8 François Hervey
5.6.09.8 François Hervey (1810-c.1900), 5th generation
One might think that the parish priest was away somewhere on a mission, because Dominique Isaïe would have to wait seventeen days for the baptism of his fourth son, who was born June 30, 1810 – in Murray Bay, like all his brothers and sisters except the eldest. In fact, the parish priest has been absent from the parish for more than two months, or at least he has not officiated since May 8. The child is baptized on July 17 and will take the first name of the eldest of his uncles, François Hervey, who lives on the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River. Jean Malteste (1784-1851) is designated as his godfather. Malteste, called Jean de Paris, will have a wife who achieves great renown in the Saguenay region, Marguerite Belley (1792-1877). It was believe up until recently that, after the death of her husband, she would have left Murray Bay to found the settlement of Jonquière. Marie Genevieve Hervey (1781-1815), the newborn’s aunt, is the godmother[1].
François[2], as an adult, acquires a lot in Sainte-Agnès, clears it a little and builds himself something. He won’t stay there very long. On March 2, 1835, he marries Angelique Milliard, known as the Basque, on the other side of the river at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière[3]. Born on March 2, 1814, the girl celebrates her majority – the legally defined age of independent adulthood – on her wedding day. The bride’s mother has been dead for fifteen years and Angelique was probably placed elsewhere upon the death of her mother, as she no longer lives under her father’s roof at the age of eleven.[4] One might think that the father did not see this union in a good light, since he did not attend the ceremony and since Angelique had to wait for her legal status as an adult to get married[5]. The estimated age of the new couple’s oldest child indicates that she was born out of wedlock, which might explain the father’s attitude [6].
How did François meet Angelique? Did Angelique work in one of the mansions of the wealthy English speakers who frequented the Murray Bay lordship during the summers? It is likely instead that François was on the South Shore. It is known that his uncle François (1760-1843), who was seventy-five years old, lived in Sainte-Anne, that he had a huge parcel of land and that he had only one son to care for it, Jean Baptiste (1798-1862). Well, this land is close to that of Jean Régis Milliard (1762-1845), Angelique’s father. François probably worked for his cousin who had taken over his father’s farm as, we shall see, other cousins will.
The couple settle in the seigneury, or lordship (a domain belonging to a member of the noble class), of L’Islet du Portage, about 31 miles east of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière.
It is not known what brought the couple into that lordship. There is Louis (1802-1866), a second cousin of François who is a farmer on his father-in-law’s farm in the parish [7], but obviously the two second cousins are not very close to each other. If they had been, one would think that either of them or their respective wives would have played a role of godfather or godmother at the baptisms of their respective children, given the absence of any other parent in the area other than Louis’ in-laws. The godparents chosen by François and Angelique are total strangers with no kinship. This Louis is the son of Louis Hervé (1762-1842), from the family of Pierre (1733-1799), François’ grandfather’s brother, whom François did not know.
Another possibility, and a more likely one, is related to the fact that Geneviève, François’sister, ten years his senior, had married five months earlier a day labourer who was residing in Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage at the time of the marriage. We know that by the end of 1835, his sister and his brother-in-law no longer would be there and that none of the members of François' or Angelique’s family seemed to reside there. Moreover, there is no shortage of work in the lordship of L’Islet du Portage for a day laborer. The new lord, John Saxton Campbell (1787-1855), the son of a wealthy British loyalist, himself a wealthy shipbuilder from Quebec, developed and administered the lordship[8]. He built a flour mill, a forge, a warehouse, a shipyard, and a wharf. Several employees worked on the construction of schooners at the shipyard, one of the fifteen largest shipyards in Quebec at the time[9]. François may have envisioned a prosperous future and a place to amass money that would allow him to acquire land.
Among the couple’s first children, two will be baptized in the church of Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage [10], where the couple is declared to be “from this parish.” They are Marie Anne Hervey, born on November 30, 1835; and Marie Claris Arvée, born on October 30, 1836[11]. During these two baptisms, which take place in autumn, François is absent, probably working in the woods like most of the landless of the time.
François does not seem to have returned to Sainte-Agnès in the Murray Bay area. In the census of 1842 his house is empty and he is registered there as absent[12]. Meanwhile, he leaves traces on the other side of the river in the Madawaska area at the ill-defined border with the United States of America. It is not surprising to find him in this region, since many of the South Shore's landless people have been working in the woods in the winter for several years. Moreover, at a place called Rivière-des-Caps on the eastern edge of the territory of the parish of Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage, a portage trail has connected the river to Acadia since the days of New France and well before[13]. This trail, like another one farther east, passes through the Madawaska area. For a time, several young people from the South Shore have moved to the area – some in search of some land, others for a job[14].
As for François and Angelique, their departure from Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage for this region must have occurred sometime in the spring of 1837, given Angelique’s delivery the previous autumn in Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage, when she gave birth to Marie Claris; and the next one, which will occur early in 1838, when Marie Obéline Arvai is born on May 12[15] in Petit-Sault (now Edmundston, New Brunswick)[16] in the parish of Saint-Basile de Madawaska, ninety-three miles farther southeast.
For some time now in this period, the British crown has multiplied land grants in the Madawaska region on both sides of the St. John River to establish its sovereignty, contested by the representatives of the state of Maine, who are doing the same. Was François hoping to get one of these concessions? There is no acquisition document for the land he will occupy and the house he will live in with his family when he arrives in the area. François is not among those to whom the British crown or the state of Maine grants land between 1830 and 1844, nor is he one of those who settled on land without grants by simply squatting on it. It is difficult today to explain that François was established on land as early as 1838[17], that he does not own it and will not own it for several years without being considered a squatter[18]. There is every reason to believe that François lives, like so many others then, on land undoubtedly belonging to his employer. In any event, it is located just over one mile west of where the Madawaska River empties into the St. John River and less than two thousand feet east of Harford Brook,[19] named after the American who originally settled there.
