This Bédard research day will be dedicated to collecting records for the family as I have now completed the 32 3x great grandparents of the present family back to their emigrant ancestor in most cases (a few still to accomplish on their next research day) and searching for any interesting webpages on the family. I have now expanded the research to the 4x great grandparents lines so every other day I will be tracing another line back to the emigrant ancestor. Once I have completed the 63 days of research (I combined the last two as I thought the final one would be just too difficult to determine although yesterday's research may change that) then I will expand the coverage one more generation back to the 128 5x great grandparents.
It is amazing to be able to research every line of a family but that is the advantage to French Canadian research. Only three surnames are duplicated back to the 4x great grandparents - Séguin dit Ladéroute, Piché and Larente dit Vinette. There are just two names missing currently although I have not yet searched for the names. In order for all the names (128) to fit into 18 weeks I will only do one day for each of Piché and Larente dit Vinette although they occur in two family lines. It is hard to believe that once I complete this next set (9 weeks) and then do the following set of 18 weeks it will be over half of a year. At that point I need to decide about moving then to do 256 lines and at the moment I think that I will do that as it only takes me back to the 6x great grandparents and most of the lines go back to the 9x, 10x, 11x or 12x great grandparents as being the emigrant ancestor.
Imagine having had your ancestors from so far back arriving here (and certainly the First Nations are much much further back). All the emigration stories are lost for the most part whereas I know all of my emigration stories but then I have only five sets of emigrants all of whom when they reached marriage age (and that is just three because three sets were families where the child of the family was the one who married) they married a new emigrant from England (i.e. a Routledge from Cumberland married a Gray from Yorkshire - their child a Gray (first born ancestor in Canada) married a Pincombe from Devon and their child (my grandfather) married a Buller from Birmingham and their child (my mother) married a Blake from Hampshire. All three who married came to Canada as children - Elizabeth Mary Ann Routledge was 14 years old and born at Bewcastle Cumberland, William Robert Pincombe was 14 years old and born at Molland Devon and Ernest Edward George Blake was 9 years old and born at Eastleigh Hampshire. All remembered their trip to Canada and passed it on to their children.
One interesting detail I didn't notice before on the 1871 census for the Charles Bédard and Emilie Whelan family is the presence of Philomen Whelan aged 21 years (female), she is born in Quebec and a seamstress by trade. Emilie Whelan has just had her fourth child Eugènie (female) and the child is just 3 months old. The other children are Melvina 2 years, Eugene 4 years and Letitia 7 years (3 daughters and 1 son thus far). I need to investigate Philomène Whelan and see if I can learn anything further about the Whelan family there but will leave that for the Whelan research day.
Interesting websites for the Bédard family
http://larryvoyer.com/genealogy/familygroup.php?familyID=F52557&tree=v7_28
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~maryc/presc04.htm (Bédard marriages)
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~snaylor/OntGraMk/Ottawa/Gloucest/NotreDame/F/F.HTM (Bedard burials)
An interesting read through these websites.
Next research day to pull more of the Bédard documents.
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