel to compete in these tournaments, the six-day races would have been quite exciting and exhilarating. There is no indication whether or not Henry ever won prize money, but still, he was a “crack” competitor.

  1. Scotland’s People, National Records of Scotland, Statutory Registers of Birth, 1875, District of Arbroath, County of Forfar, Elspeth Mill Boggie Orrock, retrieved 12 January 2018.
  2. Register of Corrected Entries for the District of Arbroath in the County of Forfar, dated 11 September 1882, directing that the defendant, Henry Boggie, Mason, should appear on the registration of birth of Elspeth Mill Boggie Orrock, in possession of author.
  3. Traces. Uncovering the Past, Tracing the Fathers of Illegitimate Children in Scottish Court Records, 3 December 2020, https://tracesmagazine.com.au/2020/12/tracing-the-fathers-of-illegitimate-children-in-scottish-court-records/, accessed 22 January 2024.
  4. Scotland’s People, National Records of Scotland, Statutory Registers of Death, 1905, District of Arbroath, County of Forfar, Henry Boggie, retrieved 22 January 2024.
  5. BBC, The Strange 19th century sport that was cooler than football, Zaria Gorvett, 28 July 2021, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210723-the-strange-19th-century-sport-that-was-cooler-than-football, accessed 22 January 2024.
  6. NPR,  In The 1870s And ’80s, Being A Pedestrian Was Anything But, 3 April 2014, accessed 23 January 2024.
  7. Aberdeen Press and Journal, 29 December 1879, page 4, accessed through British Newspapers on Findmypast, 23 January 2024.
  8. Dundee Courrier and Angus, 8 March 1880, page 1, accessed through British Newspapers on Findmypast, 23 January 2024.
Genealogy

Great-Grandfather Thomas Bevan

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Thomas Bevan Royal Navy, Australia 1908

I was too young to know my maternal Great-Grandfather, Thomas Bevan. However, I do have some memories of him – mainly in his casket – in the front room of his house at number nine, Pellow Place Stoke, Plymouth Devon. The coffin stayed in the house for 7 days before the burial. My gran said I had to kiss him goodbye so that I would have pleasant memories of him and no nightmares!

Thomas was born in the little ancient town of Okehampton in West Devon on the Northern edge of Dartmoor and had a population of less than 6,000 in 2011.

The name Okehampton means settlement or estate (tun) on the River Okement and was founded by the Saxons. The earliest written record of the settlement is from 980 AD. The early form of the name Okementone is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and later in 1167 and 1275 as Okemento(a).

Like many towns in the West Country, Okehampton grew on the medieval wool trade. Notable buildings in the town include Okehampton Castle, now a ruin, established by the Norman Sheriff of Devon, Baldwin FitzGilbert. following a revolt in Devon against Norman rule.

The 17th-century Okehampton Town Hall.

My Granny used to pronounce it as “Okenton”. Apparently, as late as the 1930’s the older people of the district pronounced it “Okington” or “Okenton” I asked Granny why she said it that way, and she said that was how her Father pronounced it. (1)

On the 18th of October, 1893, when Thomas was 18 years and 10 months old, he joined the Devonshire Regiment for ‘Short Service’.

The term “short service” refers to a type of enlistment in the British Army, introduced in 1870. It allowed soldiers to serve for a shorter time than the standard 12 years of service. Thomas served for eight years and then joined the Royal Navy at age 25.

According to his records, when he joined the Royal Navy for a 12-year engagement on the 20th of March 1900, two years were added to his birth year. He was born in 1875 but his Royal Navy service Records show 1877.

Thomas became a Cooper and Master Carpenter on HMS Vivid II. This was a shore establishment, in the Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth, where I was born and lived. He may have learned of the rules regulations and history of the Royal Navy whilst there and probably picked up the basics of his trade too. According to his Service Record below, he served on many different ships and finished his service 12 years later, also on HMS Vivid III. (2)

Thomas Bevan’s Royal Navy Service Record

Granny told me that Thomas made and repaired wooden barrels, casks and other containers. The daily Rum ration for the Royal Navy, called the ‘tot’ for the crew was stored in a barrel such as Thomas would have made. The daily tot was abolished in 1970; I remember it made headlines in England. The reason was concerns that the intake of strong alcohol would lead to unsteady hands when working machinery.

A Scarce Royal Navy Rum Barrel made of English oak painted overall in blue faded to green on the front. Bound with four iron bands, the front was painted with post-1901 Royal Arms and R.N. and retained trace imprints of earlier bands.

Thomas lived with his wife, Lilian, their daughter Edith O’Bray (my Granny) and her husband Percival Victor (my Grandfather) in the early 1950’s in Plymouth at number nine Pellow Place Stoke. I lived with my parents five doors down from them at number four.

Although my Granny, Edith was born in 1900, her mother Lillian was single. Lillian’s father, a gardener named Thomas Symons, went to the Royal Navy to find the child’s father. Thomas had no idea he was a father as he was at sea for three years. When Thomas did arrive home on HMS Cleopatra in 1904 he married Lillian and the family went on to have six more children. Granny was already four years old then. The following link explains those circumstances.

https://genealogyensemble.com/2015/11/18/the-family-secret/

My Granny, his daughter, told me that her father tragically died in her house, whilst asleep in his chair. Everyone had gone shopping and when they arrived home, the house smelled of gas and Thomas was dead. Apparently, gas had leaked into the house, killing him. She told me he was a kind, quiet man.

The photo below of him at 71, was taken about one year before his unfortunate death on the 31st of May, 1947.