The population of the parish of Saint-Basile de Madawaska, where the family settles, lives on both banks of the St. John River and is one community. This parish is the only one canonically erected in what is then known as the Madawaska Settlement. The main church, which is only a chapel, is located in Madawaska on the left bank of the river.[20] Antoine Langevin (1802-1857), the parish priest, serves two other chapels – one in Saint-Bruno (now Van Buren in the state of Maine), sixteen miles downstream from Saint-Basile; and the other at Sainte-Luce (now St. Luce Station, in Frenchville, also in the state of Maine), equally far upstream[21]. The couple who had come alone to settle in Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage certainly had not left with parents from the South Shore, since the godparents of Marie Obéline and the ten other children they will have in the Madawaska region all are or will be strangers. It is not known whether Marie Obéline was baptized at the Chapel of Saint-Basile or at Petit-Sault on May 15. Father Langevin regularly travels to Petit-Sault to administer the sacraments in the houses of the settlers less than six miles from his chapel. At the baptism, Benois Michaud, the godfather, and Geneviève Ouellet, the godmother, also live in the same area as François north of the river.
There are indications that when the family arrived in Petit-Sault, François was a day labourer until 1840 on the north bank of the St. John River. Petit-Sault and the surrounding areas had been colonized around 1785 by Acadians fleeing Saint-Anne-des-Pays-Bas (now Fredericton, New Brunswick) due to the arrival of Loyalists there. Recently, a few English-speaking immigrants of Irish origin and many French Canadians like François from the South Shore of the St. Lawrence have added to the population. As he is next door to Francis Rice (1800-1867)[22], a major Irish merchant who also has operated a mill for a decade, François may have worked for him[23]. Upon his arrival at Petit-Sault, a covered bridge is built over the falls at the mouth of the Madawaska River. As the work would extend from 1835 to 1847, perhaps he worked there?
Although mostly Acadians and French Canadians live there – more than sixty per cent[24] – and Americans account for most of the rest, United Empire Loyalists in the colony of New Brunswick regard this region on either side of the river as their own. Maine officials disagree, as they have always claimed the Madawaska area from the line of water flowing into the St. John River as part of their Aroostook County. In fact, many American settlers settled in this area on either side of the river. For example, in the Meruimticook River area, a hamlet exists that everyone calls the American Settlement[25]. Its inhabitants live almost under the American flag planted by a group of immigrants from the Kennebec area of central Maine under the leadership of the Baker brothers who, upon François'arrival, are still there. John Baker (1796-1868) reigns over the hamlet and operates a sawmill and the surrounding giant pine forests with his compatriots. The American settlers arrived in the area in two successive waves just before 1820.
But back to 1838, when some forty-three miles farther south in the state of Maine, New Brunswick loggers, over the issue of logging rights, took up arms against Maine settlers and loggers in the Caribou area. For Maine officials, this incident followed the imprisonment by the British of John Baker, one of the American settlers who had been living on the north shore of the St. John River since 1817, for planting the Stars and Stripes there; and that of a Maine land agent for seizing wood cut by New Brunswick loggers in the disputed territory. Maine officials saw this series of acts as a declaration of war and mobilized ten thousand militiamen in the region. The Aroostook War was then declared, and François, who had just arrived with his family on the banks of the St. John River, found himself mixed up in it in spite of himself. At the very least there is no shortage of work, as the British army needs wood; it is decided to build four forts along the Madawaska River, the portage road, and the St. John River and send troops there. The Americans do the same on the river’s south bank.
Tension aroused about the Maine-New Brunswick border is at its peak. It has often been argued that it was the incursion of Americans intending to collect taxes that triggered the conflict [26]; rather, it was a combination of factors such as friction between different ethnic groups and other strife involving divergent commercial interests, such as the arrest of foreign agitators who were at the same disputed site, that led to the Aroostook War. Apart from the battle in Caribou between loggers, there was no real war, nor were there even any assaults, but both sides massed troops there and provoked other tension that François witnessed.
For the moment, in April or May 1840, “Francis Harvey” is recorded in the census by the British in what they describe as the “Madawaska Settlement, Carleton County, New Brunswick.” François is declared to have been, for the past two years, a resident of the St. John River’s north bank between “Fish River” (today the village of Clair in New Brunswick) and the “Little Madawaska River” (today the Madawaska River in the city of Edmundston, also in New Brunswick). This territory is vast. The river flows almost twenty-two miles from west to east to its confluence with the St. John. As noted earlier, the land where François lives never becomes the object of a concession by the British crown. The Madawaska region’s population, as the British authorities defined it, now consists of three hundred ninety-seven households embedded on both sides of the St. John River, along a distance of more than seventy-five miles stretching from Grand Falls, New Brunswick, to the confluence of the St. Francis River in the west[27].
Not to be outdone, the Americans also recorded “Francis Harvey” in August of the same year, also on the St. John River’s north bank. According to the U.S. Census, François then lived with Angelique, his wife; the eldest, Henriette; and two of his daughters under the age of five, presumably Marie Claris and Marie Obéline[28].
In the same year, 1840, when in autumn everyone claims a plot of land, Angelique Basque gives birth on September 13 to Magdeleine Harvey. At the baptism of the child three days later, Francis Rice, the neighbour who is already well-known in the region, is chosen as the godfather. This bilingual Irishman, settled there for 16 years, is the first Catholic justice of the peace in the Protestant sea of loyalist New Brunswick, and also will become the first local person to be chosen as a member of the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly after the border dispute between the two powers is resolved. Rice, who is a militia adjutant and loyal to the British crown, is the one who has embodied the law for many years against John Baker and the American colonists[29]. Did François choose his side? Nothing is less certain, as we shall see; for the latter is not yet a farmer. At the baptism he is still considered a day labourer[30].
