A Montréal Surprise

A Montréal Surprise

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 6 Theme: Surprise

Augustin Hébert dit Jolicoeur

Generation 13
My 8th Great Grandfather

Rigsby, Kienlen, Brazeau, St. Cyr, Hebert


Last summer I visited Québec with my oldest daughter. We knew our French Canadian roots were deep, and we wanted to visit some of the places our ancestors lived. We wanted to see what they saw, to walk where they walked.

We visited Montréal first. We visited many historic sites, the Archives de Montréal (too briefly), and some of the surrounding towns and villages that were important to our story. We happened upon the Pioneers' Monument Obelisk in Montréal and took a few pictures of it. The name of Augustin Hébert was listed along with his wife, Adrienne DuVivier. I didn't think much of it because I believed our ancestor was Louis Hébert of Québec City. 

I admit that I didn't put all of my facts together prior to our trip. In the past, like most of us, I copied a lot of family trees that weren't sourced. I started a Do-Over in 2015, and I take this effort in accurate source citations very seriously. I wasn't back quite this far yet because all of the French documents need translating and my translator (my daughter) has her own life to live. I don't add things to my tree anymore that aren't properly sourced.

I was aware that there are Héberts in my family tree. I believed they were descended from Louis Hébert in Québec City - our next destination. Once we arrived in Québec City, I pulled out my information on Louis Hébert and I became confused. Louis Hébert did not have descendants that shared his surname. Were we really related to Louis? Who passed the Hébert surname to our 18th century Illinois 

ancestors if it wasn't Louis?

Some quick research yielded a nice surprise. We are directly descended from both Louis and Augustin! Had I planned a little better, I would have realized this from the start. On the up side, now I have a reason to 

revisit two beautiful cities.

(*Those unsourced trees I used in the past were correctly linked back to Augustin Hébert. I'm working on finding and translating all of the proof for the information below, and for more of the story of my 8th great grandparents.)

An afterthought: 
When we were at the Pointe-à-Callière museum, I was found myself drawn to this little cemetery. I kept going back to it, and I took a lot of photos and even a few videos of the exhibit. For some reason, it touched me.
I didn't know it at the time, but my ancestors shed tears here. They buried their newborn daughter here. 
I am not a superstitious person. I don't really believe in magic or ghosts or anything like that, but this has happened to me over and over. I was drawn to this cemetery, and then later I found out I had ancestors who buried a child here. I love New Orleans and even visited the city 3 times in 5 years, then later learned I had ancestors who lived in New Orleans. I had favorite places in Scotland, for no particular reason, then found out later than I had ancestors from that region. These feelings always surprise me, but clearly there is something in my DNA drawing me to certain places. I need to pay attention to these feelings.

The French-Canadians: Thoughts Before Québec

Origins

When I was growing up, my dad always said we were German. As it turns out, that's not true. While I do have a healthy dose of German ancestry, I am also (in no particular order) English, Scottish, Fresian, Irish, Native American, and French. My roots in the US run deep in almost all of my family lines. The most recent arrivals were the Adens. They came in 1870 from Germany, but were ethnic Fresians. 

My earliest immigrant ancestors, though, were the French. I believe Louis Hébert  to be the first of those. One of my ancestors, he and his wife are mentioned in the Canadian Encyclopedia: "Louis Hébert visited Canada three times between 1604 and 1613 with the expeditions of Pierre Degua de Monts, Samuel de Champlain, and Jean de Beincourt de Pourtrincourt. In 1617 he decided to settle in Québec City with his wife and three children. He was ceded 10 arpents of land near the site of the present cathedral of Québec, and his family is renowned for having been the first to cultivate land in Canada.His wife, Marie Rollet, was the first Frenchwoman to scratch the soil of New France. It is said that, thanks to his medical knowledge among other reasons, Hébert was on good terms with the native people."

Next Saturday, I'm headed to Québec to do some research with my daughter Jennifer. We're hoping to find more information about our French-Canadian ancestors. I want to see the Louis Hébert monument. (Do we look alike?)

These brave French men and women were travelers. They were explorers. They were adventurers. That means records of their lives can pop up almost anywhere. Not only did they leave the security of a place like France, they continued to move to even more remote locations once in Nouvelle-France (New France), eventually arriving in "Illinois Country" or, as they called it, "Pays des Illinois" which was part of "Louisiane".