Great-Grandad Thomas Bevan

SOURCES

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okehampton

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vivid_(1891)

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okehampton_Town_Hall

The Royal Navy in the year 1900 had several tradesmen who were responsible for the maintenance of the ships and their equipment. One such trade was that of a cooper. A cooper is someone who makes wooden, staved vessels, held together with wooden or metal hoops and possessing flat ends or heads. Examples of a cooper’s work include casks, barrels, buckets, tubs, butter churns, vats, hogsheads, firkins, tierces, rundlets, puncheons, pipes tuns butts, troughs pins and breakers. 

Genealogy

Bottles, Boats and Blocks

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by Claire Lindell

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many enthusiastic young men with entrepreneurial spirits set out to make their fortunes. L.J Jodouin, my maternal; grandfather was among them. It was said that where there was a need he found a way to fulfill it. L.J.’s business ventures were a great success.

Louis Joseph Jodouin was born in 1861 in Montebello, Quebec, the third of five children of Joseph Jodouin and Leocadie Fortin. When he was a young man his family moved to Hull, Quebec where he was schooled by the Christian Brothers and attended college in nearby Ottawa.

In 1891, at the age of twenty-seven, he went to Sudbury, Ontario where in nearby Copper Cliff prospectors found nickel and mines were being opened. It is there he started his first enterprise, L. J. Jodouin Bottling Works. With six employees he bottled and sold ginger ale, lemon soda, cream soda, and mineral water. Due to the influx of miners, the Sudbury area was a new and growing community, and L.J.’s business was profitable

            Louis and Louisa

              1893

With financial security assured the young man decided it was time to seek a bride and start a family. Although the couple had the same grandfather and different grandmothers, they received dispensation and were married in Saint Columbkille Cathedral in Pembroke, Ontario in January of 1893. The young couple settled in Sudbury where they built their home and raised nine children, three boys and six girls.

In 1903 the bottling works were sold to the Taylor and Pringle Company of Owen Sound. His next venture was an ice business. He built a huge icehouse in the rear of his home along with a stable for the horses. At the time people had wooden iceboxes where the top section was lined with metal and large blocks of ice were placed within. Foods that needed to be kept cold were placed on shelves below. Ice was delivered regularly in the same manner as milk and bread from house to house by horse-drawn wagons and later years by truck.

Over the years Louis Joseph had many enterprises. He built a boathouse on Lake Ramsey, a large lake nearby. He rented boats and canoes. He ran a water taxi service and a huge gasoline-powered barge to transport large quantities of building and personal supplies for the people building cottages along the lake. The boat house was also used for storing huge blocks of ice during the winter months.  

The ice business was my grandfather’s lifelong enterprise and the most successful. A key to the success was the annual contracts with both railways. The Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National Railways. This arrangement continued until the mid-1940 when the trains acquired powered refrigeration.

My cousin Madelyn Percival described how Grandfather would spend his days.

  “In the winter months, Grandfather would often go out on Lake Ramsey to oversee the ice operations wearing his long raccoon coat and fur hat and fur mitts, but for the most part, he ran the business from a rocking chair near the dining room window overlooking the backyard where the horses were kept so he could see all the action!”

He was a good employer, and an active citizen, a town councilor, a school trustee, a voluntary fireman, and a member of the Board of Health. He played in the town band, sang in the church choir, and was an avid lacrosse player until he was hit in the head and lost his hearing.

“L.J. bought one of the first motor cars in Sudbury, although he could not drive because of his deafness. His eldest daughter, Alice Percival was the first woman driver in Sudbury and for many years she was his chauffeur.”

            In 1943 on the eve of his seventy-ninth birthday Grandpa Jodouin passed away. His son, Arthur, continued the ice business into the late 1950s and early 60s supplying the many cottagers in the area until electricity became available.

References:

  • Ancestry.com Quebec, Canada Viral and Church Records. Drouin Collection 1921-1968 database online.
  • Sudbury Star newspaper article., Author, Gary Peck. “The Not-so-distant Past, Jodouin Steam Soda Water Works.” October 2, 1981
  • Ancestry.com. Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records. Drouin Collection 1802-1967 database online.
  • Archives of Ontario, Toronto, Canada Registration of Marriage, 1869-1928 Series MS032:Reel 70 source ancestry.com and Genealogical Research Library( Brampton, Ontario, Canada Ontario Canada Marriages Ancestry.com Operations In.,2010.
  • Excerpts from an interview with the author and her cousin Madelyn Percival Smith , Louis Joseph’s granddaughter, Toronto Canada, August 2010.
  • Below is a video: cutting ice on Lake Ramsey

This biographical sketch of my maternal grandfather was first published in our book “Beads in a Necklace” published in 2017 by our Genealogy Ensemble group. It seems appropriate to include it in our ongoing blog.

Genealogy, Quebec

Napoleon Bruneau – A Tragic End

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Napoleon Bruneau

Napoleon Bruneau died tragically on a Sunday night in 1916. The La Presse newspaper reported the train accident at Delson Junction on the CPR line but no details were given. This was not far from his home in St-Constant, Quebec. Was he coming home or going to Montreal? What happened? Did he fall on the tracks? He was almost 72 years old so he should have known better than to get in front of a train!

He and his twin sister Mathilde were the 5th and 6th children of Barnabe Bruneau and Sophie Marie Prudhomme. He lived his whole life in St-Constant, south of Montreal. It seems he inherited the family farm after his parent’s deaths. 

