The first three surnames, all ending with “o,” represent modified spellings from their original Québec names. Remarkably, all three families hail with the throng of émigrés from St. Hyacinthe who settled in our area.
Tag: Michael F. Dwyer
Names lost in Vermont, Part 43: Wood, Baker, and Poutier
Christa Wood, now a nurse at Rutland Regional Medical Center, was my student in several classes during my last two years at Otter Valley. I called her “Christa Bois,” surmising that she likely had some French-Canadian ancestry.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 42: Goodheart, Gokey, and Greeno
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.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 41: More Kings, Bottom, and Superman
Continuing to search for Kings born in Canada as Roi/Roy brought me to this household in New Haven’s 1850 census.
Question to Brandon Library uncovers evidence of Frederick Douglass’ visit to Brandon in 1870
A recent query to the Brandon Free Public Library led to the rediscovery of a forgotten visit to Brandon of one most important Americans of the 19th century.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 40: King & Dudley
Our new year begins with a sequel to the last installment on the Stone family that is partly the recovering of a lost name and the unraveling of a complex mystery.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 39: Stone
The subtitle of this installment could well be “leaving no stone unturned.”
Names lost in Vermont, Part 38: Liberty, Lamorder, and Forsha
Returning to previous strolls through St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon brings me to three photos of gravestones whose stories needed to be retrieved. In all three instances, the subjects’ first and last names had changed from records of their baptisms or marriages in Québec.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 37: Brooks and Disorda
Unfinished business from our last installment, Brooks had been included in the previous title along with Wideawake.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 36: Wideawake, Morris, Brooks, and Smart
Over twenty-five years ago, after reading one of Christian Wideawake’s by-lines from the Rutland Herald, I commented to George Valley, “I wonder if Wideawake is a Native American surname?” George, raised in a Francophone family, did not speak English until he went to school. He said, “I bet it was Leveillé.”
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