By MICHAEL F. DWYER
Christa Wood, now a nurse at Rutland Regional Medical Center, was my student in several classes during my last two years at Otter Valley. I called her “Christa Bois,” surmising that she likely had some French-Canadian ancestry. [Bois means wood in French.] Having chatted with Christa last week, it prompted me to investigate this supposition. Christa lives in the house once owned by her great-grandparents Harold and Loretta (Gallipo) Wood in Pittsford. Harold’s father, William Wood (1876–1957), belonged to the first generation of Woods born in Vermont.
With William’s father, Edmund Wood, I hit a solid brick wall for the first time in researching these stories. According to Vermont census records from 1870 to 1910, Edmund Wood was born in New York, around 1841, to French-Canadian parents. Remarkably, he does not show up in any earlier records that would have placed him in a household with parents. Around 1865, he married Esther Baker, born in Salisbury, but no record of their marriage survives. Their eldest daughter, Mary Malvina, is said to have been born in Mooers Forks, New York. Edmund and Esther had three more surviving children, Henry, William, and Ezra, none baptized as Catholics. That closed a door for establishing other family connections with Wood relatives who may have served as godparents. Edmund died at the Brattleboro Retreat on November 18, 1914, with scant information on his death certificate. No death notice or obituary was carried in local papers. Edmund’s widow Esther lived until 1929, with her brief obituary stating 24 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren survived her. Their descendants continued to proliferate. Henry Wood died in 1951, survived by seven daughters, one son, and 32 grandchildren. William Wood, Sr.’s obituary stated he was survived by six sons, two daughters, 45 grandchildren, and 48 great-grandchildren. His funeral was held from the house where Christa lives.
Where does this leave the “Bois” mystery? Certainly, Edmund Wood’s original last name would have ended in Bois. Two possibilities exist. In Brandon’s 1850 census, we find the household of a recent arrival from Canada, Dominick de Wood. He was born in St. Cuthbert, Québec, as Dominique DuBois. One also finds in Brandon town records the birth of John Wood, son of John and Rosette Wood, born on May 23, 1857. Two weeks later at St. Monica’s Church in Forest Dale, the baby was baptized as Joseph Gadebois, son of Jean Baptist Gadebois and Josephine Dion. The Gadbois surname, literally “spoils wood,” derives from the nickname of a carpenter. First of this name in Canada was Jospeh van den Dyck dit Gadbois, from Brussels, who married in Québec in 1678. The Flemish name was heard in Québec as Vandandaigue, which some descendants adopted as their surname! As Henry Louis Gates often says at the conclusion of his television show, Finding Your Roots, “The paper trail ends here.” Odds are that one of the many Wood descendants has taken a DNA test that will link them to a Dubois or Gadbois family from Québec. Stay tuned for updates!
Esther (Baker) Wood’s family, by contrast, gives us concrete examples of name changes. Esther, age 4, appears with her parents Andrew and Julian Baker in Salisbury’s 1850 census. As recent arrivals from Canada, Andrew Baker and Juliette Poutier were married on January 11, 1841, by James Meacham, minister of the First Congregational Church of New Haven. The lack of evidence that this marriage was validated by a Catholic priest likely explains why their four children were not baptized. Esther’s elder brother, Henry Baker, married Louise Frechette, and had 12 children. Having explored another Baker family [Lost Names #30, Baker and Rivers], I suspected Baker had changed from Belanger. Andrew Baker was born as Antoine Belanger, baptized at Napierville, on February 14, 1823, son of Jean Marie Baker and Marguerite Landry. Andrew’s brother, Julien Belanger also moved to Vermont around the same time. As Julius Baker, he married Rose Masters in Ripton on March 6, 1842. Their son, Julius Baker, served in Company F, 5th Vermont Regiment and died of his wounds at Petersburg, Virginia, on April 2,1865.
Andrew’s father, “John Baker” [Jean-Baptiste Belanger], also moved to Vermont with his second wife, Delia Robidoux. They were counted in Middlebury’s 1860 census with their two youngest children, John and Julia, with the indication John was blind. Francis Baker, [Lost Names #30] (1800–1886), buried in St. Alphonsus Cemetery in Pittsford, was John Baker’s younger brother. In another connection between families, Francis Baker’s granddaughter Alema Jones married Henry Wood! Their ancestor from Calvados, France was François Bellanger who wed Marie Guyon at Notre Dame de Québec on July 12, 1637. A sign of growing literacy in the 17th century, Francois signed his name with a flourish.
Completing our family study, Juliette Poutier, wife of Andrew Baker, also came from Napierville, where she was baptized on December 11, 1823, daughter of Abraham Poutré and Rose Menard. Certainly, this couple, wed as teenagers, would have known one another before their move to Vermont. Julian Baker [combination of Julie + Anne, not to be confused with the man’s name] outlived her husband by 32 years and died in Salisbury on March 6, 1913. Surprisingly, none of the local papers published a death notice or an obituary. Her remote ancestor, André Poutré dit Lavigne, born in Valenciennes, France, came to Québec in 1665 as a soldier.
