I am kind of lucky to have one picture for someone whose first name starts with the letter V (there are only six—even if I am cheating again). Valérie Rose was born in 1850 and she and Alphonse Tourville were only 17 years old when they married in 1867. Around 1879, they left Montréal to settle in Chicago. Rose gave birth to twelve children: five were born in Montréal, four in Chicago and three in Nebraska. She is the grandmother of Blanche and the mother of Frederick, featured in this series. Valérie died in 1931 in Nebraska.
Statistics
Letter V: Less than 1% for the Hubou-Tourvilles’ first names.
Valérie, Victor, Vivian and Virgil, that’s it!
Kind of Funny
Your choice?
The 2016 ChallengeAZ is proposed by Sophie Boudarel of La Gazette des ancêtres
There, you have it, the only member of the Hubou-Tourville family whose first name starts with the letter U: Ulric Tourville, born and baptized on April 23, 1867, at Notre-Dame Church in Montréal. Son of Louis Tourville and Suzanne Bélec, he emigrated to Chicago around 1880. In the United States, he will be known as Fred Ulrich. In 1893, he married Amanda Adams in Chicago’s Notre-Dame parish. He was a carpenter, just like his father, but later on was a millwright. Around 1925, he left Chicago to settle in Syracuse, NY, where he died in 1947.
You probably knew I couldn’t resist writing about the Missouri line… again! Recently, I was wondering if Toussaint was baptized under this name because he was born on November 1st (All Saints’ Day = Toussaint in French). Well, this was not the case since he was born in July. He was named after his godfather, Toussaint Vaudry. Toussaint named his second son the same. Sadly enough, both will die from the cholera disease on the same day. The son of Toussaint Jr, born a posthumous child, was baptized Joseph Toussaint and was later known under the name of Joseph T.
When one adds a new name to its family tree, it can be a solemn time just like in this case when I entered the data concerning Sophie, my grandniece (information corroborated by my genealogy software), on her birth date, only two weeks ago. Her ID number is 9934. She will be one of those people born just a few weeks after the 2016 Canadian Census and in a few centuries from now, somebody will say this about it : “Gee, I wonder how come I cannot find her in it, she was supposedly 10 in 2026!”
René did not go to school beyond the third grade, but nonetheless, he managed to become an aircraft mechanic for an aviation company. I still remember when we visited the airport hangar at Dorval and nothing reminds me more of my childhood than the smell of tires! Not so long ago, my brother Mario told me that I was the one who inherited the most from our father, like his intellectual curiosity, his interest in history and travel as well as his passion for reading. But, please, tell me, Dad, how come am I so afraid to fly?!
A few years ago, Dennis Tourville (now deceased) made me so happy when he sent me this picture of Pascal Lewis Tourville, born in 1839, in Florissant, Missouri. Pascal is the first cousin once removed of Jesse Herndon Tourville and the grandson of Toussaint Tourville who left Lachenaie around 1790 to settle near St. Louis, Missouri. I’m not sure that picture is a photograph. Is it an illustration or a photo that was colorized or something? No matter what, I am really glad to know what Pascal Lewis looked like!
Definitely my favorite picture! The lady holding the baby is 
While entering a child’s baptism date on my genealogy database only to realize a few minutes later that the burial date is so close, I can’t help thinking about Normand, the big brother I never had the chance to know. And thinking about some women who lived during the eighteen and nineteen centuries and who had 10 children, or even 15 in some cases, and that so many of them never made it to adulthood, I wonder how these mothers could cope with their grief. Did they become resigned? An era in which it was heartbreaking being a mother.