Joseph Bourassa, 28, and Delvina Demers, 30, on their wedding day, July 23, 1888, in Saint-Fortunat-de-Wolfestown, Province of Quebec. By then, Joseph and Delvina had known each other for about 12 years, ever since Joseph and his five brothers, one sister and widowed mother, Rose Olivier Bourassa, settled on a farm on the 7th range road in Saint-Fortunat in 1876. Delvina’s family farm that had been settled on the 6th range road in 1859 was close by. Unlike her older and only sister, Marie Euphrasie, who had married at 16, Delvina hadn’t rushed into marriage. Throughout her life, she seems to have acted deliberately and purposefully, attributes she shared with Joseph, who a daughter later wrote “planned things out slowly but surely” (“s’organisait lentement mais sûrement”).
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From the Travel Notebooks of
Odelie Demers and Télesphore Demers
July 1898
The next day we went to Uncle Joseph Bourassa’s house, still in the company of Fortunat [Demers] and Hilaire [Aubin, Jr.], who filled the role of driver. Delienne [Aubin Lambert], her small daughter, Appoline, and Alphonsine [Demers] also came with us. After having lunch, we had some exercise, all while eating raspberries, which were not abundant. And we were also bothered with some rain which came pouring down in the afternoon.
The Travel Notebook of Odelie Demers, p. 58.
August 13, 1908.
It rained all night. At nine o’clock, we left to go to Joseph Bourassa’s house. There was a heavy rain which continued all morning, and there were some small rain showers in the afternoon. They were all in good health and appear to live rather well. I went to visit their land. It is in good order, the grain is better than average. He raises pigs for the market. At seven o’clock in the evening, Eusèbe Lamontagne and his wife and D’Assise Guay and his family came to visit us for the evening until midnight. We had a lot of fun, we spoke of everything that interests farmers.
The Travel Notebook of Monsieur & Madame Télesphore Demers, p. 64.
September 5, 1908.
Very sunny and cold. At eight o’clock in the morning, it was overcast, but at nine o’clock in the morning, it is very sunny and hot.
At ten o’clock, we went to Joseph Bourassa’s. He was at the ninth rang. He had gone to bring logs to the sawmill with his two boys. At five-thirty, it was clear and hot. At eight-thirty, Joseph arrives from the mill, and at nine-thirty we go to bed.
The Travel Notebook of Monsieur et Madame Télesphore Demers, p. 84.
September 12, 1898.
The weather is clear and cold. We prepare to go to Saint-Camille. I settled my account with Joseph Bourassa.
Les Notes de Voyage de Monsieur et Madame Télesphore Demers, p. 88-89.
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When did Delvina and Joseph first meet? Certainly no later than 1876 with the arrival in Saint-Fortunat-de-Wolfestown of the Bourassa family when Joseph was 16 and Delvina, 18. Perhaps she first saw him at a distance when he, his widowed mother Rose Olivier Bourassa, and his five brothers and only sister had ridden down the chemin du 6ème rang in a wagon or two and passed the Demers farm on their way to the new Bourassa farm on the 7th rang. More likely, they met after mass the following Sunday as the Bourassa family joined other parishioners on the steps of the church in the village center. One imagines Joseph, younger by two years, shy and quiet, not exchanging a single word with Delvina as his family was surrounded by a boisterous crowd, almost all strangers to him. Did Delvina even notice him? Or was she perhaps more interested in meeting and talking to his mother or his 14 year old sister, Marie-Anne?
Le perron or steps in front of the Saint-Fortunat Church. It was here that Delvina and Joseph were married in 1888 and where all their children would be baptized. The photo shows a group of parishioners gathering on the front steps of the church, built in 1872-73, as it would have looked from 1884, the year the clocher or bell tower was added, to 1901.
(Photo from the archives of the municipality of Saint-Fortunat, Québec,
Delvina' Life before Marriage
Delvina was born in Saint-Gilles-de-Beaurivage in 1858 in the part of the town that later became Saint-Agapit. All her Demers ancestors had been living within about 15 miles of her birthplace, mostly in Saint-Nicolas-de-Lauzon, for almost 200 years. Only a year after her birth, her parents and all five of her brothers and her only sister moved to the township of Wolfestown, where they would clear the virgin forest and be the first farmers on their land on the 6th rang. (Many years later, Delvina's brother Télesphore would tell Edmund Demers that his father, Damase, was the first man to take an ax against the trees on their land.) In the early years, their farm was within the parish of Saint-Julien-de-Wolfestown, but later was within the parish and town of Saint-Fortunat when these were established in 1871 and 1873, respectively. (For more information on Delvina’s early family history, see the earlier blog posts on the family of her sister, Marie Euphrasie Demers and brother-in-law Hilaire Aubin, and on the genealogy of the Demers and Lamontagne families.)
