Louis is found, and his father signs
Steve found Louis’s baptism an hour after the morning’s entry named it as the next document to find. St-Constant, 22 August 1807 (S-0052): Louis, born that day, son of Paschal Lecompte, forgeron in this parish, and Véronique Laplante. The godfather was a Louis Lériger, the mother’s kin. The date puts Louis at twenty-two when he married, so fils majeur, as the 1830 act says. His birth, which the records had held at Unproven with no act, is now Proven.
A correction to this morning
The morning’s entry said this baptism « is the one document that lifts the base of the Comte line to Proven ». It is not, and it could not have been. Louis’s own file and his father’s said the same thing, and both are now struck and corrected in place. The baptism names the couple the 1830 act already named: Pascal and Véronique Laplante, of St-Constant. The weak joint was never who Louis’s parents were called. It was whether the St-Constant couple is the St-Philippe couple of 1787, and a baptism at St-Constant says nothing about 1787. We expected the act to close a gap it never touched. We only saw that when it was in hand, and by then two person files, the resolution of Q-0002 and this morning’s entry had all said in advance what it would prove. The person files are corrected. Q-0002’s resolution is Steve’s ruling and is left as written. Its phrase « no baptism yet links the 1830 parent to the 1787 groom » is true, but it implies that one would.
And the father signs
Under the act, in a second, unpractised hand, all lower case: « pascal comte », and the text says so: le père présent a signé avec nous. In 1787 the groom Pierre Pascal Compte ne sçait signer. The same man could have learned his name in twenty years. The father of 1807 is also a forgeron, a trade the 1787 act does not give. The difference could also be two men. Q-0004 is opened on it, with the arguments for one man and against, and the acts that would decide it: Pascal’s burial with an age, the earliest children’s baptisms, a second signature. F-0002 stays at Probable-Strong for Louis, and now cites both the marriage and the baptism.
The morning ended with a question closed on the Comte line, and the afternoon ends with one opened on the same line, one generation higher. That is the right direction, but the base is not Proven yet.
The site counts, fixed
The morning’s entry named the problem: site.json counted every person, family and woman in
records/, not the pedigree. Three tests were written first, and each failed for the reason it
was written: a collateral couple raised all three counts, an ancestor’s second marriage raised
the family count, and a merged-away person was counted twice. People and women now count
persons on the ascent and not merged, the same set the frontier uses. Families count only the
couples the pedigree walk passes through.
One number on the site moves: the front page’s 139 people becomes 138. The difference is P-0007, Pascal fils, kept since 20 September to tell two Pascals apart, and never part of the pedigree. For nine days the front page counted him in it, and nothing noticed. Families and women stay at 69. The tool suite (157) and the site suite (32) pass.
Found and not used
On the 1807 opening, 17 Aug: the baptism of Simon, son of a Louis Laplante, laboureur, and Josephte Robert. With Louis Lériger as godfather and the 1809 oncle maternel Jean-Baptiste Laplante, there are at least two Laplante men of Véronique’s generation at St-Constant.
What broke
Claude typed names read only at overview magnification into S-0052, the same slip logged this morning for S-0049. It was caught again before check. It has now happened twice in a day, and the entry says so.
Next
Pascal’s burial at St-Constant, after 1830. Its age decides whether he could be a man born in the 1760s, and it is the most likely single act to close Q-0004. Then the first children, c. 1788–1800.