The grandparents at the font
The next joint up the Comte line asked whether Pierre Pascal’s parents, Pierre Lecomte and Geneviève Boulris at his 1758 baptism, were the couple married at Lachine in April 1751. The names matched, and names were all there was. P-0008’s file said the link would stay Probable-Strong « until a baptism of Pascal joins them ». That was the same mistake the morning made about Louis, and it is struck the same way: a baptism that names the parents is names again.
What did not work, and what did
The act that should have settled it, the court’s duplicate of the 1787 marriage with the father’s signature, is not on Généalogie Québec. Only the presbytère copy was filmed there. Steve ran the index instead: every marriage of a Geneviève Boutrice, Boullerice, Boulris or Boullerie, under any spelling we had seen. There was one, Lachine 1751 (S-0055). That rules out a second couple of the same names, within the index’s coverage.
Then Steve brought the PRDH family page (S-0056). PRDH’s demographers had linked, on their own, the 1751 couple to seventeen children, Pierre Pascal among them, with the same dates we had read from the acts. Compiled, so it cannot prove anything alone. But it did two things. It was a second reading that agreed with ours. And it showed where to look.
It also caught a misreading of ours. On 20 September the bride’s mother in the 1751 act was transcribed « Geneviève [Fotté? Setté?] ». PRDH and LAFRANCE both say Jetté. Re-cropped, the act reads jetté, its j descending as this hand’s j does elsewhere. S-0004 now says so, including that we read it that way only after being told what to look for.
The acts
- Caughnawaga, 12 Sept 1761 (S-0057). A son named Gabriel, the bride’s father’s name, by a godfather Gabriel Boutrise. The father signs « pierre cont ».
- Caughnawaga, 10 Feb 1757 (S-0058). The eldest child, Marie-Geneviève, named by Gabriel Boutrise and Marie-Charlotte Fournier: the 1751 bride’s father and the 1751 groom’s mother. One grandparent from each side at the eldest child’s font, as the custom was. This was the act that decided it.
- Lachine, 10 Nov 1759 (S-0059). A second Marie-Geneviève, in the bride’s own parish. The frame is too coarse to read the mother’s surname, and we did not borrow PRDH’s.
- Notre-Dame de Montréal, 8 Dec 1799 (S-0060). Geneviève, veuve de Pierre Comte, forgeron. The father was a blacksmith, as his son Pascal was at St-Constant in 1807. Her age, 72, is four years too many for a daughter of her parents’ 1731 marriage. That is recorded as a discrepancy, not argued away.
- La Prairie, 1762–1766 (S-0061 to S-0064). Joseph-Aimé, Louis-Augustin, Urbain and Jean-Baptiste. Joseph and Urbain are the two frères de l’époux at the 1787 wedding. In 1764 the father signs « pierrecont », run together exactly as the 1751 groom did. In 1765 a Marie-Charlotte Comte is godmother.
The father’s signature appears in 1751, 1761 and 1764 in one form, in a spelling no priest used. The grandparents stand at the font. The children run without a break from Caughnawaga through Lachine to La Prairie. No act says grandfather, and none needed to.
The ruling
Steve ruled one couple. F-0003’s filiation of Pierre Pascal went from Probable-Strong to Proven, and with it the claims on Pierre and Geneviève that had waited on the question. Because the joint above Pierre was already Proven, the chain climbed two generations at once: Proven from Louis and Rose to Pierre Le Comte, the Montréal beadle, and Marie-Charlotte Fournier, married 1721 (positions 16 and 17). On the Boutrice side the joint is Proven, but the chain stops at Probable, because the 1731 marriage of Gabriel Boutrice and Geneviève Jetté is still an index entry, not an act.
Found and not used
- A Lérigé household at La Prairie in 1764, with a godmother signing « …lerigée ». That is Véronique’s surname, with no relationship shown (S-0062, read at overview only).
- Marie-Charlotte Comte, godmother in 1765, is probably the father’s sister, and a Charles Conte signed the 1751 act. Neither has a file.
Next
The 1731 Notre-Dame marriage of Gabriel Boutrice and Geneviève Jetté (F-0006), to lift the Boutrice chain from Probable. Then the other three lines. Each starts, as this one did, from a répertoire and a name.