At only a year old when she arrived in Wolfestown, Delvina would have no memories of life on the farm in Saint-Agapit with its large, level fields or of the many farms nearby. Rather, her first memories were of the new farm in the forest and the steep slopes of the narrow valley of the Bulstrode River on which their farm lay; in that sense, she was a child entirely of the Eastern Townships and the Appalachian foothills. Her long life would be centered almost entirely on Saint-Fortunat, but for her first 30 years it was even more narrowly focused on a stretch of the northwestern end of the 6th range road, le chemin du 6ème rang. Although on an isolated rang road in a township in the early stages of development, her young life was a very social one, lived within a closely knit and surprisingly populous neighborhood comprised mostly of young members of the extended family that lived in modest farmhouses fronting on the road within a mile or so of her family's farm.
On arriving in Wolfestown in 1859, Delvina’s immediate family included her father, Damase, 49, and mother, Euphrosine, 42. Her only sister and the oldest child in the family, Marie Euphrasie, 19, had already been married for three years to Hilaire Aubin, 29. It seems likely that the couple had also arrived in 1859 (if not, shortly thereafter), and had probably helped to establish the Demers farm before establishing their own a few years later across the road on the 5th rang where they would raise their 9 children, 3 of whom would die within a year of their birth. Delvina’s oldest brother, Théodore, 20, was still living at home in 1859, but would marry Philomène Lamontagne in 1862. They too settled a farm on the 6th rang road where they would have 13 children, two of whom would die before their first birthdays. The next brother, Damase, 17, married Rebecca Lantagne in 1864. They also established a farm on the road and would have 8 children. Télesphore was twelve in 1859; he married another Lamontagne daughter, Henriette, in 1869. They appear to have lived on his father’s farm after they were married; they are listed in the 1871 census as being in one single household with their oldest child and Télesphore's parents and sister Delvina. Télesphore and Henriette would have 13 children. Louis-Ferdinand, the youngest brother was ten in 1859; he would marry Marie-Sabrina Paradis in Saint-Raphael in 1870. Louis-Ferdinand was Delvina’s only sibling to reach adulthood who did not farm in Saint-Fortunat after marriage. Delvina’s youngest brother, Octave-Alexis, three years old in 1859 died in 1865 at age 9.
And then there were Delvina’s many cousins who lived on the 6th rang road. On the Demers side of her family, there was first cousin Isaïe Demers (the son of Uncle Magloire), who was born in Saint-Agapit, and his wife Sophia. They had two children by the 1871. In addition, there were several sons and step-sons of her uncle Germain Demers. Honoré, born in Saint-Nicolas, settled on the 6th rang by the early 1860’s and married yet another of Simon Lamontagne’s daughters, Victoria, in 1865. They had 11 children. Honoré’s brother Évangeliste also settled there about the same time; in 1866, he married Adelaide Boucher and they had 10 children, one of whom died at 3 months and another at 16 months. Because Évangeliste and Honoré’s father, Germain, had married Hilaire Aubin’s widowed mother, Hilaire was not only the husband of Delvina’s sister, Marie Euphrasie, but a step-cousin. Another step-cousin, Hilaire’s brother Barthelemi Aubin also settled on the 6th rang road in the early 1860’s. He married Elisabeth Dupere in 1860 and they had 9 children.
On Delvina’s mother’s side of the family, the Lamontagnes, living in Saint-Fortunat there was the family of Simon Lamontagne, one of her mother’s first cousins. Simon had been raised in Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly where he had met and married Marie Madeleine Legendre in 1842. They were early settlers the township of Wolfestown, having cleared out a farm around 1846 in a part of the northwestern section of Wolfestown that had been ceded to the town of Saint-Ferdinand-d’Halifax. Sometime in the early 1860’s they moved to the 5th rang on the north side of the 6th rang road and not far from Delvina’s family farm. Simon and Marie Madeleine had ten daughters. From oldest to youngest they were: Philomène (born 1843), Victoria (1846), Henriette (1851), Virginie (1853), Marie Louise (1855), Célina (1858), Délienne (born 1863), Julie (born 1864) and Alphonsine (born 1867). Simon and Anne also had three sons, Janvier (born 1848), Télesphore (1860) and Joseph (1871).
