By MICHAEL F. DWYER
What started out as an inquiry into solving one man’s changed surname unexpectedly linked three distantly related families, with variant spellings of their last name, to their common ancestral couple in Québec. Isaac Fields of West Rutland died on June 22, 1905, age 62. His gravestone in Evergreen Cemetery in Rutland has the dates of his birth and death as well as those of his wife, Sauffronia [sic] Fredette. Knowing Isaac was born in Canada, I first assumed that his Americanized surname Fields may have been a translation of Deschamps or Beauchamp, the last syllable being the French word for field (champs). No results came from that hypothesis. Then I became more aware of another anomaly in Isaac’s life. At the time of their deaths, Isaac and his wife belonged to the Baptist Church in West Rutland. Most, but not all, first-generation French-Canadians remained Catholic or later returned to the Catholic Church following a “rehabilitation” of a non-Catholic marriage. Moreover, I could not find a civil-marriage record for this couple anywhere in Rutland County or in Québec.
This temporary roadblock led to a wider exploration of other Québec-born families named Fields in West Rutland. It doesn’t come any better than carved in granite: the Filion-Fields gravestone in Sacred Heart Cemetery, West Rutland [see photo]. On the reverse side, Hanora [sic, misspelling of Honoré, often translated to Henry] Felion, his wife, and children. The double names certainly reflect a foot in two worlds, one of assimilation to an American identity. Fields doesn’t have much to do with Filion, only some similar letters. On the other hand, the marriage license from West Rutland of Henry’s son Joseph Fields indicated a push back to identity as a Québec-born Catholic. The priest who officiated Joseph’s marriage added the Filion after Fields and wrote above it Filion [see illustration].
Now aware of how Felion became Fields, I searched for Isaac’s marriage in the published church records of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, then known as Sacred Heart of Mary Church in Rutland. Sure enough, I found Isias Filion’s marriage to Eloise [aka Sophronie] Fredette on 28 April 1870—unrecorded at the town level. Their only child, Louis Wilfred Filion, was also baptized at Immaculate Heart, underscoring the unsolved mystery of why they later left the Catholic Church.
As I connected these two Fields families to their common Filion ancestors in Québec, I wondered about the origins of the Fillioe families of Brandon and Pittsford. With the cooperation of my dear friend Shelley (Fillioe) Martel and the research of her brother Brian Fillioe, we documented several generations back to this couple buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon: John and Matilda Fellio. It took some light cleaning to make the stone legible. [See John Fellio stone]. Names and dates on a gravestone, however, may not be accurate or complete. Matilda’s death date does not state she lived to be 100! From church and census records, John Fellio/Fillioe, was born in Québec around 1829 [not 1837], son of Jean Baptiste Filion and his wife Julie Audet. They moved to “Kissville” [Keeseville] New York in the early 1830s, a time of very poor record keeping for immigrants, exacerbated by frequent moves. One of the truly laughable attempts at indexing their name came out as “Feelyou!” By 1900, Matilda and John Fellio/Filoe, together with three generations of their family had moved to Brandon. [See photos from Brian Fillioe].
While ruminating about other families with similar spellings, I connected the ancestors of former student Josh Felion to the same set of ancestral grandparents, John and Matilda Felliio buried in Brandon. Thus, three families, Fields, Fillioe, and Felion are all distant cousins to one another. One should never assume that a difference in spelling precludes a family relationship.