A final daughter is born from the marriage of François and Angelique north of the St. John River, on the part of the territory that later would be recognized as part of Canada East[31] for a decade and then subsequently ceded to New Brunswick. The daughter in question is Angélique Harvey, who was born on January 21, 1842. As with her sisters Marie Obéline and Magdeleine, her baptism is registered in the parish of Saint-Basile de Madawaska,[32] even though it is unknown whether the baptism took place in the small chapel[33]. The godfather chosen for Angélique is once again an Irish neighbour, and this is not surprising, since the Acadian and French-Canadian families who were the first to settle the area first make sure to take care of their own children in this territory, where resources and land are not abundant and become even more meager with the arrival of the many newcomers from Lower Canada (now Quebec)[34].
The small local community is dominated by the descendants of the founding families, who are all linked by blood, and François has not yet managed to penetrate this society enough to acquire land of his own and thus stop putting his hands to work for others. In addition, the region’s lumber industry is showing signs of slowing down as mills multiply, and will soon collapse; those involved in small and medium-sized operations are losing their shirts. A depression ensues until 1848[35]. It is probably these socio-economic factors that lead François to push even farther west on the other side of the St. John River and to settle where this tight-knit community has barely set foot, or not at all. This is the only good land available at reasonable prices in this period of the end of the territorial conflict.
All the evidence suggests that in the spring of 1842, François begins to settle with his family at St. Francis, on the south bank of the St. John River, where he occupied land that he would make his own by abandoning his job as a full-time day labourer and converting to the occupation of growing and harvesting trees for lumber[36]. He did not leave alone, for the landless French Canadians of the region were numerous and they settled there in such large numbers over the years that St. Francis became Saint-François. This is the case for, among others, Marie Obéline’s godfather, Benoit Michaud, who also settles in St. Francis.
Contrary to what some may have believed, François was not the first Harvey to emigrate to New England. Instead, it was New England that came to him. As we have seen, as early as 1837, François lived in a part of the territory disputed by the British authorities and the state of Maine.
On August 9, 1842, the British and the Americans sign a treaty in Washington that establishes their mutual territorial boundary and prevents another call to arms like that of 1812;[37] but the region’s settlers won’t learn about it until several months later, because the signatories know well that what they have just signed doesn’t please anybody. They take their time before making an announcement about it. The line drawn passes right down the middle of the St. John River. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty divides the Madawaska region into two parts, namely, American Madawaska (south of the St. John River) and Canadian Madawaska (north of the same river). As a result, many Acadians and French Canadians who were farmers or forest workers and who settled on the region’s lots situated south of the river, such as François, will become de facto residents of the state of Maine. Despite all their expectations, John Baker and the handful of American colonists in the Meruimticook River hamlet (American Settlement) find themselves to be in the territory of Canada East,[38] north of the St. John. About a dozen years later this land of Brayons, as the area’s French-speaking residents are known, will come under the yoke of New Brunswick. The British, in their negotiations, obtain a parcel of territory south of Upper Canada[39] where many Loyalists live. The Brayons,[40] whose land and people are divided between the two nations, become the losers of this war that never took place.
In recent years, the population in the western Madawaska Settlement has been increasing, and therefore the bishop sends a vicar in support of the parish priest, Langevin, in 1841 to serve this area. In January 1843 the mission of Sainte-Luce is detached from the parish of Saint-Basile and Henri Dionne (1814-1861), the vicar who has officiated there for eighteen months, is appointed as the first parish priest. The boundaries of the new parish are established to the east by Harford Creek, on the north bank of the St. John River near where François once lived, and by the boundaries of the village of Madawaska on the south bank of the river.[41] At the site of Sainte-Luce, the St. John River, which has the appearance of a small river, is shallow and not very wide. It can be crossed almost by wading through it, although the term “river” still is applied to it.[42]
While the British crown and officials of the American republic might have found it agreeable to divide the Madawaska region along its great river, God or his representatives didn’t care about that at all, and the two parishes were going to continue welcoming residents from both riverbanks of the old Madawaska colony under their roofs. The new Sainte-Luce parish extends westward well beyond St. Francis, as far as there are settlers along the riverbanks.[43]
At the end of the following summer, Angélique Milliard dite Basque gives birth to a seventh daughter. Susanne Harvey, on September 2, 1843, is the first to be born on American soil. Susanne is baptized the day after her birth by Father Langevin. The priest confirms for us that François is now a farmer.[44] In contrast to records of her sisters Marie Obéline, Magdeleine, and Angélique, all born on the north side of the St. John River, the 1850 U.S. census reveals that Susanne was the first child born in the United States of America on the south bank of the St. John, which had been transferred to the Americans the previous summer, even though the great majority of the population lining the river from Saint-Basile to St. Francis was of Acadian or French Canadian descent. Susan, as the child’s first name was written because the census taker was an Anglophone, would be recorded as having been born in the state of Maine.[45] It is impossible to understand why the child’s baptism is recorded in the Saint-Basile parish register. One might conclude that Angélique, in her condition, perhaps is staying at the home of friends while François clears land and builds their new dwelling at St. Francis on the river’s south bank.[46] They might have chosen to have Father Langevin baptize the child because of the distance, or perhaps because the new pastor at Sainte-Luce is overwhelmed by the construction of his new church; for Langevin still goes there regularly to lend a hand.
