By MICHAEL F. DWYER
Non-flood-related question: how many Rivers were there in Vermont a century ago? Over 250 individuals carried the Rivers surname, several dozen of whom lived in Rutland and Addison counties. Just about all these Rivers families trace their origin to Québec ancestors who crossed the border into northern New York or Vermont at various times in the 19th century. Variations of French names for Rivers include Larivière (literal translation of river), plus Desloges dit Larivière as well as Chapdelaine dit Larivière. Now let’s look at who was whom among these descendants.
A solitary Civil War marker in Pittsford’s St. Alphonsus Cemetery attests to the service of Julius Rivers (1827–1904) in Vermont’s Second Light Artillery. His enlistment certificate states he was born in Champlain, New York, which makes his parentage difficult to ascertain because of the lack of Catholic Church records for that time and place. Julius eludes the 1850 census. Around 1855, he married Mary Baker, more forthcoming on her parentage. The couple moved from Clinton County, New York, to Goshen, Vermont in 1860, then back to Peru, New York by 1870. They continued to move: Their seventh child, Leon, was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and their last child, Bertha Felinda, was born in Chittenden on February 21, 1878. Bertha’s baptism, three months later as Marie Philomène Larivière at Immaculate of Mary Church in Rutland, revealed the true names of the parents, Julian Larivière and Marie Bélanger (not Baker).
Perhaps an indication of economic struggle and marital strife, only Mary Rivers was listed as head of household with four children in Chittenden’s 1880 census. Her youngest son, Leon Truman Rivers, died in a tragic accident on December 7, 1885, as described in the Rutland Herald: “The boiler explosion in C.R. Holden’s mill in North Chittenden Monday, which killed Leon Rivers and seriously injured the engineer, William Deming, was probably due to carelessness. Deming had allowed the water to get low in the boiler…Leon Rivers, the boy who was killed, but a few minutes before came in off from the ice and sat down in front of the engine to warm his feet. He was blown out of the building and most of his clothes torn off. He was terribly bruised and nearly every bone in his body broken.”
While Mary Rivers lived with daughter Bertha Battease in Chittenden’s 1900 census, Julius Rivers was counted in son George Rivers’s household in Pittsford. Within a few years, Julius moved to the Soldiers Home in Bennington, where he died of tuberculosis on May 27, 1904, age 77, parents’ names left blank on the death certificate. Mary survived Julius by four years. Her obituary, as “Mrs. Julius Rivers,” named her seven surviving children: Peter Rivers of Chittenden; Frank Rivers of Brandon; Julius Jr. and George Rivers of Pittsford; Julia Parker, Josephine Eddy, and Bertha Rivers (by now divorced from William Battease), all of Chittenden. From them, many descendants continue to live in the area.
Julius Rivers’s Civil War pension file, extending over 160 pages, delineates the debilitating struggles of a veteran trying to earn a living as a manual laborer. After ten years of testimony, medical examinations, and depositions, Julius was awarded the disability pension in 1891. William Buck, of Upper Jay, New York, testified that he knew Julius before the war as a healthy and robust young man. He recounted that after Julius’s discharge, barely able to work, he lived for a time with the Bucks. Discerning some kind of family relationship, it turns out that William Buck was Julius’s brother-in-law, having married Emily Rivers around 1850. Even with this clue, I have not yet been able to determine Emily and Julius’s parents. Following Julius’s death, it took widow Mary over a year to obtain a pension because she could not produce a marriage document. She alleged that she and Julius were married at St. Peter’s Church in Plattsburgh, New York, in either August 1854 or 1855. Twice, a priest responded to the pension office’s query but could not find a record, citing the officiant’s probable carelessness. Mary then stated that Julius could have used the surname Desloges—still, no record with that name either. Eventually, depositions from friends and neighbors citing Julius and Mary’s long cohabitation as a married couple won the day, and she collected her pension.
Mary River’s death certificate named her father as “Frances Baker,” mother unknown. While searching St. Alphonsus Cemetery for Julius’s Civil War marker, unrecorded in the published cemetery book, I came upon the two adjacent gravestones of Frances [sic] Baker and his wife Eliza. Were they Mary’s parents, and would I be able to track them back to Québec with the surname Bélanger? Yes! In the 1850 census of New York, they were counted Francis Baker, age 50, laborer, born Canada, with wife Lisette, 37, born Canada, and children, Mary, 12, Francis Jr. 10, Jenette, 8, Peter, 6, and Betsey, 17, all born in New York. I hoped that Francis and wife Eliza/Lisette, with possible maiden name of “Donagh,” married in Québec before moving in Clinton County, New York. Indeed, they were: François Bélanger and Louise Donais wed in Napierville, Québec, on October 18, 1825. Only their eldest child, Phebe, was baptized there in June 1826 before the couple emigrated. Tracking the Bakers through censuses, including their residence in Goshen, Vermont, in 1860, and eventually settlement in Pittsford, parallels the moves of their son-in-law, Julius Rivers.
One more loose end to tie up. Another Julius Rivers (1848–1891) is sometimes confused with the above family. He married in Shrewsbury, Vermont, on June 3, 1871, a woman named Eva Baker, no relation to Mary (Baker/Bélanger) Rivers because Eva was a Baker of Yankee origin, not a Bélanger. Her husband Julius Rivers shows up in Essex, Vermont’s 1850 census in the household of John and Delia “Ravers.” Once again, a sacramental record from St. Joseph’s Church in Burlington divulges that Julius Rivers, aka Julien Chapdelaine dit Larivière, son of Jean Chapdelaine dit Larivière and Adelaide Berthiaume, was baptized at the age of four on September 14, 1852. This Rivers family eventually moved from Milton to Wallingford. Their seventeenth-century ancestor, André Chapdelaine, enlisted in the French Royal Navy. and arrived in Québec on May 29, 1687. Chapdelaine, is the French word for hooded cloak, an apt metaphor for disguised identities until someone discovers their lost names.