Napoleon and his sister Sophie Bruneau

Descriptions of Napoleon included being a farmer, a Free Will Baptist, a veterinarian and a justice of the peace. He was appointed a justice of the peace in 1902 for the district of Montreal which included St-Constant. It is possible he studied to be a veterinarian and didn’t just learn as an apprentice. A school for veterinarians was established in Quebec in 1866 with one of his cousins, Orphyr Bruneau as one of the lecturers. In 1876 courses were also offered in French when the school was under the McGill University Department of Agriculture. The Veterinary school, later associated with The University of Montreal, moved to Oka in 1928 and to its present location in Saint-Hyacinthe in 1947.

One would think that a tall handsome man with many interests and a farm would easily find a wife, so I found it strange that he didn’t marry until he was 66. His brother, Reverand Ismael Bruneau performed the ceremony at his Protestant Church, L’Eglise St Jean Baptiste de Montreal. Napoleon’s wife Emilie Beauchamp was 42 at the time, so it isn’t surprising that they didn’t have children. Emilie was born in Grenville, Quebec, on the Ottawa River. She probably met Napoleon in Montreal where she lived with her parents and sister Lily. Emilie had an uncle who was a French Protestant minister so it is quite possible that they met through the church.

My great-grandfather, Ismael Bruneau was upset with Emilie after Napoleon died as he wrote in a letter to his son Sydney.

“You know your Uncle Napoleon made me the heir of all his estate except for $500, which I must give after the death of his widow as follows; $300 to my sister Helene, $100 to my sister Virginie and $100 to my sister Elmire. But his widow has everything during her lifetime. As she is a great deal younger than I, it is almost probable that I shall never enjoy this myself. They say she is already neglecting the house which is going to ruin and according to the law she must maintain it in good condition as it was at the time of the death of her late husband.”

Unfortunately, Ismael didn’t enjoy any of his inheritance as he died two years after Napoleon. Emilie only died in 1951. I don’t know what happened to the property as she married Emilien Frechette in 1929 and he had his own house and farm. Emilien had been married to two other Bruneau women, Emilina Bruneau, Ismael’s sister and and Ida Girod Bruneau Ismael’s wife.

Napoleon was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery with his sister Helene, her husband Celestin Lachance and their daughter Antoinette and not with his twin Mathilde in the Baptist cemetery in Grand Ligne. Emilie isn’t buried with Napoleon or even with Emilien Frechette and his first two wives, rather her final resting place is with her parents in the Beauchamp Cemetery in Marelan in the Laurentians near Grenville.

I haven’t yet found answers to questions about his tragic end.

Notes:

Napoleon Bruneau Obituary: LaPresse January 16, 1916.

Napoleon Bruneau’s death determined to be accidental. The Montreal Gazette, Tuesday, January 25, 1916. Page 7.

when searching for information on the train accident I found another Napoleon Bruneau who was also killed by a train. This accident happened in Huntington, Pennsylvania in 1908. He was decapitated and horribly mangled.

Appointed Justice of the Peace: Montreal Star Monday, June 23, 1902. page 10. Accessed Newspapers.com March 20, 2023.

Letter from Ismael Bruneau to his son Sydney Bruneau. Quebec, February 21, 1917. A copy in the hands of the author.

Emilie Beauchamp burial https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/167478027/emily-esther-beauchamp

accessed November 25, 2023.

Orphyr Bruneau one of Napoleon’s first cousins the son of his father Barnabe’s brother Medard.

There are notarial documents, Quittances which are receipts where Napoleon gave most of his siblings 300 piastres each, beginning two years after his mother died. These dispersals occurred from 1894 to 1904. Some received less and I haven’t found the documents for his sisters Aglae and Sophie. His brother Selene had already died and had no heirs. I am unsure if these were money paid to his siblings because he received the farm.

Three hundred piastres were 300 dollars. This would be the equivalent of over $10,000 today. Quebec used the word piastres on official documents into the 20th century. Even later it was used as a slang equivalent to the English word buck.

New France, Quebec

Montreal and the Ville Marie Fire of 1734

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Update: January 24, 2024

Since this story was originally published, the City of Montreal has added a poster next to Metro Champs de Mars to make it clear that Marie-Josèphe Angélique’s park will be within the Place de Montrealais!

Thanks to Annie for letting me know, and thanks for everyone who made sure that her story is not forgotten!

Original Story

For an hour on the first cold day of the year last month, I wandered around City Hall looking for the memorial park named after an enslaved woman whose torture led to her conviction for arson in 1734. She was then ridiculed, hanged, and her body was burned to ashes and thrown to the wind.

I couldn’t find it.

I’m not sure what happened from the time the park was created in 2012 to today, thirteen-and-a-half years later, but the one-time park still appears on Google Maps. In person, I couldn’t find anything to indicate where it might be.

According to various articles on the web, a green space just west of Champs de Mars métro station honours Marie-Josèphe Angélique’s memory. The official inauguration of the park took place on Aug. 23, International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, 2012.

As I walked through the area last month, the one-time park seemed to be encompassed in a massive construction site underway for Place des Montréalais, a new public space being created next to the Champ des Mars metro on Viger Street. The posters on site explaining the current project included nothing about Marie-Josèphe Angélique.

Despite being honoured with an award-winning film, a bronze plaque, lilies and a presentation by Governor General Michaelle Jean in 2006, and a public park created by the city of Montreal in 2012, she’s disappeared again.

