BY MICHAEL F. DWYER
My recent research on the McGee family pulled me into the perplexing story of Angeline, wife of Lewis McGee of Chittenden, Vermont. This investigation turned out to be much more than the mere decoding of names. As our starting point, let us begin to unfold Angeline’s life in Chittenden, as recorded in the 1880 census:
Lewis McGee, age 74 [sic, really 62], was a wood chopper, born in Canada. His wife Angeline, age 49, also born in Canada, kept house, with the following McGee children listed: Joseph, 19, working as a charcoal burner; Maggie, 11, and Mary, 10, both attending school. Mary was baptized as Marie Elmira Maillé, on February 26, 1871, at St. Louis Church in Fair Haven, with godparents Antoine Robitaille and Josephte Grenier. Hold on to those last two names! It turns out that Joseph and Maggie McGee were not Lewis’s children. How did this come to light? In the 1900 census, Louis McGee, with age corrected to 82, and wife Angeline, incorrectly recorded as 79, indicated that they had been married 32 years, which ruled out Joseph, born circa 1861, as Lewis’s son. No record of Angeline’s marriage to Lewis has survived. The census disclosed Angeline had given birth to ten children, of whom six were living.
Lewis/Louis McGee died in 1901—no gravestone survives; thereafter, Angeline lived in succession with her two married daughters. She died on February 10, 1923. A brief death notice appeared in The Rutland Herald under Pittsford News: “Mrs. Angeline McGee, widow of Lewis McGee, who had made her home with her daughter Mrs. Eugene Chaffee of East Pittsford, died February 10, after a long illness. Burial was in the Catholic cemetery at Rutland.” No gravestone for Angeline either. Her death certificate yielded little information, citing her age as “past 90,” maiden name, Preedom. Or was it? Three other records, generated by her children, indicated her maiden name was Rabtoy.
The first step in solving this puzzle was recognizing both names as Americanized versions of French names, Preedom for Prudhomme, and Rabtoy for Robitaille or Robillard. Neither name was a dit name variant of the other, so only one could have been correct in determining Angeline’s paternity. Some pieces started to fall into place in identifying Angeline’s six surviving children as noted in the 1900 census. By searching the Rutland Herald’s archives with the name “Angeline McGee,” I discovered that she had a previous husband named Charles Larose. Apparently, they lived in Benson or Orwell area for at least a decade before the Civil War.
Angeline and Charles’s son Louis Larose, age 48, died from a perforated ulcer in December 1909. His detailed obituary revealed the names of his five surviving siblings: Angeline Trombley of Rutland, Margaret Chaffee and Mary Johnson of Pittsford, Charles Larose of West Haven, Vermont, and Joseph Larose of Bellows Falls. Now I could begin to reconstruct the chronology of Angeline’s first marriage. How did I miss the Larose sons in previous records? Joseph and Lewis were recorded under the surname McGee, not Larose, in the 1880 census. By the time they attained their legal majority, Joseph and Lewis/Louis assumed their rightful surname: Larose.
Finding the marriage record of Charles Larose and Angeline in Benson, Vermont, did not settle as neatly the question of Angeline’s maiden name as I hoped. Rev. Azariah Hyde, of the Congregational Church, had officiated the marriage of several French-Canadian couples, who at that time, were miles from a Catholic Church. Since neither bride nor groom could be found in the 1850 Vermont census, they likely moved here from Canada in late 1850 or in early 1851. My surmise as to this strangely written surname, “Lilie,” is that Angelique certainly did not speak English. Perhaps when asked to repeat her surname, Rev. Hyde caught only the last syllable.
There often comes a point in genealogical research when one formulates a circumstantial conclusion based on a preponderance of the evidence. I knew there had to be a link between the Prudhomme and Robitaille families for some of Angeline’s descendants to persist in remembering Rabtoy. An analysis of this combined household in the 1860 census of Orwell, Vermont, underpins my hypothesis about likely connection. Let’s examine that census.
Robeston proved to be Robitaille/Rabtoy The first number on left signifies the household visited. The second set of numbers refers to family unit under the same roof. Antony Robeston, 51, with wife Rosetta, age 67, and children Antony, 17, Joseph 16, Mary, 15, and Vennice, 12. Next, Charles [La] Rose. 34, Angeline, 30, Charles, 7, Mary, 6, and Angeline, 1. Thus far, it proves Angeline [La] Rose shared a house with the “Robestons.” A decade earlier, “Antonio Roberto,” wife “Rosette,” and their children had been counted in the 1850 census for New Haven. In 1860, however, the chief oddity lies in the age difference between Antony and wife Rosetta. Locating their Catholic marriage records in Lavaltrie, Québec, confirmed that Antoine Robillard, age 19, married Josephte [later Rosella/Rosina] Grenier, age 35, on September 18, 1838. A late first marriage indeed for a woman at that time! Yes, they are the same couple who served as godparents to Angeline’s daughter Marie Maillé/Mary McGee in 1871.
What of Josephte Grenier’s earlier life? Building a network of family connections suggested to me that Josephte was Angeline’s mother. Josephte’s brother Joseph Grenier married a Prudhomme. The lack of a corresponding baptismal record for an Angelique Prudhomme, circa 1832, points to Angelique as an out-of-wedlock child, left at the church awaiting baptism, likely raised by a member of the Prudhomme family. Given that years later Antoine’s widow, Josephte Grenier aka Rosella Rabtan, died in Chittenden, on December 1, 1885, age 97! [sic], my contention is supported that she was Angeline’s mother because her death was recorded in the same school district where the McGees lived. As such, it made Antoine Robitaille Angeline’s stepfather.
Meanwhile, Charles Larose and family left Orwell and returned to Canada for a stretch during the early 1860s. No record of Charles’s death has been found. Now the most troubling fact to reconcile: The paternity of Angeline’s daughter, Margaret/Maggie McGee, age 12 in the 1880 census.
Margaret E. Chaffee’s dates of birth and death are carved on one side of the Chaffee four-sided monument in East Pittsford Cemetery. The absence on Margaret’s death certificate of her maiden name, as well as the names of her parents, implies either forgetfulness or obfuscation. Maggie Larose married in Chittenden on April 14, 1887 to Eugene Chaffee. Their marriage license lists her father’s name only as “Larose.” Marguerite Robitaille, not Larose, had been born in Cambridge, Vermont, and baptized six months later in St. Patrick’s Church in Fairfield, Vermont. On the baptismal certificate, it named her parents as Antoine Robitaille and Angelique Prudhomme. Two possibilities for Antoine: husband of Josephte/Rosella or her son. It is more likely that 25-year-old Antoine Robitaille, Angelique’s purported half-brother, was the father of Marguerite. Two years later, and ninety miles distant back in Rutland County, Vermont, no one except the immediate family would have been the wiser.
As Henry Louis Gates often says at the conclusion of his popular television show Finding your Roots, “This is as far as the paper trail can take us.” Perhaps one of Angeline’s many living descendants will use DNA evidence to solidify the links that I have made between the Preedom [Prudhomme] and Rabtoy (Robitaille/Robillard] families.
