Whether in spelling or speech, losing an accent often becomes part of assimilating to a new culture. In previous installments of “Lost Names,” we have seen that some French-Canadian immigrants may not have been aware of how written versions of their names were garbled or misspelled.

Alexander Bean’s (1826–1911) dignified gravestone in Pittsford’s St. Alphonsus Cemetery has long beckoned me to explore further the life and Civil War service of this man born in Canada. 

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.

My recent research on the McGee family pulled me into the perplexing story of Angeline, wife of Lewis McGee of Chittenden, Vermont.

A steep climb in Chittenden’s rocky Horton Cemetery brings us to a large memorial stone inscribed like two faces of the same coin.

A monument with the name “Christmas” carved at its base in St. Alphonsus Cemetery in Pittsford commands attention. Who was this family?

Matilda Billings sounds deceptively like a Yankee name—but we know that was neither her true first nor last name.

What started out as an inquiry into solving one man’s changed surname unexpectedly linked three distantly related families, with variant spellings of their last name, to their common ancestral couple in Québec.

Unmasking one French-Canadian surname often leads to another through family associations.