In addition to their daughters Philomène, Henriette, and Victoria whose families on the 6th range road are already described above, their daughter Julie also settled on the 6th rang or nearby with her husband, Narcisse Girard, and their three children (one other child died at birth). Simon’s oldest son Janvier also established a farm on the 6th range road where he and his wife, Marguerite Pelletier, raised 14 children after their marriage in 1871. It appears that the other sons and daughters of Simon and Marie Legendre lived outside of Saint-Fortunat after their marriages.
Other Lamontagne’s who settled on the 6th rang road included one of Simon’s younger brothers, Francois, born around 1820, and his wife Émerance Delage dit Larivière who had five children living at home in 1851. And Simon had two nephews (the sons of Isaïe Lamontagne) who lived on the 6th range road: David Lamontagne and his wife, Marie Bergeron, married in 1861 and had three children living at their farm in 1871, and Ferdinand Lamontagne and his wife, Aurelie Tardif, married in 1831, had one child at home in in 1871.
Other Lamontagne’s who settled on the 6th rang road included one of Simon’s younger brothers, Francois, born around 1820, and his wife Émerance Delage dit Larivière who had five children living at home in 1851. And Simon had two nephews (the sons of Isaïe Lamontagne) who lived on the 6th range road: David Lamontagne and his wife, Marie Bergeron, married in 1861 and had three children living at their farm in 1871, and Ferdinand Lamontagne and his wife, Aurelie Tardif, married in 1831, had one child at home in in 1871.
This portrait of Simon Lamontagne, a first cousin to Delvina's mother, Euphrosine, and some of his children was probably taken in the 1880s sometime after the death in 1881 of his wife, Marie Madeleine Legendre. Standing: Alphonsine (born 1867), Joseph (1871), and Délienne (1863). Sitting: Philomène, born 1843, father Simon Lamontagne (1818), and Victoria Lamontagne (1846). Not shown in the photo are his children Henriette (born 1851), Janvier (1848), Virginie (1853), Télesphore (1860), and Julie (1864).
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So although Delvina’s immediate family cleared a farm out of a wilderness forest beginning in 1859, the family was never truly alone or isolated. By the time Delvina was old enough to be aware of her surroundings, she lived a life surrounded by brothers and sisters, cousins, and current and future in-laws. In both the 1871 and 1881 censuses, about 70 family members lived within a mile of her home. These relatives, almost all from her or younger generations, would have looked up to her father and mother as the patriarch and matriarch of the extended family. This respect would have been generated in part because her father was the oldest and only Demers of his generation in Saint-Julien and Saint-Fortunat, and her mother was only one three Lamontagnes of her generation (the others being cousins Simon and François). Similar patriarchal and matriarchal roles would have been played by Simon Lamontagne, the eldest Lamontagne in town, and his wife Marie-Madeleine Legendre.
Delvina, then, grew up in the home of one of the most respected households in the area, and her parents were likely called oncle and tante or given the honorifics of père and mère by even non-relatives in the parish. And as time passed, Delvina in turn would have been an aunt to many nieces and nephews that lived along the road, many of whom, especially Télesphore and Henriette’s children, would probably have looked up to her as a second mother.
There is very little documentation about the daily life Delvina lived before her marriage. But growing up on a family farm and only leaving it when she married at 30 in 1888, she would have had chores expected of all young girls and women of the time. There were household chores not directly related to farming: cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, doing laundry, plucking chickens, maintaining the cooking and heating fires, making and mending clothes. And then she would have had work related to living on a farm: planting, weeding and harvesting the vegetable garden, conserving maple sugar, gathering wild berries, spinning wool, feeding the chickens and collecting their eggs, and herding milk cows from the fields to the barn for milking. And as she became older and stronger, she would have helped in the fields during haying and harvesting seasons.
Being the youngest child in her family, she would not have taken care of any of her siblings as she was growing up, but after her brother Télesphore married Henriette in 1869 and continued to live on the family farm, Delvina and her mother would have helped with caring for their children. Delvina’s help with the children would have freed up Henriette’s time, especially, to make and repair clothing as she was an excellent seamstress, or couturière. And as her mother became older, Delvina would have had the prime responsibility to care for her until Delvina married and left both the family farm and Saint-Fortunat for several years.
