By MICHAEL F. DWYER
Our last installment of Lost Names [Bush, Bullio, and Anoe, #33] connected us to three more families whose names were transformed in Vermont. Vermont-born Margaret Mayhew, age 36, married widower Peter Bush [Pierre Bousquet] on December 8, 1878. In Brandon town records, her name is written as Mayhew, the church record preserves her original name, Marguerite Mailloux, daughter of Francois Mailloux and Anastasie Privé. Looking further for Margaret’s family, one finds her as a seven-year-old child in the household of Franklin Mayo in Brandon’s 1850 census. In the early years of their marriage, Margaret’s parents shuttled between Vermont and towns just over the border in Québec. Two of their children were baptized in Québec: one son Magloire Mailloux [who went by Mike Mayhew] in Burlington, and three daughters at St. Monica’s Church in Forest Dale. Twelve years after Peter Bush’s death, his widow Margaret (Mayhew) Bush married Civil War veteran Thomas Niles in 1900. They lived in Brandon until Thomas’s death in 1922. Thereafter, Margaret moved away, likely living with one of her children out of state until her death several years after Thomas. The November 1929 obituary of Margaret’s sister, Victoria Devino, does not list her as one of her surviving siblings.
Back now to the Beaulieu family and to two of Lucie (Beaulieu) Bush’s sisters. Her sister Rosella married Frank Shoro. Their monument in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon lacks a top. After emigrating from Québec, Frank and his family adopted Shoro as their last name. The first clue in ascertaining his real name comes through his marriage record at St. Joseph’s Church in Burlington: François Charron married Rosalie Beaulieu on January 8, 1852. Frank volunteered for Civil War service in Company H, 5th Vermont Volunteers to serve in the Civil War. Wounded and hospitalized for nine months, he was given a medical discharge. His certificate indicates he was born in Moscow, Canada. We’ve seen other instances of this birthplace, a spelling variation of Maska, the original name of St.-Hyacinthe. Indeed, that is where Francois Charron was baptized on August 7, 1833. Coming to Brandon on his own as a teenager, he joined a well-established community of expatriates from neighboring villages in Québec. Despite wartime injuries, Frank Shoro lived a long life, as reflected in his obituary from the Brandon Union in February 1919. Two of Frank and Rosalie’s children lived into their nineties. A photo in the Rutland Herald commemorated Frank Shoro, Jr. and his wife Belle Larock on their 65th wedding anniversary in 1952. Frank died age 93. Longest lived of her generation, Lenora (Shoro) Loomis died in 1975, age 98!
Lucie and Rosalie Beaulieu’s younger sister, Eleanore, married in Brandon on July 26, 1858. Her husband’s name has a complicated history. The church record states his name as John Baptist Philibert Jack. From the monument in St. Mary’s Cemetery, his name is carved as J.B. Philip Nicklaw. J.B., typical for many French-Canadians, is Jean Baptiste. For most of his Vermont years, he was known as Phil Nicklaw. Nicklaw usually derives from the French Nicolas, also a first name, with the Nicklaw variant crunching the three syllables of Nicolas into two. But one would not have found him with the Nicolas surname in the baptismal register at the church in St. Hyacinthe. Instead, we have Jean Baptiste Philibert Jacques born in August 1838, son of François-Xavier Jacques and Scholastique de Deland. Why did we go from Jacques to Nicklaw? That has me stumped because it does not follow a known dit name variation.
Unlike his brother-in-law Frank Shoro, Phil Nicklaw’s parents moved to Forest Dale. In Brandon’s 1870 census, Phil’s father Francis also went by the name Nicklaw, with his mother’s name written as Augusta. A gravestone survives for Francis, with his name carved as F. X. Jacques. In the next census, Augusta appears as Calista Deland, close to her actual maiden name. She spent her last years in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where she died in 1894. Although her body was returned to Brandon, her name was not inscribed on her husband’s stone. Just adding to the puzzle of flipflopping surnames, Phil and his brother Peter kept the Nicklaw name while three of their brothers went by Jacques!
Beers’s Atlas of 1869 for the village of Forest Dale gives us a snapshot of who lived there in a tightly knit community. More importantly, it gives us evidence of assimilation and integration as to why some immigrants lost their French-Canadian names. Brothers-in-law Frank Shoro and Phil Nicklaw are nestled between the houses of Vermont natives Nathan Churchill and Christopher Bump. One wonders, after 150 years, how many descendants of these families still live in the area . . .
