Amable's parents discovered!

(moved to the valley from Quebec in about 1844) Discussion of this family, their ancestors and descendants
(migrés à la vallée de Québec vers 1844) Discuter cette famille, leurs ancêtres et leurs descendants
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ChipG
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Amable's parents discovered!

Post by ChipG »

The parentage of Amable Ouellet, my g-g-g grandfather, has long been a mystery. Because he and his wife Esther Gardner were married in a Protestant church, which usually did not include the names of the parents of the bride and groom in marriage records, we don't have the usual source of parentage for French-Canadian couples, and I'd found no other evidence on who his parents were.

After many years of searching, Dennis Prue and Allen Voisine have discovered that Amable's parents were almost certainly Henri-Marie Ouellet and Marie-Louise Pelletier, who were married at St-Roch-des-Aulnaies in Quebec in 1788. Assuming this is true, Amable himself was born on 15 March 1807 and baptized the same day at St-Roch under the name Joseph.

Evidence that has led Dennis and Allen to this conclusion -- and I agree -- is the following:
  • 1. Consanguinity. Amable's daughter Marie Desneiges had to receive a church dispensation for consanguinity when she married Louis Castonguay at Ste Luce in 1855, because they were third cousins. By tracing back Louis's ancestry, I identified the eight couples that were his great-great grandparents. I knew that one of those couples also had to be Amable's great-grandparents. This allowed Allen and Dennis to narrow down the search, and they discovered a Joseph Ouellet that we believe is our Amable; he and Louis Castonguay share a common ancestor at the correct degree of sanguinity in Charles Pelletier and Marie-Louise Chouinard (Joseph's mother's father's parents, and Louis's father's father's father's parents).

    2. Location. In the 1850 census, Amable is living in Township 17, Range 9; in the same township is Joseph's cousin Guillaume, m. to Olive Michaud. Guillaume's father and Joseph's father were brothers. One of Guillaume's brothers, Joseph, husband of Liza Angelique Thomas, was also located in that area for a while.

    3. Godparent. Jean-Alexis Ouellet, another first cousin of Joseph, was the godfather of Amable's son David at his baptism in Rivière-du-Loup in 1842.
I'll update my web pages on Amable, and add his ancestry as time permits.

If you have any other information on this connection, please let me know! It would be great to have concrete indisputable evidence in the form of a document that proves definitively this connection.

If you know of any other evidence, please email me!
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