Before this experience, I was already struggling to see Angélique as the symbol of freedom and resistance she serves for many, but I don’t want her to be forgotten. Did she set the fire or was she a convenient scapegoat? If she didn’t, who did? As I began exploring her story last month as part of a project for NANOWRIMO (the National Novel Writing Month), she served as a reminder of the kind of unnecessary suffering a biased political, policing and justice system can create. Despite the fact that she was a victim of slavery, hatred, spite, racism, class bullying and the worst that a mob could throw at her, her spirit remained strong and unrelenting.

Angélique proclaimed her innocence until the day she was tortured, throughout the court case, and through questioning. Despite that, three weeks after the fire, she was hanged, ridiculed publicly, then burned with her ashes tossed into the wind. Clearly, the authorities at the time wanted her punishment to be seen and remembered.

I read the details about Marie-Josèphe Angélique’s case on Torture and the Truth, a fabulous website set up in 2006 by multiple people, including one of my genealogical mentors, Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne and one of my historian mentors, Dorothy W. Williams. Both of these women have researched, written, spoken and taught many people about the history of Montreal and why studying it is so important.1

The site is one of thirteen different “historical cold cases” established for classrooms across Canada. It was created through the work of six writers, a photographer, an artist, and two translators collaborating with six funding agencies, seven production partners, and 15 archive and museum partners.

It is one of the best historical websites I’ve ever read. If you do nothing other than read through this site, you will get a good overview of the community, the victim arsonist, and life in early Montreal.

As I read about Angélique’s story, she sounded like just the kind of person anyone would like to get rid of. She was a woman who told people she would burn them alive in their homes. She said so to her owner for refusing to grant her freedom, to other slaves for making her work harder than she wanted and to others too. To anyone who slighted her, she threatened the worst thing she could think of. She would burn their homes down.

When 45 houses in her small community did in fact burn down, people blamed her. In retrospect, it may have been an accidental kitchen fire that caused the flames, but her words came back to haunt them all.

The fire began at 7 p.m. on a Saturday evening in spring, April 10, 1734. In only three hours, it destroyed 45 homes and businesses on Rue Saint Paul. Even the Hôtel-Dieu hospital and convent, where people initially took shelter, burned to the ground. Hundreds of people were left in the cold; supplies from many merchants burned, never to be seen again.

Plus, who knows how many caches of fur got wiped out. At that time, Montreal was the centre of the fur trade, more than half of which was illegal trading with the Dutch and English communities in Albany, Boston and other communities to the south. According to a 1942 thesis by Alice Jean Elizabeth Lunn, furs were stored in the backs of shops and even buried just beyond the Montreal wall, which was still under construction at that time, in order to be shipped without being seen by New France authorities. A lot of money went up in smoke that day.2

Everyone in Montreal knew about the fire, given that all the church bells throughout the city began ringing when it started and continued until it was over and people were safe again. Although stone buildings existed at the time, most of the buildings were made of wood; fire could destroy them all.

I had ancestors who lived in Montreal then, the Hurtubise clan on my father’s mothers side. One of them, Jean Hurtubise, the grandson of Étiennette Alton and Marin Hurtubese, was thirty-nine years old, ten years older than Angélique when the fire took place. He and his wife Marie-Jeanne (Marie-Anne ou Marianne) Tessereau had been married for seven years in 1734.

Jean was born in Ville Marie and lived in Montreal for his entire lifetime, so he and his family would have experienced the fire, at least from a distance. They certainly would have seen the ordinance compelling witnesses to appear, given that “it was posted and cried out everywhere in the city and its suburbs.”

Jean and his family farmed a 3×20 arpent property they bought three years earlier from Raphael Beauvais and Elisabeth Turpin on Rue Côte Saint-Antoine.”3 The property was in a part of Montreal that was considered the countryside at that time. Their home was then one of four wood houses on Côte Saint-Antoine in 1731.4

Given that the area was still very rural, and on a major hill, I can’t help but wonder. Did they see the smoke rising into the sky as the hospitals and 45 other buildings in Ville Marie were destroyed?

They certainly had strong links to Ville Marie, particularly the hospital. His grandmother, Etionnette Alton, had died there in her 84th year twelve years earlier. They couldn’t have helped wondering what would happen to others like her, being treated in the hospital that the fire destroyed. Were they among the crowd clamouring for revenge? Did they go to Ville Marie to see Angelique hanged? Did they watch her corpse burning? Did they see her ashes spread into the wind? Did they care at all?

I can’t help but imagine that the controversial hanging effected all 2000 people who lived on the island that year. Five years after Angélique’s death, Jean built Hurtubise House, a storey-and-a-half fieldstone structure on land originally rented by his father in 1699 on Mount Royal. The family built the gabled home out of stone to protect themselves from fire, as required by a law passed the summer after Angelique’s death. You can still visit the home today.5

Sources

1 Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse, Léon Robichaud, Dorothy W. Williams, Marquise Lepage, and Monique Dauphin, “Torture and Truth: Angélique and the Burning of Montreal,” the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History Project, 2006, https://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/angelique/accueil/indexen.html.

2 Lunn, A. J. E. Economic Development in New France, 1713-1760. McGill University, 1942, https://books.google.ca/books?id=rtcxvwEACAAJ.

3 Roy, Pierre-Georges,, Inventaire des greffes des notaires du Régime français, Québec, R. Lefebvre, Éditeur officiel du Québec, 1942, 28 vol. ; 25-27 cm, Collections de BAnQ.

4 MacKinnon, J. S. The Settlement and Rural Domestic Architecture of Côte Saint-Antoine, 1675-1874. Université de Montréal, 2004. https://books.google.ca/books?id=IEJ4zQEACAAJ.