Less than twenty months later, Angélique Basque gives birth to her eighth child, who is her first son and who will take his first name from his father. François the son is born April 10, 1845, and Father Dionne writes the family name in the form of Harvay, the way he always will do it. As was the case with Susanne, the previous child, the baptism takes place the day after the birth.[47] These two baptisms occurring so soon after the births doubtless indicate to us that although the two children were born in the United States, they can’t have been born in St. Francis, where we know the couple resides. In that era, there is no real road between Sainte-Luce, where the chapel is, and St. Francis, but at most a path. The trip on the river by canoe is twenty-nine miles long, and it’s just as long when returning, but against the current. Though certain written records seem to indicate that until 1846 Father Langevin, of Saint-Basile, and Father Dionne went three or four times a year to administer sacraments and say Mass in the various hamlets all along the St. John,[48] one could assume nonetheless that for these two deliveries, Angélique would be lodging in the Sainte-Luce area with a family of friends and near the local midwife, considering the distance to the new hamlet where the couple has set up their home. François, whose first priority was to support a family of ten people, might have taken a few years to clear land in St. Francis and build a suitable house.
In October 1846, mindful of the population growth in the western part of Sainte-Luce parish, founded four years earlier, Father Dionne opens a mission halfway between Saint Francis and his church at Sainte-Luce. The landless French Canadians from the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River number in the thousands, given that all the land is occupied. About a hundred of them arrive in the western part of the Madawaska colony and clear land there. Father Dionne’s new Saint-François-Xavier mission is going to serve families from the two countries in the western part of the parish, on both sides of the river. A small chapel is built the following year, but it is situated on the river’s north bank, still more than ten miles from the Harvay home, in what then is called Canada East (today’s Quebec province), before the British cession of that sector to the colony of New Brunswick.
The hamlet of St. Francis, where François and his family settled down, was colonized first by Americans who came from the Kennebec region in central Maine between 1820 and 1830. It is to be recalled that a first wave of Americans moved in shortly before 1820 in the area around the Meruimticook River. Of the second wave of American arrivals, some chose to settle upriver on the south bank as well as in the American Settlement, where this community meets the St. Francis River. The community they founded would be supplanted quickly enough in number by the arrival of Francophone colonists[49] and by the departure of certain families that went to join their relatives at the Meruimticook River hamlet, where they operate a sawmill. In fact, by the time of François’arrival, only three or four American families remain, and by force of numbers the hamlet already has taken the name of Saint-François. François, like all the first Acadians and French Canadians to settle in Saint Francis, has to buy his land from Americans who already were there to exploit the pine forests, using the St. John River like a driveway between the upstream forests and the downstream sawmills.
We know the family now to be well established in Saint-François in 1847. Angélique Milliard gives birth there on May 18, 1847, to Olivier Harvay, who won’t be baptized until two months later at the new Saint-François-Xavier mission. The child’s mother always has been identified as Angélique Basque in the registers since her arrival in the Madawaska region. The Rev. Henri Dionne, also originally from Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière and about the same age that Angélique must have been, realizes the link between her and her family during discussions with her. Beginning in 1847, he always writes her family name in its original form, Milliard[50].
Louise Harvay is born less than two years later, around January 17, 1849. During the baptism in June at the Saint-François-Xavier mission, Dionne writes in his register “née depuis cinq mois” [51] (born five months ago).
It’s understandable that François didn’t rush to the Saint-François-Xavier mission chapel’s porch for these two most recent baptisms. The first one happened in the middle of winter ; and the second, just as the rushing water of spring was swelling the river. He would have waited for the mother to be fully recovered and for the return of good weather to make the twenty miles trip, half of which was against the current.
In 1850, François’ land consists of two hundred twenty acres, of which sixty have been cleared and are being cultivated. This man who is now fifty years old always seems to be primarily a woodsman before being a farmer. While his neighbours possess a certain number of animals, François has only a horse. His neighbour and future son-in-law Damasse Nadeau hardly does any better, for he gets about on foot and has only two cows. Each one had to rely on the other.[52]
Over the course of the first decade here, François Harvay and Angélique Milliard will have four other children, these final ones all born in the United States and baptized in Canada, just like Olivier and Louise. The first, Frédéric Harvay, is born October 6, 1850.[53]
In the fall of 1851, Angélique Milliard is pregnant again when Henriette, the eldest of the girls, about age 17, marries a bachelor of twenty-eight, Damasse Nadeau, who is farming the neighbouring land.[54] Damasse also is a native of Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage. Having arrived in the Madawaska region at a tender age with his family in the period from 1826 to October 1828,[55] he lived with his mother until her death in 1846.[56]
Angélique Milliard gives François a fourth son, Joseph Harvay, born July 15, 1852.[57] He will be called that only by the parish at his baptism, for in his family and in civil registries and future religious registries he always will have the forename Thomas. Coming afterward are Elisabeth Harvay, later to be called Brigitte, who is born June 7, 1854[58]; and finally, Joseph Harvay, who sees the light of day around May 15, 1856, since during his baptism Abbott Dionne writes “né depuis un mois” (born a month ago); this final child will use the forename Joseph.[59] During these final two baptisms, it’s the oldest sisters, Obéline and Claris, who serve as godmothers. One can presume that the bishop has been gone since 1850, since none François’ children was confirmed during the bishop’s visits in 1844 and 1850.[60] We now find fourteen people living under François’roof.
Sadness will befall this house in the following year. Within a month at the end of the summer of 1857, Susanne dies at the age of fourteen and Angélique at fifteen. Both are interred in Canadian soil in Saint-François Cemetery.[61] François, Angélique and their children never will cross the river again to go to Saint-François Xavier de Madawaska Church in New Brunswick after their daughters’ deaths.[62]
In December 1857, Father Henri Dionne, the pastor in charge of Saint-François-Xavier mission, undertakes a census of its parishioners. François appears in it along with twenty other Catholic families residing in Saint-François in Maine. The pastor confirms for us that of the eleven people living in the house, only four are communicants.[63]
In 1860, ten of their children still are living under the roof of François and Angéline. They are Clarissa, Obelin, Magdalin, Francis, Oliver, Mary, Frederick, Thomas, Brigit, and Joseph. The American melting pot already has done its work, because the forenames are starting to become anglicized.[64] Their daughter Henriette and her husband, Damasse Nadeau, who has become a farm worker, have moved to Presque Isle, farther southeast in the county.
