Friday, June 17, 2022

Ancestry

 Since I've been home bound not feeling well enough to do anything exciting I went down the rabbit hole looking for ancestors. 

From the bit of genealogy I had done in the 1990's when my grandpa was still alive, I had come to conclusion that the Pichette family, all Pichettes in North America were all from common relative Jean Pichet arrived in Quebec in 1667 and he married an indigenous woman.

So that turned out to be false. Two unrelated Pichet's arrived in Quebec around the same time from the same region of France and we're from the other branch. My grandfathers' relative is actually Pierre Pichet Jr, he was born in France and died in Quebec.

Also I do have native ancestry. According to 23&me it's .5%.  My other ancestry changes from being Mostly French from France to broadly northern European depending how narrow I look at it and the native part never changes.

Through following leads of ancestors I did find indigenous ancestors.  I'm convinced most of us with family in Canada that can be traced back to the 1600's do.

One from my father's mother's side, the Laframboise trace back to an Anishnabee woman. On my mothers side, we have a branch that goes back to Port Royale in Nova Scotia, and tracing back Mi'kmaq relative, I found them to have a Mi'kmaq mom and Mohawk dad, from upstate NY.  All my native ancestors are from the  late 1500's early 1600s.

I was puzzled too, says about 9% of my DNA is English/Irish?? Must be because lots of my French ancestors lived near the English channel so there's overlap with the English.

So far 95% of relatives are all from various regions of France but Normadie and Poitou seem the top two. I found one set of grandparents from Belgium, one set from Germany and one lone English ancestor so far. And one that might be Scottish, as their last name is Martin "The Scot".  I have not gone as far as I could on all the branches yet.

Also there's two branches I seem stuck at. There Henriette Hardy. I found a blog about her being a dead end. 

The other dead end is the mom of my Great Grandpa Eugene Duplessis. His mom was Olive Desjardins born in Quebec 10 july 1846 and I cannot find her parents for the life of me. And while I find her husband - it's hard to find information about him because I haven't been able to confirm WTF his name is.  I've seen all sorts of names and it's not helping. His name is Zozime or Zosime or Josime or Gogine or Zotique???? But him I can trace much further. Just can't find fuck all about Olive Desjardins. Wonder if she was an orphan?  Reason I wonder is I find one source that finds her head of her own home at 15?!?!? And the other where I can find her young, she's one of a dozen children but all the others have at least common last names?

Other interesting details - My parents were actually far removed cousins. I found 2 sets of overlapping grandparents, one from Pagé  side and one from Pichette side.

Adrien Lamusette dit Piche - is my 7th great-grandfather on both my mom & dad's side. As well as Madeleine Martin dit L'Ecossais-  is 7th great-grand ma on both my mom & dad's side.

Found many Madeleine's in our ancestors as well as Isabelle Elizabeth's.  Or Elizabeth Isabelle's.  Some of the names of our ancestors? One is called "Jaquette Naturel", there's a few Gilette's,