5 https://hcq-chq.org/the-hurtubise-house/

Montreal, Quebec

The Bagg Family Dispute, part 1: Stanley Clark Bagg’s Estate

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Written by Janice Hamilton, with research by Justin Bur

Note: there were three generations named Stanley Bagg, so for the sake of brevity I use their initials: SCB for generation two, Stanley Clark Bagg, and RSB for generation three, Robert Stanley Bagg.

   Be careful what you wish for, especially when it comes to writing a will and placing conditions on how your descendants are to use their inheritance. That was a lesson my ancestors learned the hard way.

It took a special piece of provincial legislation in 1875 and what appears to have been a family crisis before these issues were finally resolved many years later. 

The estate at the heart of these problems was that of the late Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873), or SCB. He had owned extensive properties on the Island of Montreal. Several adjacent farms, including Mile End Farm and Clark Cottage Farm, stretched from around Sherbrooke Street, along the west side of Saint Lawrence Street (now Saint-Laurent Boulevard), while three other farms extended along the old country road, north to the Rivière des Prairies. SCB had inherited most of this land from his grandfather John Clark (1767-1827).  Although he trained as a notary, SCB did not practise this profession for long, but made a living renting and selling these and other smaller properties.  

This map shows the extent of the late Stanley Clark Bagg’s properties, shaded in beige, in 1875, when an inventory was made of his estate. These properties are overlaid over a modern map of the island of Montreal. At that time, the actual city of Montreal was south of Sherbrooke Street, extending down to the banks of the Saint Lawrence River. The slope of Mount Royal is just west of the SCB estate. Map created by Justin Bur, based on two open data sources: physical geography from CanVec, Natural Resources Canada and modern streets from Geobase, City of Montreal.

At age 52, SCB suddenly died of typhoid. In his will, written in 1866, he named his wife, Catharine Mitcheson Bagg (1822-1914), as the main beneficiary of his estate, to use and enjoy for her lifetime, and then pass it on to their descendants. He also made her an executor, along with his son Robert Stanley Bagg (RSB, 1848-1912). There were two other executors: Montreal notary J.E.O. Labadie and his wife’s brother, Philadelphia lawyer McGregor J. Mitcheson.

But SCB’s estate was large and complicated, and no one was prepared to handle it. RSB had recently graduated in law from McGill and was continuing his studies in Europe at the time of his father’s death. As for Catharine, she became involved in decisions regarding property sales over the years, but she must have felt overwhelmed at first.

Notary J.A. Labadie spent two years doing an inventory of all of SCB’s properties, listing where they were located, their boundaries, and when and from whom they had been acquired, but he did not mention two key documents. One of these was the marriage contract between SCB’s parents, the other was John Clark’s will.

John Clark, a butcher, was born in County Durham, England and came to Montreal around 1797. Bagg family collection.

In the marriage contract, John Clark gave a wedding present to his daughter, Mary Ann Clark (1795-1835), and her husband, Stanley Bagg (1788-1853): a stone house and about 22 acres of land on Saint Lawrence Street. Clark named the property Durham House. But it was not a straight donation; it was a substitution, similar to a trust, to benefit three generations: Mary Ann’s and Stanley’s child (SCB), grandchildren (RSB and his four sisters) and the great-grandchildren. Each intervening generation was to have the use and income from the property, and was responsible for transmitting it to the next generation. That meant SCB could not bequeath it in his will because his children automatically gained possession, and so on, with the final recipients being the great-grandchildren.

In his 1825 will, Clark had made an even more restrictive condition regarding the Mile End Farm. This time the substitution was intended to be perpetual “unto the said Mary Ann Clark and unto her said heirs, issue of her said marriage and to their lawful heirs entailed forever.”

Perhaps Clark imposed these conditions on his descendants for sentimental reasons. Durham House was his daughter’s family home, and Stanley Bagg had probably courted Mary Ann on the Mile End Farm while he was running a tavern there with his father. Or maybe Clark simply believed that these provisions would give the best financial protection to his future descendants. SCB must have thought this was a good idea because his will also included a substitution of three generations.

Clark and SCB did not foresee, however, that the laws regarding inheritances would change. In fact, the provincial government changed the law regarding substitutions a few months after SCB wrote his will. This new law limited substitutions to two generations. Meanwhile, when SCB died in 1873, no one seems to have remembered that the substituted legacies Clark had created even existed. 

Stanley Clark Bagg, Montreal, QC, 1863, William Notman, McCord Stewart Museum #1-5660.1

Real estate sales practices also changed over the years. Clark had written a codicil specifying that any lot sales from the Mile End Lodge property, where he and his wife lived and which he left to her, were subject to a rente constituée. The buyer paid the vendor an amount once a year (usually 6% of the redemption value), but it was like a mortgage that could never be paid off. In the early 1800s this had been a common practice in Quebec, designed to provide funds to the seller’s family members for several generations.

SCB similarly stipulated that nothing on the Durham House property could be sold outright, but only by rente constituée. By the time he died, some of the properties located near the city outskirts were becoming attractive to speculators and to people wanting to build houses or businesses, but the inconvenience of a rente constituée was discouraging sales. It became clear that the executors had to resolve the issue.

They asked the provincial legislature to pass a special law. On February 23, 1875, the legislature assented to “An Act to authorize the Executors of the will of Stanley C. Bagg, Esq., late of the City of Montreal, to sell, exchange, alienate and convey certain Real Estate, charged with substitution in said will, and to invest the proceeds thereof.” (According to the Quebec Official Gazette, this was one of about 100 acts that received royal assent that day after having been passed in the legislative session to incorporate various companies and organizations, approve personal name changes, amend articles in the municipal and civil codes, etc.)