The U.S. censuses of 1850 and 1860 for what today is called Township 17, Range 9 and since 1842 had been a part of the village of St. Francis (Saint-François) in Maine’s Aroostook County confirm the family’s place of residence.
The departures of the children become more numerous during this decade and the next one. François the son marries Virginie Dubé on January 22, 1867. François the father doesn’t make the trip to attend the marriage of his eldest son. The Madawaska families seem to have maintained some contact with the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River, where most of them originated, because the marriage takes place in Canada East and is celebrated by the pastor from Sainte-Louise, a village south of Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies. The bride, on the other hand, comes from the back country in the foothills of the Appalachians, at the Elgin mission in the new township of Dionne, where the marriage celebration occurs.[65] This township along the American border with Maine and the cluster of families that are there, seven at the most, live from the land and the forest. The opening of the Elgin Road a little after 1852 permitted workers in the forests of western Aroostook to get from the St. John River to this sector of the south bank.[66] Besides, François the son and Virginie will take this road occasionally, including a trip to have their daughter Marie Harvé baptized in Virginie’s native village, the Elgin mission.[67]
François will remain living for a long time in the same place. The U.S. census of 1870 records him as being on the land in Saint-François in Aroostook County. With help from his sons, he succeeds in clearing about twenty more acres after 1850, because the land in cultivation is now about eighty acres[68]. The language of the new country where he lives has become dominant again, as François now is called Frank Harvey and Saint-François has reverted to St. Francis. When a directory of the region’s inhabitants is published in 1877, the name François appears twice on one of the directory’s maps in the sector that then is called St. Francis Plantation. It’s this spot in which he has been a settler since 1842. It is unlikely that one of the names is that of Frank Jr., as his son is known, because the latter has been living at home and is a day labourer in 1880. Besides, François has given part of his land to his son Joseph, the one known as Thomas, who is now married and lives in the neighborhood. The older daughter Marie Claris, also called Clarissia, who now is forty-three years old, completes the household of François and Angélique.[69]
François and Angélique have seen four of their children married off over the previous decade. Frédéric wed Suzanne Clair on March 25, 1874 ; he rushed things a bit, since his first child will be born in October of the same year, and he will have to go to New Brunswick to have the child baptized instead of where he was married. The family’s anglicization is taking its course, because the infant will receive the forename John, even though the pastor is a francophone[70]. Olivier tied his fate to Flavie Pelletier on March 19, 1876. For his part, Joseph, the one often called Thomas – and also Damase, such as during his wedding – married Marie Séguille Pelletier, also in 1876. Marie Obéline seems to have married John Hafford during the same decade, but no trace of their marriage has been found.[71]
On February 3, 1886, a fire consumes the Saint-François-Xavier de Madawaska parish church and its registers, and pastor Jos Martin had a hard time reconstituting them afterward in the short time that he remained there. The same day, Father Joseph Martin resigns, not finding himself capable of attending to the reconstruction of his church. Even so, he remains at Saint-François until April 1886. After the blaze, Hilaire Nadeau’s house serves as a temporary chapel over a period of two years and five months.[72]
On March 8, 1893, Angélique Milliard, often called Basque, expires at home. She has given François thirteen or fourteen children and lived in conditions that often were difficult. For his part, François is still living.[73] What happens to him from this moment on ? One might imagine that Marie Claris will continue to busy herself with taking care of him, just as she had done for her mother over the previous years. In any case, her brother Joseph, the one called Thomas, also has been keeping an eye on things for a long time.
If Maine’s state archives can be trusted, François Hervey still seems to be living on January 1, 1900, since his daughter Marie Claris ties the knot then with Johnny Pinette at the age of sixty-three, although she pretends to be only sixty. François is now eighty-nine.[74] Then there is nothing more. We lose track of him, but at his advanced age, we can let him go.
The resolution of the border dispute resulted in 1842 in the division of the Madawaska region by the establishment of the international boundary that led François and his family to become American residents, like two thousand others of their people. François, like many others, doesn’t seem to have applied to become a U.S. citizen ;[75] for even though the south bank of the St. John becomes American, the change in sovereignty has absolutely no effect on the inhabitants, who keep living there as if there is no border, and French Canadian immigration continues. In 1850, the Madawaska region’s population, instead of being affected by the new border expected to divide it, remains stratified by the bloodlines of the founding families more than by an imaginary line drawn right down the middle of the great river. French Canadians continue to cram themselves onto the lowest rung of the ladder of this tiny society on the two riverbanks,[76] where the widower François doubtless lives out his final days.
François Hervey, his child, genealogical data - 6th generation
[1] BAnQ., register of the parish of Saint-Étienne de la Malbaie, July 17, 1810.
[2] After I put an initial version of François’ life online in 2014, a brief story about this ancestor was published in 2016 in a book in which he is presented as the first Harvey to emigrate toward New England, which is false. That biography is riddled with inaccuracies and errors about François’ life and the surrounding historical context.
[3] The Chemin Milliard dit Basques were among the first families to settle in the Bouteillerie lordship (Rivière-Ouelle) at the end of the seventeenth century. Of Basque origin and formerly settled in Acadia, some of them left their land and wound up on the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River in the Bouteillerie lordship region.
