By MICHAEL F. DWYER
It’s not a difficult stretch to see how Fountain came from the French name Fontaine. The real reason for chasing down this name comes from a Pittsford descendant’s family story that there was Native American ancestry in this family. Québec–born Joseph Fontaine married Philomene Rock around 1867, location unknown. They had eight children all born on the New Hampshire side of Vermont. The 1900 census finds this family living in Hartford, Vermont, with an important clue in the last person in the household, Theodore Souci, named as Joseph’s stepfather. Joseph Fountain died in 1920, according to his gravestone, yet oddly, neither Vermont nor New Hampshire has any record of his death, which would have named his parents.
How then could I find his parents? Fortunately, Catholic records once again filled in details. The baptismal record of Edward Fontaine in 1876 gives the full name of his father, Joseph Odille Fontaine. With that information, I discovered that Joseph Odille Fontaine was baptized in Gentilly, Québec, on January 6, 1840, son of Chrysanthe Fontaine and Emelie Boisvert. Emelie married, as her second husband, Theodore Souci, another confirmation I had found the correct family. Tracing the Fontaine line back to Etienne Fontaine, the immigrant ancestor from France, I found no evidence of Native Americans. In more than two dozen research requests to document a family’s Native American ancestry, I have failed to prove any of them true.
So, how do these stories get started? They usually involve the appearance of a female ancestor with “exotic” looks, high cheekbones, dark hair, and an aquiline nose. Ironic that at the same time the Indian Wars were concluding, and many indigenous people were relegated to reservations, families held onto these stories of what some have described as “Indian princesses.”
Of course, there are Vermont families with Native American heritage, but they are hard to document in the 19th century. Often, they were erased from the historical record. The 1860 census was the first to list subjects as “Indian,” if they paid taxes. It then became standard practice in the 1880 census to list race with “I” for Indian. With this search technique, I discovered a father and son living in Pittsford in 1880: Canadian-born Franklin Koska, age 50 [sic] and his 17-year-old son of the same name. I was temporarily mystified by his Polish last name. Frank Koska died in Wells, on January 7, 1888, age 67, with no indication of race or parentage. Looking for earlier clues of him in Vermont, I found Francis living with his mother, Mary Kaskey and younger brother Antoine in Pawlet’s 1850 census. Without an indicator of race in this census, the giveaway they were Native Americans was that Antoine was a basket maker, a common occupation among indigenous people of Vermont. Continuing to follow this family’s trail into Québec led me to the Jesuit Mission to the Hurons at Ancienne Lorette where François Xavier Koska [Francis Xavier, Jesuit saint] was baptized on December 3, 1818, son of Bathelemi Koska. Bathelmi’s father, Stanilas Koska Tchachitarahenre married at the mission in 1766. His Christian name came from Stanilas Koska, a young Jesuit saint held up as a role model. “Stanilas,” the Huron, was likely baptized on the feast day of the saint.
In wrapping up this series, I’d like to share with you two of my hardest puzzles that went well beyond recovering a lost name and took me over twenty years to solve. They involve my late brother-in-law’s family, which was a long-standing brick wall for him. Alex Murcray/Mercury, as he was known in Vermont records, lived most of his life in the around Bolton, Vermont. He was baptized as Alexandre Mercure son of Alexandre Mercure and Saphronie Cayer in 1855. Alex Murcray’s wife was named Mercy, maiden name Abar or Hibbard in Vermont records. Their marriage record, circa 1876, has not survived which may have named her parents. A Catholic baptism record for their daughter indicated the mother’s name as Marcelline Hébert—Abar a rough phonetic pronunciation of the French name that has a silent H. Three census records stated she was born in New York, while one indicated Vermont. Her year of birth ranged from 1848 to 1852. A few months before Mercy died in 1922, she moved to Bolton, Québec, to live with her daughter. Her burial record only gave her age and that she was the widow of Alex Mercury. That seemed a dead end until I searched through newspaper databases. A Bolton news column in the Burlington Free Press on March 23, 1921 stated: “Charles Abare, who has been lumbering in Monkton is visiting his sister, Mrs. Mercy Mercury.” That gave me enough information to find Marceline Hébert’s parents and her baptism. Mercy/Marcelline was indeed born in Vermont but taken to Iberville, Québec, about 25 miles from the Vermont border for baptism at the age of three months.
It took a different research strategy to open up the ancestry of Alex’s father, Alex Murkery, , born circa 1822, in Clinton County, New York. He first shows up as a coal stocker in Saranac New York’s 1850 census. Alex Murkery Sr. enlisted to fight in the Civil War but soon died from smallpox in the Plattsburgh barracks. His wife Saphronie died a few years later, leaving three children as orphans. Their uncle-by-marriage was appointed guardian, which came with a Civil War widow’s pension of $6.00 a month to keep the children from penury until they were sixteen.
With no birth or baptismal record for the Civil War soldier, I needed to cast a wide net. My hypothesis was that a man named Peter Mercury, a head of household in Plattsburg’s1820 census, was his father. From census categories through 1840 [that did not list names], it indicated that Peter had at least two other sons. Speculating that neighbors Peter Murcray Jr. and Lewis McRae were the Civil War soldier’s brothers was indeed a leap of faith. Peter and Lewis’s descendants, who posted trees on Ancestry.com, believed they were Scottish. My persistence with these families eventually paid off when DNA evidence irrefutably proved that the three men were brothers, descended from François Mercure, an 18th century immigrant from France, the sole progenitor of all French-Canadian Mercures.
