Tuesday, December 18, 2012

John Dupont's Voice From The Past


One of the family members that many in the family have been gathering information on is my great uncle, John Dupont.  John and two of his brothers enlisted to fight in WWII.  Two brothers returned safely, but John, an Air Force pilot, died in September, 1944, while flying a P51 solo over Schladen, Germany.  John was returning from a bombing raid over Magdeburg.   A German farm woman rescued his dog tags and personal effects at great personal risk.  My father, a boy of 10 at the time, and all the others in the family, felt the loss deeply.  Several of John’s nieces and nephews have gathered news clippings and other information on John’s unit’s experiences in Europe.  Dad made a photo collage showing events in John’s life.  In 1999, three of John's nieces (and a husband) visited France and Germany to visit the sites there.  They were able to meet the woman who pulled Uncle John out of his plane.
Front side envelope cover art and address
Well, time moves on and John’s generation is now all deceased.  This year, John’s nephew, Ted, was going thru his father’s effects and discovered the record shown below.  A razor company, American Safety Razor Corp., made recordings of service men in the 1940’s and the men sent them home to their families as audio postcards.  John Dupont recorded an audio letter to his family on one of these records.  Well, the wax record was not in good shape but Ted played it anyway, skips and all, and sent it out in mp3 format.  The cousin network did its work when we got cc:d on a forward from the photographer in the family, Sharon.  We played it and could make out only a few words, but still, there was John, speaking to us after all these years!  Great Uncle John sounds caring, witty, and energetic!  And how similar his tone is to that of the old newscasters – did everyone talk that way back then?  But the skips on the record were horrible, and it was hardly intelligible, we could catch only a few words here and there.  So Alan got out Audacity – a tool we learned of thanks to CAGGNI - and went to work on the recording.  He was able to remove the skips and filter out some of the noise.  We asked Ted to re-record it slower, to keep the phonograph needle from bouncing so much.  Al sped it back up digitally and the result is cleaner still.  We have managed to transcribe all but about 10 words.  “Write me all about yourselves and about your new jobs.  Tell me all about your romances too you can tell me you know.  Hello Pops take it easy too.  So long and write me.”  What a profound experience to hear this voice brought back to life, in a way.  The sound, while not harmony and melody, was music indeed, to our ears.

The original recording.  Notice the regular skips at 1.9, 2.8, 3.5, 4.3 and so on. 

The same recording, after converting to mono, low-pass filtering and removal of the skips using Audacity.
The sound files are available here - the original recording and cleaned up versions, split into the Intro by the Gem Blades announcer and then the body of the letter from John.
Here's our attempt at transcription.  If you hear this differently, please let me know.  Unintelligible words appear in highlights.
… Robert Dupont.  This record is being made at Williams Field, Arizona, November the 15th 1943 with the compliments Gem Blade.
Hello then I’d like to clutter a day  xxx  worried about  paper unda write ger I was going to call home tonight but I’ll call when  you get back from up north tell Don to write me all about it and not to scare me again like that.  I’m getting along all right here so far and hope I hope I [sic] can to continue to do so.  This must seem a little funny but I thought I’d try it anyway.  Say hello to Pa, Fritz, Mabel and all the kids.  Say hello to Gari  if you see her too.  I was hoping I could see Don when he was in Frisco but I didn’t know his address so I couldn’t look him up.  We’re staying [at] hotels for now so I’ll have him ???  turn the pow ??? renew I have to make a pool slip.
I’ll write soon anyway.  In case I can’t get in touch with Don have him call me here.  Wait and I’ll say a word to him.  Hello Don how’s everything.
Write me all about yourselves and about your new (jobs / brides).  Tell me all about your romances too you can tell me you know.  Hello Pops take it easy too.  So long and write me.

Updated 20 Jan 2020 upon info from ND regarding the four family members who met with the woman in Germany: she was indeed alive in 1999 when the family visited.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Revelations from a Postcard

This is the story of how a few words on a postcard helped reveal answers to long-standing questions about my Great-Grandfather Joseph Bray (1867 - 1912). It’s also a good illustration of the oft-repeated adage to “follow the collaterals.”

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:
After absorbing the wonder of receiving such an artifact, we tried to puzzle it out. Z. D. Bray of Brooks, Minn., was the addressee, J.A.B, the correspondent. “Brother Z.D.” reads the salutation. Bless you J.A.B for announcing your relationship to Z.D.! My great-grandfather was a J. Bray – Unfortunately, not the only one in the area. “Hmm,” I said to Joyce, “I don’t recall any brother named Z.D., or any relatives at all living in Brooks.” Was this card by great-grandpa? I was doubtful.

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 December 12, 1912[vii]:


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.
But the major question remained, what was Joe doing northwest of Calgary and how long had he been apart from Rebecca and, presumably the children? There seemed to be no way to answer the question. Until the postcard entered the equation, that is.

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!

 Brooks Main Street before 1918. Zotique Bray’s saloon is second from left. Photo from “A History of Red Lake County,” p. 98.

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
Ancestry.com’s indexing of the 1911 Medicine Hat record

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]:

 
Mystery Solved

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.
[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.
[xi] Ancestry.com. Border Crossings: From U.S. to Canada, 1908-1935
about Mrs. J A Bray.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Our Bray Surname in France...it's not what you think!


Etienne “Bray”, our immigrant ancestor to Canada from France, first appears in the Canadian record in 1717.  Between 1717 and 1774 Etienne’s name is recorded in the following places:

·         in a register of the sick as a navy recruit at the Quebec Hotel de Dieu (hospital)
·         as godparent at two baptisms
·         in his own marriage record
·         in a census
·         in the baptisms and marriages of his numerous children
·         as a witness at other’s wedding
·         in his own and his wife’s death records

In Canada Etienne’s surname is spelled variously as Bre, Bray, Braye, and Bree, most frequently as Bre and Bray.  Spelling variations such as this are commonplace in this time period.  Throughout the years, the Canadian spelling of Etienne’s male-line descendants has been standardized to Bray.

