By MICHAEL F. DWYER
An obelisk with a broken cross at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon attests to the fractured identities of the names inscribed on three of its faces. First, above the surname WHITE: John White, Died Feb. 27, 1888, age 21 years. A front-page headline in the Rutland Herald, “Horribly Mangled,” described how this inexperienced railroad brakeman slipped between cars and met a grisly death. Rotating to the right from John’s name: Merrill White, Died Jan. 17, 1896, age 41 yrs. Merrill, John’s older brother, also died as the result of a railroad accident. More details below. On the back of the monument, evidently carved at a later time—the names and dates of the White brothers’ parents: Frank White 1832–1894, and Maggie White, 1835 –1898.
Census records place Frank White, born in Canada, laborer/farmer, and Maggie/Matilde White, born in Canada, in Leicester, Vermont 1860 through 1880. Neither one could read or write. They had at least ten children, all born in Vermont. Birth records disclosed scant information about the parents, sometimes not even mentioning the mother’s name. Frank White, age 67, died in Leicester on December 8, 1894, age 67 [off five years from the gravestone birth year]. The death certificate had no information on his parents or the specific town of his birth. Nonetheless, I thought this would be an easy puzzle to solve because Frank White was undoubtedly born with the name Francois Leblanc [White is the literal English translation of Leblanc]. My efforts focused instead on identifying the maiden name of his wife, Maggie/Matilde. Her documentation trail left an assortment of possible surnames, starting with her death certificate which claimed “San Cuba, Canada” as her birthplace and father’s name as Frank Shordu. Marriage and death records of Maggie’s children variously recorded her maiden name as Shortwell, Shaddock, Shonto, Shurty, or sadly, “unknown.” What these names seemed to have in common was their first syllable, SH, followed by a vowel. Having recognized similar patterns among muddled translations of French names, I surmised her original French surname began with the letters Cour[t], meaning short.
An online family tree posted by a descendant averred that Frank and Maggie White were married on September 30, 1854, location not given. Hoping they were married in Vermont, I searched the statewide index for that year, hoping I would find the right match. Eureka! Francis Blanc married Matilda Cushan in Brandon! How could I prove they were the right couple? As recorded in Brandon records, one week earlier, Francis Cushan married Amelia Tatro. In November of the same year, Sophia Cushan married Newell Real. Were these three Cushans siblings? Yes! The trail led back to St. Cuthbert [rendered by Leiceister town records as San Cuba], Québec, where baptismal records confirmed their relationship and true surname as Brisset dit Courchesne. A complicated journey to Shortwell, for sure. Also surprising is the distance that this trio traveled to get to Vermont. While many pre-Civil War French Canadian immigrants came from towns along the Richelieu River and the Eastern Townships of Québec, St. Cuthbert is about fifty miles northeast of Montréal, making it an arduous trip to Vermont in the days before railroad connections.
Let’s go back to Frank White. He was not married in the Catholic Church, nor were any of his and Maggie’s children baptized as infants. According to the strict formula of the times, a priest would not have recognized the children as the product of a legitimate marriage. Had the children been baptized, the sacramental records would have revealed the names of godparents and thereby establish a web of family associations thus far missing. Four of Frank and Maggie’s children were married by Protestant clergy or justices of the peace.
However, in the case of their son, Merrill, whose name is carved on the monument, something unusual happened. While it may look like he had no family of his own, under the name of Joseph Leblanc he married Ozila Lesperance in St. Pierre-de la Rivière du-Sud, Québec, on August 2, 1887. The meticulous Catholic Church record discloses his parents as “Francois Xavier Leblanc and Marguerite Courchaine” of “Lyster” in the State of Vermont, thus proving that Merrill White and Joseph Leblanc were the same person. He brought his bride back to Leicester. Five of their children, alternating between Leblanc and White surnames, were baptized at St. Mary’s Church in Brandon. Following Merrill’s accident and death, The Middlebury Register and Addison County Journal reported that his widow collected $2,000 from his life insurance policy [roughly $73,000 in today’s money]. With that money, Ozila returned to Québec with her children. She never remarried. At her death in 1933, her memorial prayer card, written entirely in French, describes her as the wife of Joseph Leblanc deceased.
Several of Frank White/Francois Xavier Leblanc’s descendants claim to have identified his birthplace and parents. They have been ruled out because that person remained in Québec and married someone else. The quest therefore beckons me to discover the right Frank among an early community of French-Canadians in Brandon. Stay tuned for another chapter.
