PRELUDE / FOREWORD
As promised some two months ago I have finally decided to post the results of my research into my family history . There remains much more to uncover , discover and write up but this will do for now and hopefully one day my two lads will read this text with interest , respect and love for those who went before them...... thereby better understanding where they themselves come from. Top picture : Aunt Minnie .... Middle Picture : Matilda Georgiana and John Joseph ..... Bottom picture : Matilda Georgiana
Growing up in the shanty-Irish North End ( Indiantown / Pokiok ) of Saint John , New Brunswick I guess I knew as much about my immediate forebearers as anybody else did about theirs........ an Gorta Mór or Great Famine of Ireland , the coffin ships carrying death , disease and survivors in the aftermath.......along with the tough times since their arrival in the adopted land.......long periods of quarantine on Ellis Island for those going to the States or on Partridge Island or Grosse Île for those coming into Saint John and Québec City respectively. One of my important ancestors , "surnamesake" and future great grandfather ...... a lad named Séamas from County Donegal sailed into Saint John sometime during the Great Famine on a "coffin ship" along with his father , Owen ( John ) / Eoin , his mother , Mary McShane and his older brother , Myles , a rather odd name for an Irish Catholic back then..... therefore easily spotable by someone like myself climbing the family tree a century and a half later. I am still researching the fate of his mother and possible other siblings. One tidbit I do know for certain is that he was born in Ireland in 1841.
My Dad told me that Séamas or Old Jimmy as he called him , a millwright by trade ,spent most of his life piling lumber / deal at Murray's sawmill , doing carpentry work around Saint John and also shipbuilding in nearby Saint Martins where he met and married his second wife , Mary Buckley , sister to Dan and Johnny whose descendants had moved to Mars Hill , Maine where Fluff and I visited with their decendants during our recent trip to Northeastern Maine........touching base with my long-lost kin I guess........... all part of the search for roots !. But now , however , I'm jumping the gun chronologically !l My truly documented family history begins with Old Jimmy's first marriage to Anne Bryson which took place at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on November 3rd , 1862........ with Henry and Ann McGinn as best man and bride's maid. Of this union five children were born...Frances ( Fannie ) , 1864 , William , 1866 , Mary Ann , 1868 , John , 1871 and finally Catherine ( Katie ) , 1873...... who unfortunately would drown at age 13 in the Reversing Falls. Fannie married John Brookins and boosted the demographical statistics of Portland Street by a half dozen .....giving birth to six children many of whom I knew in my youth , William went to Boston in search of fame and fortune and was never heard from after that , Mary Ann married Daniel Doherty and moved to Oregon , and then comes my grandfather , John Joseph ....born on January 11 , 1871 and died on May 15th , 1909 at age 38 of TB as well as from gangrene poisoning in his legs . My Dad told me that all he could remember of him was that he was tall and carried a big cane. I still have the receipt for the burial lot he bought at St Joe's Cemetery in 1908....... maybe he had a premonition of his imment death which happened the following year.
Sometime between Catherine's birth in 1873 and 1880 my biological great grand ma , Anne Bryson , died since the diocese archives bear witness to Old Jimmy's second marriage to Mary Buckley ( mentioned above ) which , like his first , was celebrated at the Cathedral. Mary gave birth to only one child .......Ellen G. ( aka Ella ) .... born in 1881 . She would later marry Ned Furness and live across the river from us in Fairville. I knew her well in my youth as Aunt Ellen ( she was really my great aunt though ) , a stubby , comely old lady with lots of facehair and a wide variety of odd hats. Old Ned smoked cigars and the pipe and their house "stenched thereof " !! He never missed a spitoon either .... not even at three paces !! Séamas / Old Jimmy died at the Saint John Infirmary on the 28th of January , 1924 , at age 83. Mary Buckley would die three years later at her daughter Ellen's home , 12 Mill Street , Fairville , NB......in December , 1927. She was 89.
Parallel to the drama unfolding in Saint John and of equal importance for the make up of my family tree are the intermingled stories of the Brochet and Valpy families of the Gaspé Peninsula and Isle of Jersey , one of the two Channel Islands ......... just off the French Coast but belonging to England the population of which was more or less bilingual. On February 2nd , 1843 at age 40 James Brochet of Jersey marries Henriette , 16-year-old daughter of John Laurens .... both likewise of Jersey. The marriage took place at Percé , Québec and eight children were born of this union. The third child , Mary , was born in 1847 and would become fatefully linked to my coming into being !! In her mid twenties while working as servant to Monsieur Dumaresq Valpy , originally from Jersey and local merchant at Percé , she became pregnant twice by him giving birth to two baby girls.... the first in 1872 was named Emma , the second born in 1874 was christened Matilda Georgiana........ my own dear sweet Nanna whom I knew and loved so much !! I remember her well as she died in 1954 when I was 18 years old. Remarkably for that period in time Emma and Matilda , both illegitimate , opted for their biological father's surname , Valpy , and not that of their mother's , Brochet. Thus , my true biological great-grandfather , Dumaresq Valpy , was born on the Isle of Jersey in 1848 and died at Percé in 1890 .When in their early twenties Emma married Joe LeBlanc and moved to Montreal where she gave birth to three children ..... Roland , Lucienne and Edna called Deda whereas Matilda , accompanied by her mother , Mary , found her way to Saint John , New Brunswick looking for work as a house servant. For years afterwards people would refer to Mary as " Aunt Minnie ". She never once told anybody what her true relationship was to Matilda , my Nanna Matilda met John McAnulty and they were married at the Cathedral on July 10th , 1900 . They had two sons , Leo in 1901 and Edmond , my Dad , in 1903.
AFTER THOUGHTS
Back in my former life in the old country ... Yahoo 360.... I wrote a series of blogs entitled "Cortona Chronicles " in which I described my life as a Catholic seminarian at Colleggio San Alfonso in Cortona ( Toscana ) , Italy in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I had a Vespa scooter at my disposal and would often take off to visit neighbouring towns , villages and cities... Siena , Arezzo , Assisi , Perugia , Spoleto , Foligno.... and one of my very special haunts ... Orvieto , about 60 kms south of Cortona .....a massive mound rising out of nowhere and towering some 800 feet high above the Umbrian Plain..Picture Ayers Rock ( Uluru ) deep into the Australian outback with a medievel Italian city on top and around the ramparts..Whenever I see the one the other automatically pops up in my mind.