The surname Bray, also common in England, is found early in France frequently on the Normandy / Picardy border where there is a small geological region called pays de Bray.  Pays de Bray translates as Brayland or Bray country.  Pays de Bray features several towns with Bray in the title, such as Neufchâtel-en-Bray, and Gournay-en-Bray.  Etymologically, Bray comes from the Gaulish word braco, which in Old French became Bray.  Bray means marsh, swamp or mud; Pays de Bray is named for its muddy clay soil.  We can well imagine that when surnames were being established, many people in the Pays de Bray region took their town’s name for their surname resulting in the many Brays in this area.  By 1700, however, the Bray name in France is even more common in Saone-et-Loire, a department in central France.

Our immigrant ancestor, however, is not from Pays de Bray or Saone-et-Loire.  In his Canadian parish marriage record from St-François-de-Sales, on Montreal’s  Île-Jésus, 21 February 1724, Etienne gave his home parish as St. Etienne en Dauphine, located in the hamlet of Montagne, today in the department of Isere, in the Rhone-Alps region of France. 

In Etienne’s 4 February 1694 baptismal record in France, his father is listed as Etienne Bret – a spelling that never appears in Canada - and his mother as Hélène Argoud.  (French women maintain their natal names throughout life in vital records.)  Baptismal records for two sisters and a brother of Etienne – children of Etienne Bret and Hélène Argoud - have recently been brought to the attention of the French-Canadian community by Lise Dandonneau, as noted at Fichier Origine.  In Etienne’s sister Élisabeth’s 31 January 1684 baptismal record, her godmother is listed as “Élisabeth Conil, veuve de [widow of] Jean Bret”.  Jean Bret was likely a relative, possibly an uncle or grandfather to the new baby.  This is another clue that our family name Bray was spelled Bret in Isere. 

As the map of Bret surnames in 1700 from GeneaNet shows, the surname Bret is tightly localized to the Rhone-Alps region, with 36.7% of all French Brets in 1700 coming from Rhone-Alps.
I see the Bret development as positive news on two fronts.  First, Bret is not a common name outside the Rhone-Alps region.  That's good because less common names are more likely to trace back to a single common ancestor.  Secondly, the name Bret is highly specific to the regions near Montagne in France.  This regional specificity again is typical of a single common ancestor.

GeneaNet, citing William Arthur’s 1857 An etymological dictionary of family and Christian names indicates that Bret is probably contracted from Breton, meaning a Briton, and also notes that brette in French is a long sword.

As more parish records from the Isere department of France are beginning to be available online, I am optimistic, that we will soon have genealogical proof extending our Bray family line back one or two more generations in France.

Sources
“Etienne’s name is recorded “, “spelled variously” – PRDH
“Pays de Bray features several towns”, “Bray means marsh” – Wikipedia, Pays-de-Bray
“more likely to trace back to a single common ancestor” – see King and Jobling for more detail.

 

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Our Bray Immigrant Ancestor


Many of you have seen the Bray family tree made by Herbert E. Thellin in the 1930’s titled “Family Tree of Pierre Bray”.  Thellin's tree was a huge accomplishment for its day but is not without small inaccuracies.  Of concern for us Brays is that we do not descend from Pierre Bray. 
The error seems to have originated in 1871 with the first major genealogist of Quebec, Father Cyprien Tanguay. Tanguay's monumental opus Dictionnaire généalogique des Familles Canadiennes depuis la fondation de la colonie jusqu’à nos jours is now readily available on the internet.  Alas for Tanguay, he did not have access to all the records we do today, and in making a reasonable assumption he made an understandable error. 
As Thellin's tree shows, Pierre Bray is the father of Leger Bray dit Labonte. Leger and Etienne are the only two male immigrants to Canada during the French regime who left sons who carried on the Bray name. Both Leger and Etienne lived in the Montreal region. Leger was about 21 years older than Etienne.  Without access to Etienne's marriage records, the Tanguay's mis-assignment of Etienne into Leger's family was understandable.  Tanguay shows Etienne as the son of Leger (erroneously) and Leger as the son of Pierre.
Our Bray immigrant ancestor - the ancestor who immigrated to Canada from France - is Etienne Bray, who married Barbe Daze, in Canada in 1724.  Etienne’s parents are named in his marriage record, where they appear listed as Etienne Bre and Helene Ergon.  Both Etiennes – French father and immigrant son - appear on Thellin's tree:  Thellin shows Etienne as the son of Etienne, and then shows (erroneously) the elder Etienne as the son of Pierre. 
I don't know what inspired Thellin to relate the elder Etienne to Pierre.  The younger Etienne's 1724 marriage record lists his parent's home parish as "St Etienne en Daufine".  This parish is in Montagne, a tiny hamlet in the French department of Isere.  Leger Bray dit Labonte's French origins are not known - Leger's parents' names - including father Pierre Bray - originate from Leger's 1718 second marriage record, in Longueil, Quebec.  Neither Pierre nor the elder Etienne immigrated to Canada. 
Given that Bray is a common name in France, there is no reason I'm aware of to believe that the elder Etienne and Pierre are related.
Source information --
"two male immigrants to Canada", "21 years older", "married Barbe Daze" -  PRDH
"1718 second marriage record" - The LAFRANCE

Welcome

Hi and welcome to Chez Bray.

Here you will find information about our family history and genealogy. I welcome your comments to the blog posts and any contributions you wish to make.

Happy reading

Michelle