Stories about Quenneville's

Some stories about Quenneville's I have received from "cousins" that have helped in this research.

A Story about Mary Quenneville Thurston by her daughter in law, Sharon Thurston

I first met my soon to be in laws, Mary and Humphrey Thurston in April 1968, just a few days before our wedding. They had come in a ten year old car to Surrey, British Columbia, three thousand miles from their home in Saint Anicet, Quebec, to attend the marriage of their son to me.

Saint Anicet is located in the southwestern corner of the province of Quebec. It borders on New York, United States on the south and on Lake Saint Francis, part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway with Ontario across channel to the west.

My husband is the eighth of twelve children, the third of six sons. His parents had married in 1931, both in their mid-twenties. Their family spanned two generations with almost a twenty years age difference between eldest (who was born in 1932) and youngest (who was born in 1951).

In 1969 my husband and I flew from Vancouver to Montreal to visit the "Eastern Family Connection" at their home, on the "Irish Ridge". Their farm had been homesteaded by the Moriarty family in 1820, the great-grandparents of my husband's mother. It was a journey into the past I would never forget. The farm was a beautiful clapboard frame house. The heat was supplied by wood fuelled stoves. The hot water tank was a water front on a wood-fired kitchen range.

Although, I knew that Quebec had been initially settled by the French habitants, I was soon to realize that the Scots and Irish held a major role in the development of Saint Anicet. Mary Thurston's immigrant ancestors came to Quebec from Ireland with dreams of becoming landowners. The crown had promised each settler one hundred acres of land if four acres could be cleared in the first year and a dwelling built.

Their journey to Canada by ship was treacherous. Many became ill with pneumonia, diarrhea or vomiting. After sailing several long weeks, the survivors reached the quarantine camp east of Montreal at Grosse Isle. They were released from quarantine forty days later, those destined for Saint Anicet came to Montreal then boarded boats and traveled Lake Saint Francis along the present Saint Lawrence seaway to their homesteads.

Through time the Irish, English and Scot people integrated with the French speaking Quebecois to form a culturally rich society. My mother in law Mary's mother descended from four generations of these Canadian Irish, the Moriarty, O'Leary and Higgins who came to the Leahy Road in 1820 and became intertwined through the marriages of their children.

Her father was pur laine "Quebecois". His ancestors Marie Denise and Jean Quenneville were born in France and married in Montreal in 1674. Jean Quenneville was a master tailor and hussier of the Roman Catholic Church. His wife was a "Filles de Roi". Their Quenneville descendants settled throughout southwestern Quebec and eventually came to Saint Anicet in 1831.

Mary grew up on the Moriarty son's farm adjoining the original homeplace founded in 1820. Because Mary's grandmother, Margaret O'Leary Moriarty had been widowed, Mary's mother, Catherine Moriarty and Francis Quenneville, the hired man who later married Catherine, worked the family farm.

The farms on Leah Road were rich with maple bushes, cedar trees for split rail fences and hardwood and softwood for winter fuel and for lumber to build. Most of the homesteads were self-sufficient with eggs and butter to sell or trade for tea and sugar. A booming potash business filled the Laguerre area with workers, and the farming community quietly grew.

Nearly a century later, in 1915, Mary recalled, the first rural mail delivery came to their homes year around, either by sleigh in winter or by a horse drawn buggy from a Post Office opened at the O'Neil house on the corner of Leahy Road. Prior to this the mail was brought by train to the mail depot at White Side Road and someone passing the station would deliver mail to others on his route home.

The roads were muddy in the spring and the fall so the people were pleased to see winter freeze-up when a sharp shod horse and sleigh could travel well on hard snow-packed roads. Few had cars in 1920. Although gas was sixteen cents a gallon the workers were lucky to earn fifty cents per day. A vehicle license plate was about five dollars and a driver's license only one. Today, an hour's work will buy several gallons of gasoline but in those days a wage did not stretch far despite lower prices.

Mary recalled the summer of 1925 when she went with her brother and some friends to the theatre in Malone, New York. The main entertainment for country folk was a circuit of home socials where people would gather with their instruments and entertain their friends in a family oriented house party or barn dance. Social events were seldom missed and families would travel miles to gather for card games and square dances called by lamplight to the music of the fiddler. Often the weary party goers would go to do their barn chores before crawling into bed when they finally arrived home early the next morning.

During these years, farm work was very primitive. Barns and buildings were made by laboriously cutting huge trees with bucksaws and taking them to the sawyer with horse and wagon to be sawed into lumber. Carpenters and farmers used wooden pegs to hold axe hewn beams. When nails became available, it was a remarkable advancement to the community.

A big job for the farmer was fencing his land. Cattle were held on the property by stone walls built by clearing rocks from the field into piles along the land boundaries. Less time consuming than stone walls, cedar rails were cut and split. The long poles would be built four or five levels high to form a very serviceable corralled area or pasture fence. Farmers found fencing much easier when the first barbed wire was sold. They still needed to cut and sharpen cedar posts to attach wire along measured intervals but the wire could be put into place much faster then stonework or split rail fences of the past.