This act allowed the executors of the SCB estate, after obtaining authorization from a judge of the superior court, and in consultation with the curator to the substitution, to sell land outright, provided that the proceeds were reinvested in real estate or mortgages for the benefit of the estate. In other words, the rente constituée was no longer required, and sales previously made by the estate were considered valid.

No more changes were made until 1889, when family members realized that part of SCB’s property actually belonged to his children, and not to his estate, and a family dispute erupted. The story of how they resolved this issue and remained on good terms will be posted soon.

This article is also posted on my personal family history blog, http://www.writinguptheancestors.ca

Notes and Sources:

I could not have written this article without the help of urban historian Justin Bur. Justin has done a great deal of historical research on the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal (around Saint-Laurent Blvd. and Mount Royal Ave.) and is a longtime member of the Mile End Memories/Memoire du Mile-End community history group (http://memoire.mile-end.qc.ca/en/). He is one of the authors of Dictionnaire historique du Plateau Mont-Royal (Montreal, Éditions Écosociété, 2017), along with Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Bernard Vallée and Joshua Wolfe. His most recent article about the Bagg family is La famille Bagg et le Mile End, published in Bulletin de la Société d’histoire du Plateau-Mont-Royal, Vol. 18, no. 3, Automne 2023.

Documents referenced:

Mile End Tavern lease, Jonathan Abraham Gray, n.p. no 2874, 17 October 1810

Marriage contract between Stanley Bagg and Mary Ann Clark, N.B. Doucet, n.p. no 6489, 5 August 1819/ reg. Montreal (Ouest) 66032

John Clark will, Henry Griffin, n.p. no 5989, 29 August 1825

Stanley Clark Bagg will, J.A. Labadie, n.p. no 15635, 7 July 1866

Stanley Clark Bagg inventory, J.A. Labadie, n.p. no 16733, 7 June 1875

Quebec legislation: 38 Vict. cap. XCIV, assented to 23 February 1875

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Stanley Clark Bagg’s Early Years,” Writing Up the Ancestors, Jan. 8, 2020, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2020/01/stanley-clark-baggs-early-years.html

Janice Hamilton, “John Clark, 19th Century Real Estate Visionary,” Writing Up the Ancestors,   May 22, 2019, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2019/05/john-clark-19th-century-real-estate.html

Filles de Roi, Genealogy, Quebec

My French Connection -or why my grandfather had a lot of GAUL

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My very Gallic Grandpapa, Jules Crepeau (1879-1938) proud descendant of the Redones of Eastern Brittany in the Iron Age, among other Gallic Tribes.

Judging from her family tree, my late mother, Marie Marthe Crepeau was a bona fide French Canadian de souche.1

Her father, Jules Crepeau, son of an entrepreneur painter from Laval and her mother, Maria Roy of Montreal, daughter of a master-butcher, have trees that go right back to the boat in France – and yes, mostly to Normandy, Poitou and Ile de France. Classic!2

And yet, according to Ancestry’s (beta) chromosome browser, my mother was not 100 percent “French.”

I’ve provided my own spit to the platform and apparently chromosomes 3 and 12 on her side are English (but that does include the North of France) and chromosomes 17 and 18 are Norwegian (Norsemen -Northmen-Normandy, perhaps?) And a swath of chromosome 2 is indigenous American, making me less than one percent indigenous.

Lately, I’ve subscribed to an interesting infotainment3 website that really dives into a person’s ethnicity from all angles and over a slew of time periods: Ancient, Bronze , Iron and Modern Ages. Sure, I get Eure, Finistere and Vendee (Normandy, Brittany and Poitou) in spades, but I get just about every other area of France, too – as well as some Spanish, French Corsican and French Basque.4

My mom’s French Canadian family tree supports some of this. From the ten percent sample I traced back to France I get natives of Limousine, Aquitaine, the Mid-Pyrenees, Picardy, Bourgogne, Haute-Marne, Bayonne, Les Rhones Alpes, as well as the Canadian North (Innu).5

And let’s not forget my ancestor the legendary pioneer river pilot Abraham Martin dit L’Ecossais (he of the Plains of Abraham fame) who may have been from Scotland. My mom has him at least twice in her tree.

A while back, I figured out that my Mom’s paternal Crepeau line (father’s father’s father, etc.) can be traced back to Vendee but it is likely of Sephardic Jewish ethnicity and hails originally from Spain. 6

Lachenaye Seigneury 1676 (Claude Martel -historian)
View from Hubou farm (or close). These pioneer farms on the North Shore of Montreal were a narrow stretch of river away from the Eastern tip of Laval Island, and just a bit more north of the Eastern tip (Pointe aux Trembles) of Montreal Island.

In New France, my grandpapa Crepeau’s maternal tree can be traced to the original families at the Lachenaye (Terrebonne) Seigneury (est.1673) north east of Montreal, four founding farmer families in particular: Ethier (Poitou-Charentes), Forget (Normandy), Hubou (Ile de France) and Limoges (Rhones Alpes). My mother’s DNA is largely a mish-mash of these families’ genes, for they inter-bred down through the centuries. Basil Crepeau my mom’s 4 x GG was a slightly later arrival at Lachenaye who moved in beside the Hubous.

Jules and family before my mom was born circa 1920. Maria Roy (Gagnon) his wife was also connected to the Lachenaye tribe through Ethier.

