Brenda Macdougall
A few years ago, I acquired a book, Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, Vols I and II, and Stellamaris Mission (French Prairie Press, 1972), which was translated by Mikell de Lores Wormell Warner, and annotated by Harriet Duncan Munnick.[i] I don’t recall why I sought out the book, but it’s proven useful for my research on Metis families and buffalo hunting communities, and also for finding my own relatives (some of whom will be highlighted in this blog). The book itself is the transcribed record of the work of Fathers François Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers, the first two Catholic priests who travelled to the Oregon country in an HBC brigade bound for Fort Vancouver. They set out on 3 May 1838 from Lachine, Quebec, and covered over 5,000 miles with the brigade, arriving at Fort Vancouver (in the Oregon Territory) late in the year.[ii] While noted for their role in that region specifically, Blanchet and Demers also bestowed the sacraments related to baptism, marriage, and burial along the way at a variety of fur trade posts and encampments.
The original ledgers of their work were carried across the continent and exist as an important record of early post-contact families along the North Saskatchewan River. While the journal doesn’t directly detail the voyage of Blanchet and Demers across the interior of British North America, it is clear that they stopped at Fort Edmonton, where HBC Chief Factor John Rowand and his then wife, Louise Umphreville, hosted them for several days. During that time, 39 people were baptized and three marriage ceremonies conducted at Fort Edmonton alone. Regionally, between 19 August and 10 September 1838, we see another 37 baptisms and 12 marriages at Forts Carleton and Pitt (both in the administrative part of Fort Edmonton).[iii] It’s likely Rowand escorted the priests from Fort Carleton to Fort Edmonton since he appears as witness to several of the rites performed along the way, including at the marriage of Patrick Small Jr. (b. Ile a la Crosse and brother of the famous Charlotte Small, wife of David Thompson) and Nancy Hughes on 21 August 1838 at Fort Carlton.[iv] Patrick was the fort’s clerk, making Rowand his superior officer. That same day, Nancy Hughes herself was baptized in front of Rowand, her husband, and her godmother, Nancy McKenzie, along with her and Small’s seven daughters and son (Helen, Nancy, Charlotte, Amelia, Carolina, Elizabeth, Maria, and William) (see B35-42 & M4 pp. 3rd & 4th and 4th & 5th in the photos included below).
What this transcribed volume of records demonstrates is which specific families were living and working together and some of their forged connections. Embedded within the sacramental records are not simply the record of births, marriages, and deaths. The entries speak to who sponsored children via godparenting, who bore witness (meaning they were present at the ceremony), and how those families become intertwined and/or spread out over time. The surnames of many of the people within the region in the 1830-40s are those that are the old Metis families from along the North Saskatchewan River and in northern Alberta today—Chalifois, Desjarlais, Auger, Gaudry, Cardinal. Their existence destabilizes the narrative of Red River being the centre or heart of Metis nationhood by virtue of being the first place the Metis lived. The families itemized in these pages focused on Forts Edmonton, Carleton, and Pitt have histories in that region dating back to the late 18th century.[v] Moreover, when we apply forms of triangulation between primary records—HBC records, scrip documents, censuses, to name a few—and the secondary sources centring Metis history, we can see how these Metis communities west of Red River were formed and took shape, and their connections to other spaces east, west, and north, including those found within this journal. What is valuable as a scholar of Metis history is that this journal places Metis people in communities and reveals the nature of their connections across time and place.
So, for instance, in the 1838 records for Fort Edmonton, are those for four of John Rowand and Louisa Umpreville’s children (Adelaide, Nancy, Sophie, and Margarite/Margaret), who were baptized on 9 and 10 September 1838 (see B79 & B88-90 pgs 8th and 8th&9th); and also for Nancy’s marriage to John Edward Harriott on the 10th (see M10 pp. 8th & 9th and 9th&10th). Furthermore, two of Nancy and John Edward’s daughters, Flora and Christine, were baptized with two of their aunts and their mother on the 9th (see B80 & 81, pp. 8th). Also within the journal are close relatives of Louise Umphreville—brothers, a sister, and a former son-in-law, along with a host of nieces and nephews. At the Catholic Mission of St. Paul of the Walamette (Oregon Territory), her sister Marie Anne (Susanne) Umpherville (Ompherville) was baptized just prior to her wedding to Nicolas Montour Sr., who also converted to Catholicism—all on 10 June 1839 (seeM49, pp. 42nd & 43rd). According to the entry, Marie Anne was 47 years old while Nicolas was about 57, likely solemnizing a custom of the country marriage by Catholic rite. Meanwhile, multiple journal entries record baptisms for the children of Canote Umphreville, Louise’s brother, including Isabelle, Grégoire, in 1839, and Félicite in 1840, all at Fort Colville (see B158-162 pp. 15th & 16th, B136-137 pp. 53rd & 54th and B31 pg. 60th). Finally, her former son-in-law, Richard Grant, widower of Louise’s daughter Marie-Anne Breland, married Hélène Kitson (formerly McDonald and the widow of William Kittson) on 29 March 1845 in the Oregon Territory (see M26, pp. 56 & 57). Grant, like Harriott and Small, worked under Rowand, and so in these small entries and records, we can see the influence that John Rowand bore over his employees and their family lives. Similarly, Louise’s family members remain in range of her life, even if they are not in the immediate vicinity of Fort Edmonton itself.