In 1931 Mary left her girlhood home and married Humphrey Thurston. They lived in a number of places but finally settled in 1945 on the Moriarty original 1820 homestead, next-door to the Moriarty-Quenneville farm where she was born.

Their children attended the same one room school opened in the 1840's that Mary, her mother and her grandparents had attended as children. She remembered her Grandmother talking about going barefoot as a child until snow fell because the family had only one pair of shoes that had to last for many children several years being passed down through their family. Going to school they traveled through fields where dairy cows lay chewing their cud's. The cows would be aroused by Mary's grandmother and the children would warm their feet where the cow rested.

The little O'Neil School was used from 1840 until 1962 when the school board closed the small classrooms and bussed the children to regional schools in Huntingdon and Saint Anicet. The little country schoolhouse never held more than fifteen students although a single teacher was responsible for teaching grade one to grade seven in both English and / or French. The older boys drew a milk can full of water every day to the school from the neighbour's well and from fall until the warmer weather of spring, a fire would be lit to heat the small school.

By 1935 the first phones were available. Mary's parents, the Quennevilles were among the first to have one installed on Leahy Road. Few women delivered babies in hospital before 1940 and if a neighbour had a telephone it helped many to be able to call a doctor to the home of the woman approaching the birth of her child without having to take a carriage or sleigh to town to give the message to the doctor.

In the early 1940's, Humphrey and Mary bought the first radio. It was powered by the same large batteries used in their car. When the battery ran down, they would have it recharged. In 1947 electricity came to the Leahy Road at this time the old dug well used since 1820 was fitted with hoses and attached to a modern pump. Mary had running water in her kitchen and a long unused downstairs bedroom became a bathroom. At this time the family had swollen to nine children all living at home.

By 1955 the youngest child had been born. Of fourteen children, twelve had survived. The eldest were soon to begin lives of their own and branch out away from home. Life became easier for Mary and Humphrey when they received family allowance in 1947. They had lived frugally but always managed to care for their family through their farm.

In January 1976, after forty-five years of marriage, a party was held by the family in Saint Anicet Hall for Mary and Humphrey. It was the last occasion they spent together. Later that year Humphrey died suddenly of a heart attach. Until 1987, Mary lived in her beloved farm house. Her failing health eventually lead her to private care. She died in November 1988 leaving a legacy of memories to her extended family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

My husband and I moved to Quebec from British Columbia with our three daughters and bought the Moriarty-Quenneville farm (where Mary was born) from her brother Henry in 1974. Our grandchildren are the seventh generation dwelling on this Leahy Road family land. In 1972, my husband's brother and wife and children bought the land and later built a house on part of the parent's farm. Our youngest daughter and her husband now own a 50 acre farm belonging to the Quenneville family where Mary and Humphrey rented from her parents in their early marriage over sixty years ago.

The Irish Ridge holds a magical power of life in the past and the future. Our fields grow rich hay crops and grains. The meadows are filled with grazing Shorthorn beef cattle. My husband like his ancestors, is a farmer. He and I have raised our family here.

Although, this place is not my heritage, I feel as if I belong; I have developed an attachment for the farm and the people in the quiet community. No money can buy the peace and joy we feel when a new calf is born in the spring or when we see strong healthy calves ready to be weaned in the fall. The cycle of life and death is ongoing but there are not beginning and no end.

Direct line from Jean Quenneville to Marie Auriel Quenneville

Jean Quenneville 1653 - 1701	Denise Marié 1654 - 1729
Jean dit Jean-Baptiste Quenneville 1695 - 1733	Marie Madeleine Guilbert dit Laframboise 1701 - 1748
Jean-Baptiste Quenneville 1727 - 1791	Barbe Amable Sedilot dit Montreuil 1727 - 1797
Jean-Baptiste Quenneville 1756 - 1830	Judith Lalonde 1762 -
Joseph Quenneville 1790 - 1850	Josephte Lefebvre dit Lasizerai 1796 -
Joseph Quenneville 1814 - 1901	Angele Dancause 1809 - 1895
François Xavier Quenneville 1841 - 1931	Aurelie Leblanc 1844 - 1926
François Xavier Quenneville 1873 - 1946	Catherine Moriarty 1874 - 1943
Marie Aurelie Quenneville 1906 - 1988

From a letter sent to Marilyn Trainor from her aunt Yolande Tremblay

Damas Quenneville married Eulaie Bonneville on April 2 1872 and on his way to his wedding he picked up a citation (speeding ticket) for galloping his horse across a bridge, which at the time was against the law.

As a young man Damas was a seaman working on ships along the St Laurent. One night after hours with friends he came aboard ship feeling no pain. He tripped and fell on the anchor chain. He spent the night there. That night the weather turned cold, so that by morning there was frost on the chain and everywhere. When Damas got up some skin from his leg stayed stuck to the chain. In later life he had gangrene in his left leg as a legacy of that night.

