Where were Amable and Esther married?
Posted: 28 May 2005 11:37
One of the mysteries of this family is that I and other researchers have been unable to find a record of marriage for Amable Ouellet and Esther Gardner. They are not included in any of the compilations of Catholic weddings from Quebec, as far as I know, and that is where they came from.
But I recently was going through the Ste-Luce church records and noticed that in the baptismal records for their children, they are described as being married. This is different from most of the records, which use the words "legitimate marriage" (mariage légitime) In general, when Father Dionne used "marriage" without the word légitime, it meant that the couple was married, but not in the Catholic church.
This means it is likely they were married in a Protestant church, or at least by a Protestant minister.
Further evidence is that for one of their daughters, Olympe, Fr. Dionne has written next to her name "Protestant." Now what's interesting is that he did not do this for any other of the children. But there must have been a reason for doing it that one time.
Finally, in the 1831 census of Rivière du Loup, Esther's family, headed by her dad David is listed as belonging to the Church of Scotland.
So, I'd guess that the couple were married not by a Catholic priest, but by a minister of the Church of Scotland.
Does anyone know anything about marriage records of that church for that area?
But I recently was going through the Ste-Luce church records and noticed that in the baptismal records for their children, they are described as being married. This is different from most of the records, which use the words "legitimate marriage" (mariage légitime) In general, when Father Dionne used "marriage" without the word légitime, it meant that the couple was married, but not in the Catholic church.
This means it is likely they were married in a Protestant church, or at least by a Protestant minister.
Further evidence is that for one of their daughters, Olympe, Fr. Dionne has written next to her name "Protestant." Now what's interesting is that he did not do this for any other of the children. But there must have been a reason for doing it that one time.
Finally, in the 1831 census of Rivière du Loup, Esther's family, headed by her dad David is listed as belonging to the Church of Scotland.
So, I'd guess that the couple were married not by a Catholic priest, but by a minister of the Church of Scotland.
Does anyone know anything about marriage records of that church for that area?