They say she sang.

         Nobody in the family ever spoke about what my great-grandmother, Valérie Provost Catudal, was like as a person, or even how she died.  We only knew that she died when her children were very young.  Valérie’s eldest daughter, my great-aunt Germaine, used to say that her mother sang in church with a voice so beautiful that parishoners would turn around to see who was singing.  My mother named me Valerie (minus the accent) because she had always thought it was a pretty name and wished she had been named after her grandmother.  I am the only professional singer in a family of non-musicians, but my mother tells me that her father (Valérie’s second child, Joseph Arthur Désiré) sang in a barbershop quartet before he was married.   I never knew my grandfather because he died when my mother was 15. 

            My genealogical journey began two years ago when I was about to make a CD of 19th c. American songs.   I was inspired to use a photo of my great-grandparents, Charles Catudal and Valérie Provost, on the cover, because the time period of the photo was appropriate for the music. It also seemed fitting to use Valérie’s photo, since (we think) she was also a singer.  Just to satisfy my curiosity, I decided to do some research to see if I could find any evidence in print that Valérie had indeed been a soloist and/or chorister in church.  I thought there might be lists of church choir members or soloists, newspaper clippings, an obituary, or some documentation somewhere to confirm the family legend.  So far, nothing has turned up.  Nevertheless, I have made many very surprising discoveries about the Provost family, including the fact that Valérie and two of her siblings were born in the U.S.  We had always thought that Valérie and Charles were the first generation to come to the U.S. from Canada. Following is the story of the Provost family that I have pieced together, beginning with the marriage of Valérie’s parents.  In my next post, I will write about the search process and explain how and where I found the documents.  

            Désiré Provost and Marceline Monast were married on 14 October 1875 in Chicopee, Massachusetts.  Désiré, a carpenter, was among the many French Canadians who sought employment in the U.S. throughout the 19^th century.  A little over a year later, their first child, Valérie (Marie Valerie) was born, and in two years’ time a second child, Wilfrid (Joseph Jean-Baptiste Wilfrid), was born.  Fall River, Massachusetts town directories list a Désiré Provost, carpenter, living on Chestnut Street from 1878 to 1882 and we know that their third child, Auguste (Augustin Edouard) was born in Fall River and baptized at Saint Anne.  The family appears to have moved back to St-Pie after 1882, but it seems that Désiré returned to New England on his own when work was available, because he died in Rhode Island while the rest of the family was living in St-Pie.  A fourth child, Exavérine (Marie Exavérine Alba Blanche) was born and baptized in St-Pie in 1883.  On July 3, 1886, Désiré died of sunstroke in Lincoln, RI, just a year after a fifth child, Désiré (Raphael Louis Désiré), was born.  Désiré’s body was sent back to St-Pie for burial and the young widow Marceline was left to care for five children.  By the time of the 1901 Quebec census, four of the children were working adults.  Marceline,Valérie and Exavérine were all earning a living as seamstresses, and Wilfred and Auguste were employed as domestics (I think - abbreviation on census form is Dom.). 

            On 21 October 1902, Valérie married Charles Catudal in St-Pie, Bagot, Quebec, and their first two children were born there.  Germaine (Exavérine Germaine), was born on July 4, 1904 and two years later, on 27 March 1906, Désiré (Joseph Arthur Désiré) (my grandfather) arrived.  He was always known to his family as Joseph, but according to the 1910 North Attleboro census, Valérie had called him Désiré.  Shortly after Désiré’s birth, Charles and Valérie moved the family to North Attleboro, Massachusetts.  The Catudals lived on the second floor of a two-story house on Washington Street that they shared with another Canadian family, Agnes (O’Brien) and August Dumont, a painter, and the Dumont’s two young daughters, Margaret and Leonia.  The Dumonts had lost one child, Rose Blanche (25 July 1904 – 22 August 1906), who had been born hydrocephalic.  

Evening Chronicle (Attleborough, MA), 20 Nov. 1910

Valérie was just 34 years old at the time of her death in 1910, when tuberculosis (phtysis pulmonalis) took her life.  She had fallen ill two years prior, just after the birth of the Catudals’ third child, Alphonse, on 27 July 1908.  She died at home on 18 November 1910 and her body was sent back to Canada for burial following a funeral Mass at Sacred Heart Church in North Attleboro.

What happened to the children at this juncture in the story is not completely clear, but we do know from the 1911 census of Canada that Germaine went to live with relatives.  Charles remarried in April of 1912, but so far I have found no clues about who took care of the two boys in the interim. Germaine appears on a Canada to U.S. border crossing list in 1917, with her residence listed as St-Pie, Quebec and her destination Massachusetts, so it appears that she had lived in Canada from 1910 to 1917, and possibly even beyond that date.  When I knew Aunt Germaine, she was living in North Attleboro, had married, raised two children and owned an apartment building in which her father had lived with his second wife.  She never mentioned having grown up in Canada, and neither my grandfather nor Uncle Al had mentioned anything to their children about that period of their lives.  I found out recently that Uncle Al had kept in touch and visited with Auguste Provost until Auguste’s death in 1969.

So, I have uncovered a lot of family history, but did Valérie sing?   I still don’t know for sure, but I have hope that somewhere out there, a document, photo or object exists that will provide the answer I seek.