Last week, several members of the former French-Canadian Genealogists of Wisconsin gathered for “Pea Soup and Johnny Cake Night” at Kateri Dupuis’ home in Milwaukee. One guest was Joyce Soltis Banachowski, author FCGW’s recent Quarterly articles and a descendant of French-Canadians from Red Lake Falls, in Minnesota’s far northwest.
Joyce placed this postcard in my hands:
The Brays of Red Lake Falls
In 1909 when the
postcard was written, the Brays living around Red Lake Falls, where the hamlet
of Brooks formed in 1904 when a railroad came through[i],
were all close relatives. All descended from Simon Bray and Elisabeth Sédilot
of Soulanges County, Quebec, near Montreal. After four generations in Quebec,
two adult sons and one daughter of Simon and Elisabeth made the 1100 mile
journey from Montreal to Red Lake Falls to start a new life. The Brays
emigrated at the peak of the Quebec Diaspora, a fifty
year period wherein Quebec lost 20% of its population, nearly a million
citizens, for better opportunities in the US and western Canada. In northwest
Minnesota, following the 1863 Treaty of Old Crossing, the Red Lake Falls and
Red River valley land, with its rich alluvial soils, was opened up to white
settlement. The “Walking Peace Pipe” métis
Pierre Bottineau signed the treaty imposed on the Red Lake Band of Chippewa for
whom he was interpreting.[ii]
When the land was opened for settlement, Bottineau put out the call to his
French-speaking compatriots in St. Paul and St. Anthony (now Minneapolis); word
reached Quebec as well[iii].
This would be Minnesota’s last great land boom.
Damase Bray,
Moise Bray, and Rose Bray Clement, the long grown children of Simon and
Elisabeth, answered Bottineau’s call in 1880[iv].
(Alas. Immigrating when they did, they avoided both the 1880 US Federal Census
and the 1881 Canadian Census.) Meaning to settle, they brought their spouses,
young children, and several adult children. Damase, by this time, was well into
the second of his highly productive marriages. Obits disagree on the exact
count of his children; I find at least twenty in the record. Great-great
grandfather Moise, on the other hand, had “only” nine children, including my
great-grandfather Joseph. By 1909 most of the Brays in the Red Lake Falls area
were descended from Damase. Perhaps there was one living in Brooks that I had
overlooked along the way.
Old Joe’s Death
State and Federal census records from 1885, 1895, 1900, 1905 and 1910 provide a wealth of information on the Bray kin[v]. Joseph A. Bray is found as a hardware clerk in 1895 and 1900 in Red Lake Falls and in 1905 as a saloon keeper in Blackduck, Minnesota, also located in the far north. Dad knew all about the saloon in Blackduck; he had once taken my daughter to see the town. A search of the Red Lake Falls cemetery[vi] reveals a grave for a Joseph E. Bray who died in 1912. Is this our Joe? One of the earliest questions I asked Dad when I started researching was how Joe died. “Old Joe went up to the woods and never came back” was Dad’s immediate, matter-of-fact reply. “Well, when?” I persisted. Dad explained that Joe had died long before he was born, when Dad’s own father was just a boy. This recollection was consistent with a 1912 death date except for the annoying matter of that middle initial, E. But as I dug further I came upon a most interesting story, published 100 years ago on
Wow. Joe died in 1909in Calgary,
Alberta, a thousand miles from Blackduck, a few days by train. That was indeed
far “up to the woods.” But death by piano was hardly what I was expecting. I
rang Dad. “Oh, you know, that’s what Aunt Cecille always used to say,” Dad
replied when I relayed the news. “She said Joe got blood poisoning when he cut
his finger moving a piano. But we
always heard that he went up to the woods. I didn’t think there was anything to
that story about the piano.” I explained that the story had made news in the Red Lake Falls Gazette. The Gazette’s
story clinched the cemetery grave record: it was indeed for our Joe. The
numerous records for Joseph A. Bray are indeed for the same person as the Joseph
E. Bray, a spelling found most often on documents not of Joe’s own making.
Z.D. and the Brooks Connection
Having enjoyed the pea soup in Milwaukee, I hurried home to look up the brothers of Joseph A. Bray. I had recalled siblings with archaic names like Calixte and Olympe, but nothing with a Z. But there it was: Joseph Damase Zotique Bray, baptized July 9, 1863 at St. Zotique church in Soulanges County[viii] and probably called Zotique. Named for the church and for his uncle Damase, this child was the perfect candidate for the postcard’s addressee, “Brother Z.D.”[ix].
Zotique’s baptismal
record.My great grandfather Joe and his brother Zotique were now prime postcard writer / recipient candidates. The Blackduck postmark also matched, but the whole scheme wouldn’t be solid unless I could find brother Zotique in Brooks. I began my search.
