While vacationing in Massachusetts recently, I visited the American French Genealogical Society in Woonsocket, RI. After looking at their website, I decided that it would be most efficient if I made a list of the items I most wanted to find, in order of their priority. First, I searched their online searchable obituary database to see if there might be anything useful. An entry for Germaine Catudal Henry came up, so I made a note of the book and page number. The AFGS obituary database contains names and locations, but it is necessary to go there and look up the actual obituary. I did not find any other obituaries, which is not surprising, considering that the collection only began in the 1970s and it is solely dependent on submissions by AFGS volunteers.
My research goals were:
1. Find a baptismal record for Valérie Provost. I have found what I think is a birth record on FamilySearch, but as I mentioned in a previous post, the mother’s name is incorrect. The first name on the record is Sophronia with no middle name or other names, so I cannot be certain that the record is a match. The father’s name and child’s birth date are accurate, and the birth occurred in Chicopee, MA, where her parents were married the year prior. An inquiry of the church records in Chicopee was unfruitful.
Outcome: Not found. No records for parishes in Chicopee.
2. Find a marriage record for Desiré Provost and Marceline Monast. Again, I found a transcription on FamilySearch but was unable to track down a church record in Chicopee. Unlike the birth record, which is a civil record, the marriage record does not exist in the state archives. Therefore, the transcription must have been made from a church record. That aspect of it remains a mystery to me.
Outcome: Not found. Marriage indexes at AFGS only contain Canadian church records. Again, there were no records for Chicopee.
3. Look for exact death dates for Charles Catudal and his mother, Marie Anne Boulay.
Outcome: Not found. AFGS has death indexes only, but not the vital records themselves. I had already found the indexes at the New Bedford Public Library.
4. Look at the funeral home records for more information about Valérie Provost.
Outcome: Although they have volumes of funeral home records, they didn’t have the records from McGinn funeral home in North Attleboro. There probably would not have been any information that I don’t already have anyway. These funeral home records provide such information as next-of-kin and other information that is usually found on a death certificate.
5. Try to find a birth or baptismal record for Marie Louise Trémouillé (see last post “What happened to the Dumonts?”).
Outcome: No luck here either. The volunteer who assisted me said that it would be very difficult to find a birth or baptismal record without the parents’ names. He did say that Trémouillé is an unusual name for a French Canadian, and that she was probably an orphan or of mixed heritage.
6. Look in the St-Pie church records register just to see if there is any information I have not found elsewhere.
Outcome: Lots of information here.
I found listings for the baptism of two more children of Ambroise Provost and Magdeleine May Denonville, bringing their total number of children to fifteen. Both children died in childhood:
M. Genviève – 7 September 1832 – 23 November 1834
M. Magdeleine – 26 July 1834 – 17 April 1836
I also found a death date of 6 February 1841 for their child, Désiré, who was born in 1837.
Other information contained in this register were the marriage dates and names of spouses for:
M. Rosalie Hermine – Prosper Michaud – married 4 August 1873
Joseph Charles – Victorine Chagnon – married 24 February 1873
Adelphe (he is a new addition) –Elmire Gendreau – married 8 June 1853
Elmire – Raphael Emery Coderre* – married 4 February 1873
Misaél – Sophie Séraphine Morin – married 21 October 1859
Antoine – Aschash Emma Ball – 15 June 1858
*I had wondered who Raphael Coderre was. He signed Désiré Provost’s burial record in 1886 and was godfather to Raphael Louis Désiré Provost (b. 3 August 1885)
The children of Misaél and Sophie and their spouses were also listed:
Olivier Théodore (b. 17 September 1869) married Alice Coderre in St-Hyacinthe.
Alice Exire (alt. spelling Escire) (b. 13 November 1873)
Henri Fabien Antonio (b. 28 November 1879) married Elmire Laporte, was widowed and remarried Alice Traverse.
Entries for the children of Pierre Ambroise and Tharsile Thomas (Williams) were also available, and I was able to find more complete names and birth dates:
Aurelié Valérie (previously, we didn’t know her name was Aurélie) b. 31 March 1868
Léandre – b. 14 October 1855
Gabriel Ambroise Georges – b. 12 February 1859
So, the regional collection at AFGS proved to be quite useful. As with any collection of records, I would not place complete trust in the accuracy of the information, and it is not complete by any means, but it is an excellent place to gather names and dates as a preliminary step in searching for the original documents. Most of the entries I saw matched records I had already found. There were only two discrepancies, which I will have to go back and check (it is entirely possible that I made an error in recording the dates as well). I also found the obituary for Germaine Catudal and was able to photocopy it. By the time I had asked for assistance and browsed the shelves a bit, I was out of time.
AFGS is run entirely by volunteers. The three volunteers who assisted me were very friendly French-Canadian American gentlemen, and one of them even answered my questions about Canadian French pronunciation and idioms. If you decide to conduct research at AFGS, you can save yourself some time by going through their list of holdings online and knowing exactly what you want to look for in advance. As daunting as it looks online, it is much more so onsite. The onsite “catalog” consists of two binders listing the volumes that line the shelves. The binders have categories, but they do not actually match the lists contained within the sections. The second binder contains addenda to the first one, so it is necessary to look through both if you do not find the item you are seeking in the first one. From what I could tell, there is no logic to the holdings list categories. I even asked one of the volunteers to explain it to me and he said it didn’t make sense to him either. I suspect that they made sense at one time but as pages of holdings were added, the categories were not updated to reflect the changes. I ultimately gave up on the binders and just perused the shelves. Also, as knowledgeable and helpful as the volunteers are, don’t expect to be assisted by a professional reference librarian. When you visit AFGS, try to plan in advance and give yourself plenty of time. There is a lot of information in the library there, but it may take a while to find what you are looking for.
Non-members pay an admission fee of $5.00 for the day, and bring change or small bills if you plan to make any photocopies. You will also be required to leave bags, 3-ring binders and fanny packs in the lockers provided outside of the research room. Even if you visit their website http://www.afgs.org/, you will find useful information and some interesting items, including some familiar French-Canadian recipes from the Grandmère Cookbook, which is available to order for $14.00.