At the wedding of Maria Quenneville (daughter of Damas) to Arthur Forget, Joseph Quenneville, then about 6 years old was assigned the task to get apples from a barrel in the entrance way. The barrel was near empty so that when Joseph reached in for the apples, he fell head first in and much as he tried could not get himself out. He cried for help, no one could hear him as there was dancing at the time. When the quadrille was finished, he was heard and rescued. It was a tearful Joseph who passed the apples around to the guests.

From James Crosby, this is an extract from a book that James is working on

The Genealogical Files of James Edward Crosby

(6) Joseph Elie Quenneville and Dorlida Dupuis:

"Extracts from this story taken from the Commemorative Biographical Record 1904 (Beers)"

Joseph Elie Quenneville, for a time filled the position of district deputy of the council for the county of Essex and was well-known agriculturist of Tilbury North Township in the province of Ontario. J.Elie Quenneville, at the the was in every way a prominent figure of this township and was considered a man of unusually broad and liberal views. He was born on a farm February 22 1858 within the farmlands around the town of St. Anicet, in the county of Huntington of Canada East, which formerly (1850) was called Lower Canada and is the now province of Quebec Canada. He was the eleventh child of fifteen children born to Jean-Baptiste and Marguerite Quenneville (Dupuis).

Schooling advantages within the farming districts of Canada East, (Quebec) at that time were exceedingly limited, as far back as the 1860's. Living within this large family at home made it necessary for J.Elie to help his father most of the time. J. Elie therfore was able to secure ver little education. What little was acquired in the French schools, he had learnt nothing what so ever of the English language.

He started out on his own, for himself at the age of nineteen, (1878) with only twenty-five cents in his pocket. J.Elie managed to make his way to the United States and began working at the Crown Point iron mine near Lake Champlain, not far from where his sister Josephine and her husband Alexander Delorm had settled at North Hudson, New York. It was there that his ignorance of the English language become a great drawback. He became determined to master the English language, even though that meant hours of hard study at night after his long day's work.

After three years of life at Lake Champlain, at twenty-three years of age (1881), J.Elie left for Colorado, with a strong desire to see the great west. There he worked in the gold and silver mines. During all those years he still worked hard learning the English language. Bye dint of careful study, extended reading and close observation, he acquired a thorough mastery of it.

Now having at his command both the English and French languages, he returned from Colorado to Ontario, Canada and located on what is now Tilbury North Township, where he bought one hundred acres of land on Concession #4, (1883) which was then nothing but wilderness. He cleared the land and built a log house. Bye his untiring industry and strict attention to business, he succeeded so well that he added at first one hundred and sixty two acres more to his farm, then latter another one hundred and fifty acre tract in Rochester Township, now owning and operating four hundred and twelve acres in all.

In 1898 he built a fine brick dwelling on the site where the original log cabin had stood for fifteen years. The house was noted as one of the finest homes in the township, while the barns and outback farm buildings were excellently adapted to suit there purposes.

J.Elie Quenneville was primarily engaged in general farming, stock raising and lumbering. In the course of twenty-one years, he had become on the the largest landowners and one of the most prosperous farmers in the county. Besides being a man with a through knowledge of his own lines and a sagacious investor, he was very enterprising and progressive in his ideas and was thoroughly posted in the events of the day.

Never too much absorbed in his own interest to be awake to the needs of the town, J.Elie had always been foremost in every movement of advantage to his community. He was a stockholder, director and treasurer of a cheese factory. A treasurer of the threshing association, a stockholder in a binding twine company and in public political life he was a staunch liberal. Being born a fighter as well as a strictly honest man, he waged several active campaigns against corruption in the township. In one, while he was himself defeated as a candidate for reeve, he secured in election of good men on the council and so prevented a continuation of the existing dishonest methods in the town affairs. For three years he was a member of the township council, for five years he was treasurer of the township and for two years was one of the district deputies for the county of Essex. He was a man of great ability and was noted for his straight forward honourable dealings.

On August 14 1883, at the then new parish of St. Joachim, (first mass celebrated March 5 1882) the reverend Ambroise Lorion married J.Elie to Miss Dorlida Dupuis. Miss Dorlida Dupuis was born in the county of Maskinonge, Canada East (Quebec) September 27 1862. She was daughter to county settlers, Elie and Leocadie(Laundry)Dupuis also of Tilbury North Township. She was a woman of refinement, devoted to her home and family and had been in every sense a helpmate to her husband. J.Elie and Dorlida parented eleven children, of the eleven children two died in infancy. One September 5 1888 and the other December 26 1902.

J. Elie and Dorlida (Dupuis) Quenneville were Roman Catholic and members of the parish of St. Joachim. J. Elie was a member of the Canadian Order of Foresters, court #900, Olympic lodger of St Joachim in which he filled the office of Chief Ranger. Joseph Elie died January 23 1914, from Typhoid, apparently received by drinking water from out of the field run off. He was buried in the cemetery at St. Joachim. Dorlida died December 25 1935 from tuberculosis. Together they were buried in the front row at the St. Joachim cemetery, St. Joachim Ontario.

Please Email Me

These pages are designed by AustPurr and are copyright © 1997 - 2009

HOME

This page was updated on 30 December 2008