Searching on Ancestry.com, I hit on Zotique in the 1900 census in Polk Center, just northwest of Red Lake Falls, digitally mis-indexed as “Jotique,” with wife Exiline and son Moses Dejarden. Possibly that’s her son from a first marriage. Zeroing in now on Polk Center, I am able to find Zotique in 1895, this time indexed as “Cutique.” Age 31 in 1895, his wife is listed as “Excellent Bray,” age 26. Charming, but obviously a census taker’s mistake - Excellent is not a name French-Canadians assign their daughters. It is our Exiline and despite her age, they have no children. From this new perspective, the Moses Dejarden found in 1900 is looking more like an adoption. On to 1905, I now have the name “Exiline” to search on. This time, Zotique has been spelled “Zothique,” but there they are, “Zothique Bray,” “Exiline Bray” and young “Moise Desjardin,” now located in Brooks just as the 1909 postcard indicated! And note Zotique’s occupation: Saloon Keeper! Just like brother Joe. Double bingo!
I start to look for the family in 1910. Trying every permutation of spellings I can think of, I cannot find Zotique, wife, or son in the 1910 census. The Zotique Brays have vanished into thin air!
Shocking Data from Medicine Hat
It is at this point that I consider the 1911 Canadian Census. Knowing from the postcard that brothers Joe and Zotique are in correspondence, I wonder if perhaps Zotique was also in Canada. The common name Joseph Bray, I reason, would result in too many search errors, but Zotique should be findable. Trying Calgary and Carstairs, the town mentioned in Joe’s obit, I don’t have any luck at first. Then, when I open up the search to Alberta province, I get a hit for … “Batise” Bray in Medicine Hat. Thinking - very wrongly! - that Medicine Hat must be near Calgary, I tentatively click on the record. To my great surprise, there they are, clearly my family, despite errors in both the census and in Ancestry’s valiant attempt at indexing poor handwriting:
As Indexed |
Actual
|
Relation
|
|
Batise Bray
|
Zotique
Bray
|
Head
|
|
Axlem
|
Exiline
|
Wife
|
|
Mose B.
|
Moses
D.
|
Adopted
son
|
|
Joseph
|
Joseph
|
Brother
|
|
Bellen
|
Gilbert
|
Son
of Joseph
|
The indexing is further confused by the age of “Mose B.,” indexed as 79 for 19 due to the handwriting, and “Tribal” as Irish, for a different family on the page, whereas the census clearly shows the family is of French origin and American-Canadian nationality. Here are selected columns, showing what the record actually looks like[x]:
The Medicine Hat finding demonstrates that Joe was in Canada in 1911. Possibly he was working opportunities further and further up the expanding trans-Canada railroad lines. My guess is that these arduous trips were lengthy, possibly seasonal, stays. It is quite possible he is mentioning a return from a trip to Canada on the 1909 postcard. Joe was likely apprenticing his eldest son Gilbert to follow in the saloon trade in 1911. We now know that Joe was in Canada in 1911, 1912 and possibly, 1909. Joe’s wife Rebecca and the younger children did not make the trip. “...they were all glad to see me” says the 1909 postcard. Dad’s thinking is that Rebecca stayed behind to oversee the bar in Blackduck, leaving the care of the younger children to the older teenage girls in the family. Joe’s 1912 death must have been a terrible blow for her. Joe would be buried not in Blackduck, but in his hometown, Red Lake Falls.
A 1913 border crossing record[xi] shows Rebecca, as “Mrs. J. A. Bray, widow,” her brother, and her daughter Doralese admitted at the port of Emerson, Manitoba, en route to Alberta on the Soo Line Railroad in February, two months after Joe’s death. Surely they went to close out Joe’s affairs. Rebecca must have wished she had taken an earlier train, if only to be with Joe as sepsis from the piano injury set in.
I hope Zotique, the elusive “brother Z.D.,” was there to comfort him.
Postcard – Front Side: L.H.
Halverson Photo Blackduck, Minn.
This post was originally written in November, 2012 but has been scheduled to post on 12 December 2012, the 100th anniversary of Joseph A. Bray's death, in his memory.
Sources
[i] Red Lake County Historical
Society, Inc., A History of Red Lake County: Red Lake County, Minnesota (Taylor
Publishing Co., Dallas, Texas, 1976), pp. 98–103.
[ii] Wikipedia. “Treaty of Old Crossing.” As accessed 21 November 2012.
[iii] A History of Red Lake County,
p. 7.
[iv] Minnesota Historical Society,
mnhs.org, place names, Pennington County, Damase Bray.
[v] Ancestry.com. Minnesota,
Territorial and State Census, 1849-1905 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com
Operations Inc., 2007, and US Federal Censuses.
[vi] St. Joseph’s Catholic
Cemetery Association. On-line search at
http://www.rlccatholic.org/cemetery_database.php.
[vii] Pennington County Historical
Society, pvillage.org, references Joseph’s Gazette obit, which was supplied to
the author by Red Lake Falls resident and cemetery archivist, Ella Mae
Derosier.
[viii]
Ancestry.com. Quebec,
Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967, Saint-Zotique, 1863, p. 15.
[ix]
Author’s
note: In French baptisms, the
forename actually used in life is often the last one in a long list. The name Joseph is often applied like the
flourish of a pen – assigned at baptism and then forgotten. These naming
practices, together with Anglicization in which the order of words is reversed
from French, result in a name that could naturally evolve to Z.D.
[x] Ancestry.com. 1911 Census of Canada. Alberta, Medicine Hat, Subdistrict 73 –
Taber, Page 13, Family Number 129.
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