By MICHAEL F. DWYER
Unpacking a family photo from 1920 takes us into the history of two entwined and transformed names. Once a common practice in small towns, pairs of siblings married siblings from a neighboring family, as with this case of two Forest Dale families. In September 1917, Charles Bird married Ezma Devino, and his sister Ethel Bird married Ezma’s brother Frank Devino. At time this picture was taken, the two families lived together in Shelburne, Massachusetts. At left Mary (Crone) Bird sits next to her daughter, Ethel (Bird) Devino, who is holding her infant nephew, Stanley Bird, son of Charles and Ezma. The Birds were grandchildren of Québec immigrant Edward Bird, born Antoine Loiseau. [Lost Names, Part 1]. Charles Bird and Ezma were captured in a charming photo at their double nephew Stanley Bird’s wedding in 1940.
In the late 1840s, Mary Crone’s parents, William and Elvira had moved from Henryville, Québec, about 17 miles over the border, to Orwell. The 1850 census shows four of their children born in Canada. Often when the surname Crone appears in American French-Canadian families, it proves to have been Caron, a two syllable-name mashed into one as Crone. Here, Crone makes the exception. In a reverse of Lost Names, it seems an original name was modified in Canada, not the United States! Baptismal records of William’s older children record the name as Crown. William was married as Guillaume Croan to Ovide [Elvira in Vermont] Laroque at Chambly, Québec, on May 5, 1835. According to the church record, Guillaume’s father was George Croan, living in Sorel, Québec. His mother, Marie Bonnet, was deceased.
Croan/Crown/Crone: we are certainly not dealing with a French name. George evidently married a second time to Amable Gravel. They had a child named Marguerite Krown who died in infancy. Her burial record from 1831 describes George as an old soldier. According to the church register in Sorel, George Crown died in March of 1840, age 99! Even with allowances for an upwardly exaggerated age, that puts George’s year of birth somewhere between 1741 and 1751, making him old enough to have been a soldier at the time of the American Revolution. Did he fight for or against the Crown? The dearth of records for George’s children point to his being non-Catholic for most of his life. On a land record from 1803, he signed his name as George Krown—suggesting he came from one of the German states. In the 1880 census of Orwell, William Crone indicated his father was born in Germany. Perhaps one of the male-line Crone descendants will do a Y-DNA test that will hold the answer to George’s origins.
Now back to Chambly, home for a century to the Davignon family, which is how the Devinos spelled their name in Québec. The name. of course, has a remote association with the city of Avignon with its fabled bridge. [Many French students, this one included, once sang Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse]. Francois Davignon, with the dit name Beauregarde, “good-looking,” first appears on a document from 1717. Even then, he signed his name with inconsistent spelling. A century later, his descendant Augustin Davignon (1796–1859) left Québec at the vanguard of French-Canadian migration to Vermont, moving to the Burlington area before 1820. He married Esther Cottard, and together they had ten children. With no resident Catholic priest in Vermont during the 1820s, Augustin and family made the trip seventy miles north to have three of their children baptized at Chambly.
While two of Augustin’s brothers eventually returned to Québec, Augustin made Colchester [present-day Winooksi] his permanent home. In 1831, Augustin Deavanoe purchased a farm on the west side of the “Onion River.” In Vermont censuses 1830 through 1850, Augustin’s name was written in a variety of ways:
In 1830, Houstin Devenaux; in 1840, Gustin Devenoe, and in 1850, Eustine Devino.
Augustin’s seventh child, Oliver, breaking the norm among French Catholic families, wed a Protestant, Orpha Bickford on March 2, 1857, their marriage officiated by a Methodist clergyman. A year later, however, their marriage was rehabilitated at St. Joseph’s Church in Burlington. Opposite of a French name garbled by an English speaker, the French priest recorded Orpha Bickford’s name as Mary Banfield. Leaving Vermont in the 1870s, Oliver and Orpha lived in several locations in New Hampshire before moving back to Vermont by 1920. Still working as a sawyer at 82 years old, Oliver lived in a Forest Dale neighborhood near son Fred and grandson Volney Devino. Orpha Devino died in January 1928, age 89, her husband Oliver following her four months later. A vicissitude of old age, they outlived every one of their children. Reading the Devino cemetery stones at St. Mary’s Cemetery calls our attention to this fact. Son Fred Devino and wife Katherine’s stones have their full dates of birth and death, but an adjacent stone for Oliver and Orpha’s has only their dates of birth. Curiously, someone planted a veteran’s flag next to the stone. Along with four of his brothers, Oliver had registered for the draft during the Civil War but did not serve.
Notwithstanding dying before his parents, Fred Devino’s obituary from 1925 recounts he was survived by eight children, all of whom lived in Forest Dale: John, Fred, George [father of Ivor Devino], and Volney Devino, and daughters Lucy Anoe, Bernice LaRock. Elizabeth Pfenning, and Ezma Bird. Son Frank Devino lived in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Today scores of descendants live in the area.
One more curious twist of names. Another D’Avignon family had students who matriculated through Otter Valley. Their ancestor was Joseph Arthur D’Avignon (1900–1981), born with the surname McFarland; he was adopted from a New York orphanage by a Québec-born D’Avignon family. Some students within this family answered to the pronunciation of Devino proving what people hear does not always follow the spelling of their name.
Thanks to Michele Bird Poremski for loaning family photos.