Primarily, we will be researching in Montréal and Québec City. But as I said, our ancestors were mobile. They lived in little villages all along the St. Lawrence River. Places like Batiscan, Cap-Santé, Lotbinière, Trois-Rivières, and Verchères to name a few. We hope to drive through these towns, get out and have a look around, and imagine what life was like 350-400 years ago. 

I want to see what my ancestors saw. I know things have changed, but I'm really hoping we can get a feel for the place. We can't travel back in time, but as my daughter Jennifer and I agreed, it will be fun just to go somewhere and hear people speaking French, the language of our people, or at least some of them.

Colonial St. Louis Economy and The Compagnie de Commerce pour la Découverte des Nations du haut du Missouri (Commercial Company for the Discovery of the Nations of the Upper Missouri), more commonly referred to as The Missouri Company

For those of you who don't realize this, St. Louis was founded by French settlers but was under Spanish rule for most of its early history. I don't mean to insult anyone by implying that you don't already know this, but I think it's a part of our history that gets neglected. There is so much focus on the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, and the arrival of the Americans that our early history has been swept aside. That's a shame, because it sure was interesting!

In 1780, 15 years after the founding of St. Louis, August Chouteau drew this map of the little village (https://shsmo.org). That same year, Spanish St. Louis was attacked by a British-led force of mostly Indians. Spain actually played a pretty big role in the American Revolution - another fact that has been left out of our history books. 

So let's shatter another historical myth. Lewis and Clark had a lot of help.  A lot. The Spanish (Spanish government but primarily French men) had been out on the Missouri River exploring and trading decades before that epic journey to the Pacific. If not for the contact made by these earlier explorers, Lewis and Clark would have had a more difficult time forging past the previous limits. 

I would like to refer you to this old book. There is another book of the same title that talks about the Chouteau family, but this is the one you want. It's in a lot of libraries.

The "Missouri Company" was founded by ten St. Louis merchants in 1794 and was granted exclusive trade rights for ten years with the Native American tribes along the Missouri above the Ponca lands (South Dakota). They were also charged with securing the Upper Missouri for Spanish trade by developing relationships with the tribes and, hopefully, discovering a route to the Pacific. They would be paid 3000 pesos by the King of Spain if they made it to the Pacific in addition to whatever profits they would make through trade. My 4th great grandfather was one of the 10 investors.

I recently wrote a paper about this 4th great grandfather, Hyacinthe-Amable Rouillard dit St. Cyr. He was born in Batiscan, Quebec, in 1751 and, like many French Canadians, found his way to St. Louis. Always referred to as Hyacinthe (or Jacinto) St. Cyr here, he is consistently mentioned as a prominent citizen and listed among the most influential St. Louisans. Unfortunately, he ended up losing almost everything before he died in Florissant. I wanted to know what led to his economic ruin. How did he go from prominent merchant to insolvent debtor?

I'm going to sum up my research in just a few sentences. There was no money in St. Louis. Everyone bought everything on credit, and many people could not pay the debts they owed. People even traded I.O.U.s, basically buying things they needed with the debts owed to them by other people. Needless to say, this was a big problem and even wealthy merchants were often not paid back. Another problem was with the nature of  St. Louis itself. It was founded as a fur-trading town, a center of commerce, and everyone wanted to get rich. I think the fur trade was sort of like the Gold Rush. People took big risks hoping to gain wealth when they were allowed. The ability to trade was limited by the government and was very political. Usually Chouteau and his allies got the best trade licenses.

Due to a series of unfortunate events, The Missouri Company lost money. They lost a lot of money. As a result, the investors lost a lot of money (They had all signed for each other so there was no real back-up in case of failure). Hyacinthe St. Cyr was forced to sell everything he owned. His best pieces of land in St. Louis were bought by the Chouteaus. Once everything had been sold, he could only pay 10% of what he owed. Out of kindness to his family, they allowed him to keep some property in Florissant and everything he would need to farm that land with the stipulation that this was for his wife and children (they had 15) and could not be taken by any of his creditors.

There are still so many things I want to learn about this man. Even after all of this, he was able to provide a good education for his children, even the girls. They married well, and St. Cyr remained a respected member of society. He was resilient.

Hyacinthe St. Cyr and his wife Hélène Hébert had fifteen children. There must be hundreds of descendants like me out there somewhere. I like to think we're risk-takers like St. Cyr, but I hope we're all resilient too, just in case things don't go as planned.