[4] B.A.C., G., 1825 census of Lower Canada, district of Cornwallis, subdistrict of Sainte-Anne, page 60.
[5] The father, Jean Regis Milliard (1762-1845) must have been in good enough condition to attend the wedding; for eight years later, having reached the age of eighty, this widower will marry at L’Isle-Verte a young woman of thirty-six who will end up dying before he does. Even though François and Angélique both have parents in the region, as well as brothers, uncles, and cousins, it’s friends who serve as witnesses for them, an unusual situation for that era.
[6] National Archives and Records Administration Federal Population Schedules for the 6th and 7th Census of the United States in 1840 and 1850, Madawaska, Aroostook, Maine, township 17, range 9. During the sixth census, held in 1840, during which the count occurred on June 1 and which was completed before November, a child of the feminine gender older that five and younger than ten formed part of François’ family. During the following census, held September 30, 1850, the oldest of the children is recorded as being sixteen years old. If the information in the two censuses is accurate, she would have been born outside of marriage. When the eldest, Henriette, got married on November 24, 1851, she was a minor. Parish registries on the South Shore and north of the St. Lawrence River for 1834 contain inscriptions about baptisms of illegitimate children. There is only one for Saint-André de L’Islet-du-Portage – Marie des Anges, born December 29, but nothing leads one to assume that the record is referring to Henriette. She could have been baptized in another parish, but the registers of neighboring parishes reveal nothing. A child of the couple, given the forename Marie Anne, was born in November 1835. Could that actually be Henriette? If that were the case, would the information furnished on two occasions to the census takers by one of the parents have been erroneous? Given that during the 1840 census, the family consists of three children and that no record of a burial of any child of François can be found in the registries of Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage or Saint-Basile de Madawaska, is it possible that the parents altered Marie Anne’s forename between the baptism and the census?
[7] In 1831 he lives with his wife and his first child at his father-in-law’s home in Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage.
[8] Poulin, Pierre. « Campbell, John Saxton ». Dictionnaire biographique du Canada [Dictionary of Canadian Biography]. First edition, 1969, Sainte-Foy, Laval University Press, 1985, 15 volumes, volume VIII (Deaths of 1851-1860).
[9] Canada’s Historic Places : Estate of the Lordship of l’Islet-du-Portage [online]. http://www.historicplaces.ca/fr/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=10292 [page consulted October 30, 2016].
[10] Today’s Saint-André de Kamouraska.
[11] BAnQ., Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage parish register, November 30, 1835, baptism of Marie Anne ; and October 30, 1836, baptism of Marie Claris.
[12] B.A.C., G., census of 1842, district of Saguenay, subdistrict of Sainte-Agnès, page 1. At that time, five men named François resided in the region, and I was able to find only three recorded in the census.
[13] As the section dealing with the life of Joseph Sébastien (1767-1834) shows, during the centuries before the arrival of Europeans in America, the Maliseets, Mi’kmaqs, Abenakis, and Montagnais made use of two travel routes, composed of waterways and land trails, that allowed them to move between the St. Lawrence River and the St. John River. The first involved paddling on Témiscouata Lake and the Madawaska River; the second, on the St. Francis River and Pohénégamook Lake. The trail in question here is the second one. Since the beginning of New France, these two parallel routes, interspersed with other rivers and lakes, linked the St. Lawrence to Acadia by way of the St. John.
[14] Ignace Basque, a cousin of Angélique Milliard dite Basque, will settle much later at Saint-François de Madawaska, on the St. John River’s north bank about twelve miles from François and spouse Angélique’s place of residence, which is situated on the same river’s south bank. François and Angélique’s migration therefore can’t be linked to that of his cousin, given that it followed about twenty years later.
[15] BAnQ., Saint-Basile de Madawaska parish register, May 15, 1838. When she reaches adulthood, she will appear with the forename Belinda in the American civil registers.
[16] Rayburn, Alan. Geographical names of New Brunswick. Ottawa, Ministry of Energy, Mines and Resources, 1975, 304 pages. Named Petit-Sault [Little Falls] because of a waterfall of about four feet at the mouth of the Madawaska River.
[17] Archives of the University of New Brunswick Loyalist Collection. 1840 New Brunswick Census of the Madawaska Settlement by J.A. MacLauchlan, Warden of the Disputed Territories, Province of New Brunswick, May 9, 1840, page 11. This census specifies that François has occupied the land for two years and that it had not been granted to him.
[18] Maine State Archives. The Reports of Committees of the Senate of the United States for the second session of the thirty-second congress, 1852-53. Washington, Robert Armstrong Editor, 1853. Report 361, « Joint Report of the Commissioners to locate grants and determine the extent of possessory claims under the late treaty with Great Britain. », Upper St. John River Valley & Aroostook River Valley, Aroostook County, Maine, August 1844. This U.S. Senate committee report, commissioned to follow up on the treaty between the two powers, inventories the people to whom lots had been granted by the British government and the state of Maine and people who settled on land in the region without authorization of one of the governments in order to regularize their situation. François doesn’t appear in it. He should be there, however, given that he occupies land there, as is shown in the two censuses of 1840. For some reason unknown to us, but that might not have been unusual at the time of his departure for St. Francis in 1842, he seems not to have availed himself of the process « claims to land ownership » put in place by the two powers, the method by which people could regularize their situation and have their land recognized as belonging to them.
[19] Therriault, Patrick, and Prudent L. Mercure. Histoire du Madawaska [History of the Madawaska Region]. Québec, Imprimerie Franciscaine Missionnaire, 1920, page 397. « Harford’s Brook » is called « Three Mile Brook » today.
[20] Today a district of the city of Edmundston.