At the back of the book, Duncan Munnick attempted to provide some context for the families by writing short biographies of some of those captured in the records. A number of these biographies have substantial errors, which is somewhat understandable as, pre-internet, the ability to search and locate information would have been limited. Still, she notes, for instance, that Richard Grant’s first wife, Marie Anne Breland, died in Montreal in 1834 (see pg. A-32); in fact, she died on the bank of the North Saskatchewan River that year in front of her half-sister, Nancy Rowand, and small son, Johnny Grant, of what is now suspected to be an aneurism.[vi] A Catherine Humphreville (see B182, pg. 17th & 18th and M14 pg. 18th & 19th), daughter of Thomas (brother of Canote and Louise) identified her father as an Englishman and a baronet who came to Fort York, where he married a woman named Ann (see A-38). Thomas was actually married to Hannah Turnor, granddaughter of cartographer HBC Philip Turnor. Catherine appears to have mixed up her father and grandfather’s stories. It was her grandfather Edward Umphreville/Humphreville who was from England and arrived at York Factory as a fur trade employee in the late eighteenth century, had a custom-of-the-country marriage with Ann Constant, and fathered at least seven children before leaving North America and abandoning his family entirely.[vii] How Duncan Munnick became privy to Catherine’s erroneous story is not explained and so sorting through the narrative is not, at this time, possible. Errors like these are easily introduced, but much harder to correct once they are repeated. Nevertheless, there are important clues to the identities of the early families of the Metis Nation embedded in records such as this, and their transcription (and even annotations) make them useful for scholars and family genealogists alike.
[i] Modeste Demers & Francis Norbert Blanchet, Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, Vols I and II, and Stellamaris Mission. Mikell de Lores Wormell Warner trans. & Harriet Duncan Munnick annotator, (St. Paul, OR: French Prairie Press, 1972).
[ii] Demers & Blanchet, Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest. pg. n.p. (Introduction).
[iii] Demers & Blanchet, Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest. pp. 2-10.
[iv] Demers & Blanchet, Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest. pg. 4. The marriage and life of Charlotte Small and David Thompson is well documented. Charlotte, her brother Patrick and sister Nancy, were all born at Ile a la Crosse but it’s Charlotte’s marriage to Thompson that’s captivated scholars largely because she travelled with him as he mapped the interior of North America. The Thompson’s retired to Williamstown, a village just outside of Cornwall, ON where other fur traders retired. Living next door to them was Charlotte’s sister Nancy and her husband trader John McDonald of Garth. Only brother Patrick remained inland and worked in the trade. See Jennifer S.H. Brown, “‘Mrs. Thompson Was a Model Housewife’: Finding Charlotte Small,” in An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2017. pp. 161-182.
[v] I’ve written several pieces now pushing back against the narrative that Red River is the centrally most important and oldest Metis community. See Brenda Macdougall, One of the Family: Metis Culture in Nineteenth Century Northwestern Saskatchewan. University of British Columbia Press, 2010; Brenda Macdougall & Nicole St-Onge, “Metis in the Borderlands of the Northern Plains in the Nineteenth Century.” In Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies, edited by J. O’Brien & C. Andersen, 257-265. Routledge, 2017; Brenda Macdougall, “Speaking of Metis: Reading Family Life into Colonial Records.” Journal of Ethnohistory 61, no. 1(2014): 27–56; and Brenda Macdougall & Nicole St-Onge. “Rooted in Mobility: Metis Buffalo Hunting Brigades.” Manitoba History 71 (2013): 21–32.
[vi] Demers & Blanchet, Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest. pp. A-32; See also John Francis Grant, A Son of the Fur Trade: The Memoirs of Johnny Grant. Gerhard Ens (ed). Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2008 and Brenda Macdougall & Nicole St-Onge. “Rooted in Mobility: Metis Buffalo Hunting Brigades.” Manitoba History 71 (2013): 21–32 for more context on the marriage Marie Anne Breland and Richard Grant.
[vii] See Joseph and Emma Turnor, https://www.redriverancestry.ca/TURNER-JOSEPH-1783.php; and Thomas Humphreville, https://www.redriverancestry.ca/HUMPHREYVILLE-THOMAS-1779.php.