Now DNA distributes down the generations in very complicated and irregular ways especially where endogamy or founder effect is concerned8 and judging from my many French Canadian ‘cousins’ on Ancestry, my mom may have gotten a disproportionate amount of her genetic material from the Hubou founder family at Lachenaye Seigneury. A great majority of my DNA cousins on that platform are connected to me through her 2nd great grandfather, Michel Hubou dit Tourville.9

As it happens, Michel’s pioneer ancestor was one Mathieu Hubou dit Deslongchamps, a master-armourer from Normandy who was married to one Suzanne Betfer who was…wait for it… a gal from Gloucester, UK.

Now, ain’t that fun! A bona fide English Fille de Roi!!

THE END

1. de souche a controversial label that means from the roots.

2. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.20.500680v1.full.pdf On the genes, genealogy and geographies of Quebec. According to: French Canadians come from 8500 founder families in 17th and 18th century, with only 250 of these founder families, the majority from Perche, leaving behind the majority of genetic disorders that passed down through the ages. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41464974

(Hereditary disorders in the population of Quebec II Contribution of Perche)

The very first pioneers, the 2,700 super founder families, 1608-1680, were 95 percent French. The later 17th and 18th century founder families were 80-85 percent French but the non-French includes Acadians.) The first 2,700 founder families contributed to 2/3rds of the modern gene pool of French Canadians, but geography and natural boundaries kept families within even smaller gene pools. Indigenous DNA contributed one percent of French Canadian DNA. Regions can have super-founder families that contributed even more to the modern gene pool.

3. Your DNA Portal

4.These ethnicity estimates are based on complex science but the various results have to be taken with a grain of salt. Even if the original science is spot on, these results depend on what sample of your DNA is taken and how far back the algorithm is examining. I liken it to making a complicated stew from various ingredients, letting it simmer for a long time and then trying to deconstruct what it was made from. Maybe you put parsnips, carrots and parsley in the recipe, but these ingredients are already related genetically so it’s not easy to pull apart. Still, taken as a whole the results I get are telling: My mother’s ancestors were mostly from Gaul, especially the tribes Redones and Veneti in Brittany. Hardly a surprise as that’s what my Mom had always been told, that her people were from Brittany. I also get Gaul Santones who lived in Charentes. So spot on!

5. Nos Origines and Drouin

6.My mother is no outlier French Canadian in this respect, at least according to a recent paper that maintains that the Huguenot and Acadian populations are largely made-up of Sephardic Jews escaping the Inquisition. Investigating the Sephardic Jewish ancestry of colonial French Canadians through genetic and historical evidence. Hirschman.

https://nameyourroots.com/home/names/Crespo (Spanish roots likely Sephardic) The name means Curly Haired One. My mom knew that. She did have very curly hair as did her father so that trait passed down through the ages.

The Crepeaus (Crespeaus, Crespo’s Crepspin) are not the only possible Spanish line my mother has in her tree. For instance, her mother’s maternal Gagnon line goes back to one Lily Rodrigue in Normandy, a surname some say is Spanish derived. Another line goes to a Domingo in Bayonne, near the Spanish border. That name is Spanish/Italian and found in Southern France. I also have Navarre or Navarro. ADDED August 2025. I recently got two distant cousins – not related themselves on Ancestry Crespo and Crespim. Both mostly Spanish (very little 2 percent French) with 3 percent Sephardic Jew. Seems to prove my point.

7. Roy is the second most common surname in Quebec. http://leroy-quebec.weebly.com/the-surname-leroy.html . Gagnon is the third most common name and my direct pioneering ancestor hails from Perche in the North of France where he was a leading citizen, apparently.

8. Supposedly, all things being equal, we have only a 47 percent chance of inheriting DNA from an 8th GG, and inherited DNA from 8th GG’s amounts to a fraction of 1 percent but a high degree of endogamy or ‘founder effect’ clearly changes that, judging from the info in the studies in the links I have posted here.

9. On Ancestry, 60 percent of my closer DNA cousins are connected to me through Michel Hubou Tourville and his wife, but it should be noted that a full 400 family trees on Ancestry contain his name. It appears that his descendants moved to the US and did their family trees! Also, these ‘cousins’ tend to have my other Lachenaye names like Ethier and Forget and Limoges in their trees, so impossible to parse.

“This article explains the very thing I’m talking about: https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dealing-endogamy-part-exploring-amounts-shared-dna?fbclid=IwAR1veE4wNTc9gLGtx33Z8qphXmRdtTH2fREANxrenVDgx2NRqs1SznCAV0 “In one of our research cases, we found that an individual descended 12 different times from the same ancestral couple who lived in the late 1600s in French Canada. Although they were quite distant ancestors in every case (within the range of 9th-11th great grandparents), he had inherited a disproportionate amount of DNA from them due to their heavy representation within his family tree.”

Endogamy or consanguity? I’ve discovered that my grandfather Jules Crepeau likely had some double first cousins: his mother Vitaline Forget Despaties married Joseph Crepeau and Vitaline’s brother Adolphe Forget Despatie married Joseph’s sister, Alphonsine. I wonder if this happened further up the line. Wouldn’t that have messed with the DNA estimates! If such cousins marry it is closer to consanguinity than endogamy.

https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsEurope/BarbarianRedones.htm

The Celtic Tribes in France were described by the Romans as the GAULS.

Genealogy

Woodland’s Nymph

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I recently discovered two photos of “Amy” in my dusty old boxes of family memorabilia. The first captured her elderly wrinkled face with a twinkle in her eye and a flower corsage adorning her left shoulder and the other portrayed a 29-year old Amy dressed in a formal gown complete with a silk fan also with a flower corsage on her left shoulder. Inscribed on the reverse side of this second photo, written in Amy’s scrawl, was “Bob with love Amy – Xmas 1894.”