[21] MichaudI, Guy R.« Langevin, Antoine ». Dictionnaire biographique du Canada [Dictionary of Canadian Biography]. first edition, 1969, Sainte-Foy, Laval University Press, 1985, 15 volumes, volume VIII (Deaths of 1851-1860).
[22] Archives of the University of New Brunswick Loyalist Collection. 1840 New Brunswick Census of the Madawaska Settlement by J.A. MacLauchlan, Warden of the Disputed Territories, Province of New Brunswick, May 9th, 1840, page 11. The 1840 census conducted by the New Brunswick colonial authorities mentions the names of François’ neighbors, some of whom were mixed up in the territorial conflict involving John Baker, an American settler who had occupied land at Baker Brook that later would become part of New Brunswick. Also in : Congress of the United States. Documents, Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States from the First Session of the First Congress to the Thirty-Fifth Congress. Washington : Gales & Seaton, 1859, Volume VI, Foreign Relations, page 939. Witness declarations in a case related to the territorial dispute establish the places of residence of François’ neighbors.
[23] Dorion, Alonzo. Petit guide historique sur le Madawaska (Little Historical Guide to the Madawaska Region). Edmundston, New Brunswick, A. Doiron, published for the author, 1979, 210 pages.
[24] National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Population Schedules for the 6th Census of the United States in 1840. Madawaska, Maine. Op. cit.
[25] Today’s Baker Brook in New Brunswick.
[26] Morton, Desmond. Une histoire militaire du Canada [A Military History of Canada], 1608-1991. Sillery, Quebec : Les Éditions du Septentrion, 1992. 414 pages. In fact, it often said in English Canadian literature that it’s the Americans’ incursion to collect taxes that unleashed the conflict. Canadian authors often ignore the establishment of an American colony by the Baker brothers on the river’s north bank beginning in 1817 and the trial and subsequent imprisonment of the latter. In addition, the incursion by New Brunswick loggers and and the Caribou skirmish are scarcely taken into account.
[27] 1840 New Brunswick Census of the Madawaska Settlement. Op.cit.
[28] National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Population Schedules for the 6th Census of the United States in 1840. Madawaska, Aroostook County, Maine, page 50. The U.S. census of 1840 did not record all names. Only the names of heads of families appeared, along with the number of people living with them, divided into age groups. Marie Anne, born in 1835, doesn’t appear in subsequent censuses, so one can presume that she died or that her forename was changed to Henriette.
[29] Maine State Archives. First Statement on the part of Great Britain, according to the provision of the convention concluded between Great Britain and the United States, on the 29th September, 1827. Regulating the reference to arbitration of the disputed joints boundary under the fifth article of the Ghent. J. Harrison and Son Editor, page 270.
[30] BAnQ., Saint-Basile de Madawaska parish register, September 16, 1840. When she reaches adulthood, she will appear under the forename Magdaline in the American civil registers.
[31] Today’s province of Quebec.
[32] BAnQ., Saint-Basile de Madawaska parish register, May 15, 1838 ; September 16, 1840 ; and January 23, 1842. Even though the baptisms of these last three girls all are registered at Saint-Basile de Madawaska, they probably didn’t take place at the Saint-Basile chapel, but rather in a residence in Petit-Sault. Pastor Langevin’s practice of going to Petit-Sault regularly to administer sacraments there, the dates of the baptisms so soon after the births, and the godparents’ places of residence allow the conclusion that without any doubt, these folks would not have traveled SIX MILES ten kilometres in a canoe to show up at Saint-Basile and then go all the way back, with a newborn infant and a mother just recovering from childbirth.
[33] Therriault, Patrick, and Prudent L. Mercure. Histoire du Madawaska [History of the Madawaska Region]. Quebec, Imprimerie Franciscaine Missionnaire, 1920, page 112.
[34] Craig, B. « Immigrants in a frontier community: Madawaska, 1785-1850 », N. Madore and B. Rodrigue (Eds.); Voyages : A Maine Franco-American reader, Gardiner, Maine: Tilbury House, 2007, pages 277-278.
[35] Graig, Beatrice. Backwoods Consumers and Homespun Capitalists: The Rise of a Market Culture in Eastern Canada. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2009, 320 pages.
[36] Angélique Milliard dite Basque gives birth to a child at the very beginning of September 1843. François had to clear part of the land and construct a house for his family, which was going to consist of eight people. He wasn’t able to do that in 1843 with any help from his wife, who was about to deliver at the end of summer and who had an eighteen-month-old baby in her arms.
[37] The Webster-Ashburton Treaty, signed August 9, 1842, put an end to the quarrel about the border separating Maine and New Brunswick in the British Colonial era.
[38] Today’s province of Quebec.
[39] Today’s Ontario.
[40] The Brayons, also called the Madawaskans, are the francophone inhabitants of Madawaska County, in northwestern New Brunswick. Madawaska County forms the Canadian part of the Madawaska area; but at the time of its origin, the region was more vast, also including northern Aroostook County in the American state of Maine, and therefore consisting of the St. John River’s entire upper valley.
[41] Doiron, Alonzo. Op.cit., page 23.
[42] What today is Frenchville (and Upper Frenchville) in Maine, on the St. John River’s south bank and all of the part facing it on the north bank of the same river originally was part of what was called Chautauqua or Chateaugay or Sainte-Emilie by the French-speaking settlers, the last because of the name of the first chapel they erected there. Around 1830, when the bishop of Quebec changed the name of Sainte-Emilie to Sainte-Luce and until 1843, this sector of the Madawaska Settlement took the name Sainte-Luce. The sector, then situated the farthest west in the Madawaska region, was settled largely by Acadian refugees and their descendants around 1785 before they were mostly supplanted in number by the massive arrival in the 1820s and 1830s of French Canadian settlers such as François from the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River. In 1830, one hundred twelve families, making a total of seven hundred forty-six people, lived at Sainte-Luce on the two riverbanks.
