Unmasking one French-Canadian surname often leads to another through family associations.
Tag: Michael Dwyer
Names lost in Vermont, Part 7: Frank and Maggie White of Leicester
An obelisk with a broken cross at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon attests to the fractured identities of the names inscribed on three of its faces.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 6: Battis Santa aka John Center
“Battis Santa” and “Julia Potway” were married in South Hero, Vermont on October 19, 1838 by a Justice of the Peace.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 5
Before the Civil War, with only one other married couple named Naylor born in Canada living in central Vermont, it led me to hypothesize the name originally had been Cloutier, from the French word clou, meaning nail.
Vermont’s presidential moment lives on
August 2, 2023 marks the centennial of a unique presidential swearing-in. Vice President of the United States Calvin Coolidge was home visiting his father, John Coolidge, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 4: Josiah Maris
Unraveling both a garbled first and last name began with the rare instance of a French-language gravestone in Shoreham Village Cemetery.
Names lost in Vermont, part 3: Dillor Eugair
In 1923, when Dillor Eugair, his wife, Stella, and their six children moved from Burlington to Pittsford, Vermont, he brought with him an unusual first name and a one-of-a-kind last name
Names lost in Vermont, Part 2: Mary Bird
Part 1 ended with the mystery of why Mary Bird’s date of death was not recorded on her gravestone in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon.
Names lost in Vermont, Part 1: Edward Bird
Edward Bird and his wife Mary are buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Brandon. As immigrants from French-speaking Canada in the 1840s, they were both hard to trace because they lost their original names and, as their story will reveal, they remained outside the Catholic Church for most of their lives.
Moveable Feasts: A sermon
Christmas falls every year on December 25. To determine the dates of Passover and Easter for 2024, most of us would have to consult a calendar.