By MICHAEL F. DWYER
This round of alliterative surnames started with recollections of my late Mayflower Society friend, “Mrs. Cecil Goodheart,” née Helen Clara Churchill, who lived at 61 Park Street in Brandon. Occasionally I would give her rides to out-of-town meetings. When she learned I would be teaching at Otter Valley, she invited me to dinner along with her next-door neighbor Peter Hughes, Principal at that time. “Make a good impression on your new boss,” she said. I never knew Helen’s husband, second marriage for each of them. He owned several Brandon businesses including a meat-and-grocery store at Conant Square, gutted by fire in 1960. I once remarked to Helen, “I bet your husband’s name was once Vadeboncoeur,” which means “Go with good heart.”
Sure enough, Cecil’s grandfather, born in Highgate, Vermont, was Jérome Vadeboncoeur (1828–1917). His parents, Jérome and Victoire, migrated to Highgate from St. Cuthbert, Québec, in the early 1820s, and right away adopted the translation of their name, “Goodheart.” With no Catholic Church in Highgate, the parents brought their children back to Canada for baptism, as was the case with their son, Julien, baptized at nine months, with the notation “Pere est journalier a Hagget Falls dans les Etats-Unis.” (“The father is a day laborer at Highgate Falls in the United States”).
If Goodheart represents a translated name, the next two names fall into the garbled, misheard, or freely adopted categories. Having encountered the Gokey surname many times, I had yet to connect it to a local family. Mary Louise Gokey, mother of my longtime Otter Valley colleague Jack Smiel and the late Mary Greeno, married Dominic Smiel on January 31, 1927. While Gokey appears on the civil record, in the church register at Immaculate Heart of Mary in Rutland, her name is written as Marie Louise Gauthier. Pronounced in French, “Go tee aye,” with three syllables, it crunched down to two syllables with Gokey. Mary’s parents, William Gauthier and Mary Raymond were married on November 24, 1903. Throughout their lives, however, in Vermont Civil records, their name was written as Gokey.
William Gokey, baptized in Brandon as Guillaume Gauthier on September 6, 1874, belonged to the first generation born in Vermont. In the late 1850s, his father, Joseph Gauthier/Gokey came from St. Simon de Bagot, Québec, a village nine miles distant from St, Hyacinthe. The Gokeys moved often to find work. In 1880, a cluster of French-Canadian families lived in the now disincorporated town of Glastenbury in Bennington County. They labored in the dirty and arduous task of burning charcoal. Note how William’s name was spelled as “Welling.” Other members of this family never reverted to the Gauthier spelling and joined Protestant churches. Eliza Gokey Blackmer and her husband Harold became members of the Pittsford Congregational Church in 1950.
That brings me to Greeno, a prolific name in greater Pittsford. In the two generations of Greenos whom I taught at Otter Valley, I often said there was probably a Greeno descendant always accounted for in the history of school. Let’s start with the long-lived progenitor of the clan, David Greeno (1830–1917). His obituary recounts that he was born in St. Hyacinthe, came to Pittsford when he was 12, married there Monique Lorette, and served in the Civil War. Six children survived him, along with 40 grandchildren, and 56 great-grandchildren. At the end of an aged parent’s life, facts and memories from their children often get jumbled. A closer examination of David’s life addresses errors and omissions.
First, the church register of Notre Dame du Rosaire in St. Hyacinthe reveals David Greeno was born as François-David Guertin, son of Pierre Guertin and Louise Perro on October 11, 1830. How did Guertin, pronounced “Gair tan” become Greeno? A Yankee Greeno family lived in greater Rutland since the American Revolution. I think David chose the name Greeno as part of his assimilation. A record of his marriage to Monique Lorette, circa 1849, has not survived. Moreover, they cannot be found living in Vermont at the time of the 1850 census. From the evidence we have presented in previous articles, there were dozens of families from St. Hyacinthe who lived in Pittsford and Brandon. David and Monique would have settled among friends and neighbors. As one example, twenty-one-year-old Canada-born laborer Joseph Gurnish lived in the household of Sidney Griswold. Was he David Greeno’s brother? Joseph’s naturalization record discloses he was born in “Mosco.” [See Lost Names, Part 10, Gingras/Shangraw for explanation of how the identified Mosco(w) as St. Hyacinthe]. Indeed, Joseph Guertin/Gurnish proved to be David’s brother, baptized at St Hyacinthe on June 11, 1828.
Paralleling the name switching in the Gauthier/Gokey family, David’s children were recorded in church records as Guertin. In the late 1850s, David and family returned to St. Pie, Québec, just over the border, where two of his children were born. Back in Pittsford, he enlisted on September 23, 1861 as David Greenough in Company G of the 12th Vermont Regiment. Just nine months later, he was hospitalized in Hagerstown, Maryland, for a debilitating fever and an injury to his left eye. Sent home to Pittsford, he received his military discharge on November 20, 1862. The certificate gives physical details: height 5’ 6,” dark complexion, grey eyes, brown hair. His infirmities earned him a Civil War pension by 1878. David later purchased property on Arch Street in Pittsford. His marriage to Monique Lorette endured for almost 65 years until her death on February 12, 1914.
A heritage recovered for David Greeno’s descendants names their ancestor from Daumeray, Anjou, France, Louis Guertin, who arrived in New France in the 1650s. He married Elisabeth Camus at the church of Notre Dame in Montréal on October 26, 1659. Louis Guertin’s occupation: a sabotier, a maker and seller of wooden clogs.
With appreciation to Clarence Greeno Jr. and Jack Smiel for sharing family photos.