It turns out that Amy C. Lindsay (1865-1960) was my great grandfather Robert Lindsay’s (1855-1931) half sister. His mother Henrietta Dyde died within months of losing her fourth child and, a couple of years later, his father Robert A. Lindsay (1826-1891) married a young Charlotte Vennor (1843-1912) who became stepmother to his three boys – Robert, Charles and Percival – all under the age of ten. Over time, Robert A. and Charlotte had five more children, with Amy being their first born and ten years junior to Robert.

Who the heck was “Bob”?

Amy never married, so “Bob” could not have been a lost love in WW1, as she was 50 years old at that time. The most plausible explanation could be a gift to her older half brother Robert – “Bob” – and that’s the reason why the photo ended up in with my family.

My guess is that she idolized her oldest half-brother and gifted him that special photo which somehow survived the test of time to be found by me in my dusty old boxes. Mystery solved!

In 1873, when Amy turned eight, her parents bought a huge summer estate property called Woodland on Lake Memphremagog just south of Georgeville, Quebec. Lake Memphremagog1 is in the Eastern Townships just 72 miles east of Montreal, Quebec. It is 31 miles long, from north to south, spanning the international border between Quebec and Vermont but is predominately in Quebec.

Amy’s father acquired “Woodland” from the original owner William Wood and it consisted of 280 acres of land bordering on the waterfront. William Wood had built a large red brick manor house that a neighbour described as a “barrack with a steeple.” Regardless of how it looked, it became home to several generations of the Lindsay family until the early 1960’s when it was replaced. They affectionately called it “The Big House.”

During this time, several other wealthy English speaking families acquired farm properties in the area and established their summer residences there as well. Woodland became a full functioning farm complete with livestock and crops all managed by hired hands. Over time, various third parties managed the farm until well into the 20th century, which left the family with plenty of free time on their hands.

The Lindsay family took up residence in the Big House every summer. Amy’s father worked as an accountant for the Bank of Montreal and evidently could be spared for the long summer months to enjoy time with his family. “Apparently Robert Lindsay followed a daily routine of walking around the property with his entire family in tow according to size.” On another special occasion the whole family dressed up in fancy costume clothes for a party.

The grand “Lady of the Lake” steamer would sail twice daily on Lake Memphremagog stopping at private docks and thus providing the family with lake excursions right from the front doorstep of the “Big House.”

The Lindsay family (including mother-in-law Vennor who rescued Woodland financially in 1885) enjoyed the property until Robert’s death in 1891. Mrs. Vennor died four years after him and the property devolved to the four surviving grandchildren: Amy, Douglas, Cecil and Edith. (Their brother Sydenham died young while trying to save a drowning victim.)

According to her family, “Amy was a small lady, well liked and well respected by most… She loved the lake and Georgeville and spent almost all her summers there… She lived in the Big House and had a beautiful English country garden nearby where she liked to spend many hours puttering about.”2

Although Amy never had children of her own, her many nieces and nephews doted on their “Aunt Amy.” After her mother died in 1913, her nephew took her to Paris and they stayed at the Hotel Pas de Calais, a four-star boutique hotel, right in the heart of tourist Paris. Nothing but the best for Aunt Amy!

According to an article in the Montreal Star, when Amy hosted a social tea at The Chateau (across from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel), “the tea table was arranged with daffodils, yellow tulips and freesia and lighted by yellow candles in silver candlesticks.” What made it even more special were her five adult nieces assisting her in the serving of tea. She must have been very proud!

Woodland stayed in the Lindsay family until 2020 with several generations enjoying the spectacular property and family legacy. The road leading to their property was aptly named “Chemin Lindsay” and remains so today.

Although Amy spent extended summers with the multi-generational Lindsay family at Woodland, she lived the rest of the year in the downtown area in Montreal known as “The Golden Square Mile.”3 She seemed to move around quite a bit but always within the same area first staying with her mother until her death and then sometimes with her sister Edith (Carter) after that. Although in 1920 she enjoyed “wintering” at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel!

Amy eventually settled for her last 20 years in the Maxwelton Apartments on Sherbrooke Street near McTavish across from the McGill University campus while summering at Woodland until she died in 1960 at age 95.

According to the family, she obtained her first TV late in life and became an avid hockey fan! What a thrill it must have been to watch that first televised hockey game in 1952!

Amy on the Georgeville dock 1955 at age 90

In her last will and testament, written in 1896 when she inherited one quarter of Woodland, she bequeathed “Bob” her cherished set of Waverly books by Sir Walter Scott. He died long before her and, unfortunately, they were not to be found in my dusty old boxes!

1https://wiki2.org/en/Lake_Memphremagog – as referenced 2023-10-18

2The Lindsay Family and Woodlands – “Georgeville 200th”

1901 Lake Memphremagog map” by Rand Avery Supply Co. – Ward Maps. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://wiki2.org/en/File:1901_Lake_Memphremagog_map.png#/media/File:1901_Lake_Memphremagog_map.png

3https://wiki2.org/en/Golden_Square_Mile?wprov=srpw1_0 – as referenced 2023-10-18

Notes:

A map of Grand Trunk Railway route Mtl to Portland, the train appears to have stopped in Sherbrooke:

https://digitalarchive.tpl.ca/objects/353690/map-of-grand-trunk-railway-system-and-connections

Archival photos of Georgeville:

https://www.townshipsarchives.ca/georgeville-quebec

Janice Hamilton’s story about the Baggs in Georgeville:

Summer in Georgeville

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