By MICHAEL F. DWYER
Growing up in Fall River, Massachusetts, once a bastion of immigrants from Québec, as well as studying French since sixth grade, gives me an advantage in deciphering changed Vermont French-Canadian names. Shortsleeve[s] was the first Vermont surname I recognized as a literal translation of the two French words court [short] and manche [sleeve]. On French maps you will see the English Channel labeled La Manche because it was thought to have resembled a sleeve.
About one hundred people named Shortsleeve lived in Vermont at the time of the 1920 census. In 1850, however, only three families bore this name: John Shortsleeves of New Haven, with wife Mary aka Josephte, and their four children. John was born Jean-Baptiste Courtmanche in Iberville, Québec. Dennis Shortsleeves [Denis Courtmanche] of Burlington, his wife Mary, and eight children, came from St.-Denis-sur-Richelieu, Québec. And the specific family under study here, that of Peter Shortsleeve of Brandon, came from St.-Ours, Québec. Undoubtedly, he traveled south along the Richelieu River into Vermont. While not closely related to one another, all three Courtmanche men descend from French soldier Antoine Courtmanche dit Jolicoeur who emigrated to New France (Québec) in the 1660s.
Brandon immigrant Peter Shortsleeve (1820–1900), ninth child of Jean-Baptiste Courtmanche and his wife Louise Adelaide Letarte, arrived here as a teenager in the late 1830s. On July 25, 1840, Peter married fifteen-year-old Angeline Twodshid [a rough phonetic attempt at Touchette!]. With no Catholic priest in the area, Rev. Cornelius A. Thomas of the Brandon Baptist Church officiated their wedding. More the norm among French-Canadians, Peter and Angeline had their marriage blessed by a Catholic priest, and when St. Mary’s Church in Middlebury opened in 1845, their first three children were baptized there on the same day. Altogether, over a span of 25 years, the couple had eleven children.
As revealed in Brandon’s 1850 census, Peter Shurslieve, 30, occupation tanner, headed a household with wife Angeline, 25, and their children Joseph, David, Aurilla, and infant Francis. At first glance, the next household, that of Francis Vorill, 32, also a tanner, with probable wife, Louisa 49, and children Hervier [Xavier] 9 and Orrin [Aurelia] seemed to have no connection with Peter’s family. The seventeen-year age difference between Francis and Louisa struck me as odd, leading me to think that Louise was not the mother of these young Vorill children. Proximity of family households is always worth further exploration and took me in the direction of documenting the parents of Angeline (Touchette) Shortsleeve, Charles Touchette, and Louise Letourneau. As remembered by Angeline’s children, the name Touchette became Thatcher.
Angeline’s father, Charles Touschette, died in Brandon on 21 March 1848, age 51, as evidenced from a broken French-language gravestone at the edge of the steep ravine in the west end of the Brandon Congregation Church Cemetery. Leaning into Charles’s stone is a badly damaged one that faintly reads “Louise famme [sic, femme, wife] de Francis Varin,” who died 14 November 1852, age 53. A hypothesis in search of proof found that young widower Francis V. La Pitch married in Brandon “Mrs. Louisa Touchette” on 7 February 1850. [Varin and Lapistole were used interchangeably in the same family] The pieces fit together to prove the “Vorill” family of the 1850 census were Angeline’s mother Louisa, stepfather Francis, and his children. Thus, the two broken stones in the Congregational Cemetery belong to Angeline’s parents! [Readers: in the spring we need to do something about resetting some of these gravestones before they are forever lost]. Francis “Pistol,” as F. X. Varin, married a third time to Marie Louise Leduc and died in Rutland on 31 May 1893.
Peter Shortsleeve wasted no time in becoming an American citizen in 1856. Usual for naturalization records in Rutland County, this one stated Peter’s specific birthplace as St. Tour [Ours], Canada. Continuing to track the Shortsleeves family in Brandon’s 1860 census yielded more surprises. In the previous decade, Peter’s parents—John Shortsleeves, 81, and wife Louisa, 75—also settled in Brandon and were listed as paupers in the census. Their household unit was preceded in the census enumeration by another family born in Canada: Joseph Cole, 51, wife Mary, 42, and their children. Once again, probing proximity revealed another changed name and family relationship. Joseph Charbonneau [charbon, French for coal] married in 1840 Sophie Courtmanche [Mary in the census], Peter’s elder sister. Their transformation from Charbonneau to Cole was literally carved in stone as we can see from their monument in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon.
For members of the Courtmanche family who remained Catholic, their French name, rather than its translation, Shortsleeve, was always faithfully recorded in sacramental records if the priest was French-speaking. As anxiety arose with the vast numbers of French-Canadians leaving Québec for New England, the French Catholic hierarchy feared if their flock lost their native language, they would lose their faith. In other instances of dual identities, Peter and Angeline’s daughter Aurilla married in 1865 Etienne Couture in 1865—a Civil War soldier, who soon adopted the American version of his first and last name, Steven Simes [couture French for seam]. Aurilla’s brother David Courtemanche/Shortsleeve married Malvina Ducharme, but her father’s surname was recorded as Bluebeach—a one of-a-kind surname that still leaves me befuddled!
Courtmanche families from Canada continued to migrate to our area at different times. Laurence Coutermarsh (1909–1998) came from Newport, New Hampshire, to Pittsford, maintaining a spelling and pronunciation that was closer to the original name. In 1879, Laurence’s grandfather, Marcel Martin Courtmanche moved to New Hampshire from Durham, Québec. The grandfather of Pittsford resident Rollin Shortsleeves, Joseph Courtmanche, came from Mascouche, Québec.
Russell Shortsleeves (1921–2006) of Middlebury and Pittsford left many descendants who can trace their Courtmanche origins from immigrant ancestor Antoine Courtmanche of L’Acadie, Québec, who crossed to Essex County, New York, around 1849. His son Eugene Shortsleeves (1850–1927) eventually made his way to Vermont. Without knowing their original name, Courtmanche, the ancestry of these varied families would have stopped at the Vermont border.