[43] National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Population Schedules for the 4th Census of the United States in 1820. U.S. Census of Penobscot County, Maine. Matawasca Parish, French Settlement, page 3. Also in : Dietz, Lew. The Allagash. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968, pages 189-190. A lone settler lived farther west than St. Francis in 1820 – John Harford and his family. He will be joined there before 1830 by five other English, Scottish, and Irish families who push twenty kilometres beyond the sector where the Acadians and French Canadians dominate. They will form a small anglophone community at the place that will take the name of Allagash at the end of the century.
[44] BAnQ., Register of Saint-Basile de Madawaska parish, September 3, 1843.
[45] National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Population Schedules for the 7th Census of the United States, Madawaska, Aroostook, Maine, September 30, 1850, page 333, image 166a, line 28. “Susan, birthplace Maine”.
[46] The family names of the godfather and the godmother are so common that they are of no help to us in determining the pair’s place or places of origin.
[47] BAnQ., register of Sainte-Luce de Madawaska in Maine, April 11, 1845. On reaching adulthood, he will be identified under the forename Françis in American civil registers.
[48] Société historique du Madawaska. Souvenir book published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Diocese of Edmundston, published by the Revue de la Société Historique du Madawaska (vol. XXIII, numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4), 1995.
[49] Chadbourne, Ava Harriet. Maine Place Names and the Peopling of Its Towns. Freeport, Maine, the Bond Wheelwright Company, 1971, pages 41 and 42.
[50] BAnQ., register of Sainte-Luce of Madawaska parish in Maine, Saint-François-Xavier mission, Canada East, July 9, 1847. As an adult, he will be identified by the forename Oliver in the American civil registries.
[51] BAnQ., register of Sainte-Luce of Madawaska parish in Maine, Saint-François-Xavier mission, Canada East, June 17, 1849. As an adult, she will be identified by the forename Mary in the American civil registries.
[52] National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Population Schedules for the 7th Census of the United States, Madawaska, Aroostook, Maine, 30 September 1850, production of agriculture in Township No 17 Range 9, page 61.
[53] BAnQ., register of Sainte-Luce de Madawaska parish in Maine, Saint-François-Xavier mission, Canada East, October 13, 1850.
[54] Ibid., November 24, 1851.
[55] B.A.C., G., Lower Canada census of 1825, Cornwallis district, Saint-André de L’Islet du Portage subdistrict, page 76. Also BAnQ., register of Saint-Basile de Madawaska, October 1, 1828. His family is enumerated in the 1825 Lower Canada census and his father is buried at Saint-Basile in 1828.
[56] BAnQ., Register of Sainte-Luce de Madawaska parish in Maine, February 2, 1846. Interment of Marie Morin.
[57] Register of Sainte-Luce de Madawaska parish in Maine, Saint-François-Xavier mission, New Brunswick, July 17, 1852.
[58] BAnQ., register of Sainte-Luce de Madawaska parish in Maine, Saint-François-Xavier mission, New Brunswick, June 10, 1854.
[59] BAnQ., register of Sainte-Luce de Madawaska parish in Maine, Saint-François-Xavier mission, New Brunswick, June 15, 1856.
[60] BAnQ., register of Sainte-Luce de Madawaska parish in Maine ; August 29, 30, and 31, 1844, and July 18, 19, and 20, 1850.
[61] BAnQ., register of Saint-François-Xavier parish of New Brunswick. The registered was opened in 1859. Not a single mention of a baptism or a marriage of a Harvey is inscribed in this parish in the period from 1859 to 1886, with the exception of a baptism of an infant born before mariage.
[62] BAnQ., Register of Sainte-Luce of Madawaska parish in Maine, Saint-François-Xavier mission, New Brunswick.
[63] Archives de la Côte-du-Sud et du Collège de Sainte-Anne [Archives of the South Shore and of the College of St. Anne], Henri Dionne collection, box 34 (1), document XLII. Census of Saint-François de Madawaska parish, December 1857, including parts of Township 17, Range 9 in Maine.
[64] National Archives and Records Administration Federal Population Schedules for the 8th Census of the United States, Township 17 R9, Aroostook County, Maine, June 30, 1860, page 56.
[65] BAnQ., Sainte-Louise parish register, January 22, 1867.
[66] BAnQ., MRNFP — Répertoire des cantons du Québec [Directory of Quebec cantons] 2004; Proclamation of Dionne Canton, December 12, 1863 ; and Collective, Rapport sur les missions du diocèse de Québec [Report on the missions of the diocese of Quebec]. Québec, Léger Brousseau, printers, 1863, pages 27-29.
[67] BAnQ., mission register at Elgin (today the parish and village of Sainte-Perpétue de l’Islet), February 19, 1871.
[68] National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Population Schedules for the 9th Census of the United States, production of agriculture in St Francis, Aroostook County, Maine, June 21, 1870, page 1.
[69] National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Population Schedules for the 10th Census of the United States, St Francis, Aroostook, June 10, 1880, page 6.
[70] BAnQ., parish register of Saint-François-Xavier de Madawaska, New Brunswick, October 11, 1874.
[71] BMS2000, March 25, 1874, and March 19, 1876.
[72] « Un terrible malheur vient de fondre sur la paroisse de Saint-François » (« A terrible misfortune has just befallen Saint-François parish ») , Le Messager de Lewiston. Tuesday, February 10, 1886.
[73] Maine State Archives, record of a death, St. Francis, Maine, March 8, 1893.
[74] Maine State Archives, record of a mariage, January 1, 1900, John Pinette and Clara Harvey.
[75] U.S. immigration registers so far have not revealed any claim that François might have made.
[76] CRAIG, B. Op.cit., page 278.