Notre-Dame, 1731: an index entry becomes an act
The last Probable on the Comte line below generation five was a marriage we knew only from the index: Gabriel Boutrice and Geneviève Jetté, Notre-Dame de Montréal, 5 March 1731 (F-0006). It held the chain at Probable on positions 18 and 19 while everything beside it was Proven.
Steve pulled the act. It spans two frames: it begins at the foot of one page and ends, with its signatures, at the head of the next. I first read only the second frame and asked Steve for the first. He had already put it on the Desktop, and I had looked only at the newest file. That was my slip. The first frame was there all along.
Both frames are coarse (2202 px) and the ink has bled. Large parts of the act cannot be read, and the transcription marks every gap rather than filling it from the index. What can be read is enough: « Le cinquième jour du mois de mars de l’année mil sept cent trente et un », gabriel bou[rt…], son of the late Jean-Baptiste […], and Geneviève […] Jetté, daughter of Urbain Jetté, who stood as père de l’épouse. The groom signs « gabri[el] bou… » in lower case with a looped g, consistent with the « gabriel bo… » who gave his daughter away at Lachine twenty years later (S-0004).
F-0006’s marriage is now Proven, and positions 18 and 19 with it: the chain is Proven from Louis and Rose to both of Geneviève Boutrice’s parents. The act also names the two fathers of the generation above, so Gabriel’s link to Jean Bourrice (F-0026) and Geneviève’s to Urbain Jetté (F-0029) move from Probable to Probable-Strong, not Proven. The act gives the fathers, but the mothers, and the groom’s father’s surname, are not legible on this copy.
Found and not used
On the same opening, February 1731: the burial of an infant ondoyé, « le fils de pierre comte ». A Pierre Comte was having children at Montréal in 1731, and our beadle had married in 1721. The mother’s name cannot be read, so nothing is claimed.
Next
On the Comte line, generation five, the four index-only marriages of F-0026, F-0029 and their neighbours. Or turn to the other three lines. That is Steve’s choice.