Delvina, then, grew up in the home of one of the most respected households in the area, and her parents were likely called oncle and tante or given the honorifics of père and mère by even non-relatives in the parish. And as time passed, Delvina in turn would have been an aunt to many nieces and nephews that lived along the road, many of whom, especially Télesphore and Henriette’s children, would probably have looked up to her as a second mother.
There is very little documentation about the daily life Delvina lived before her marriage. But growing up on a family farm and only leaving it when she married at 30 in 1888, she would have had chores expected of all young girls and women of the time. There were household chores not directly related to farming: cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, doing laundry, plucking chickens, maintaining the cooking and heating fires, making and mending clothes. And then she would have had work related to living on a farm: planting, weeding and harvesting the vegetable garden, conserving maple sugar, gathering wild berries, spinning wool, feeding the chickens and collecting their eggs, and herding milk cows from the fields to the barn for milking. And as she became older and stronger, she would have helped in the fields during haying and harvesting seasons.
Being the youngest child in her family, she would not have taken care of any of her siblings as she was growing up, but after her brother Télesphore married Henriette in 1869 and continued to live on the family farm, Delvina and her mother would have helped with caring for their children. Delvina’s help with the children would have freed up Henriette’s time, especially, to make and repair clothing as she was an excellent seamstress, or couturière. And as her mother became older, Delvina would have had the prime responsibility to care for her until Delvina married and left both the family farm and Saint-Fortunat for several years.
Until she married at 30, Delvina lived in her parents’ home and then in her brother Télesphor's when it was transferred to him after their father’s death in 1871. Télesphore and Henriette's growing family continued to live on the farm until they all emigrated to Maine in 1890, only two years after Delvina’s marriage. Both Delvina and her mother, who died in early 1890, therefore, would have played a important role in the lives of the children of Télesphore and Henriette.
This photo was taken around the time of Delvina’s marriage in 1888. In addition to Henriette and Télesphore, the family portrait shows all their surviving children; they were only a few of Delvina’s many nieces and nephews that lived on the 6th range road in Saint-Fortunat. Seated: Éva (born 1879), Henriette (1851), Phidelem (1887), Donat (1885), Télesphore (1847), and Émile (1877). Standing: Lydia (born in 1873), Andreana (1881), Odelie (1871), Virginie (1875), and Télesphore, Junior (1869). When this photo was taken, one of their children, Melanie, had already died. She was born in 1884 and died in 1888.
This photo was taken around the time of Delvina’s marriage in 1888. In addition to Henriette and Télesphore, the family portrait shows all their surviving children; they were only a few of Delvina’s many nieces and nephews that lived on the 6th range road in Saint-Fortunat. Seated: Éva (born 1879), Henriette (1851), Phidelem (1887), Donat (1885), Télesphore (1847), and Émile (1877). Standing: Lydia (born in 1873), Andreana (1881), Odelie (1871), Virginie (1875), and Télesphore, Junior (1869). When this photo was taken, one of their children, Melanie, had already died. She was born in 1884 and died in 1888.
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Beyond the family, and of equal importance, Delvina’s world was permeated with the beliefs, prayers, and rites of the Catholic Church, beginning with her own baptism within two days of her birth. As a child she learned her prayers from her mother, which were recited alone or with others upon arising in the morning, before each meal, and before sleeping. For many families, rosaries were said together every evening after supper, but all families would have recited them daily during the 40 days of Lent.During her first 15 years, going to “church” for Delvina meant going to the chapel in Saint-Julien about 4 miles, or a wagon ride of about an hour and a half, from the farm. Established only in 1858 as an outpost of the parish of Saint-Ferdinand-d’Halifax, in the early years the chapel was served only every other week by a missionary priest who said mass and gave communion, baptized newborns, took confessions and presided over funeral services. In 1863, the chapel had its first full-time resident priest, a Father Pelisson, who served not only those living in Wolfestown, but those in neighboring Ham-Nord and Coleraine.
On those Sundays in the early years when the missionary priest didn’t go to Saint-Julien or on those frequent Sundays when the weather or the roads made it too difficult to reach the chapel, the family would stay at home and say prayers in lieu of attending mass.
But on those days when the weather and road conditions permitted and parishioners went to the chapel, the families at the furthest reaches of the parish, such as those on the 8th range road and on far end of the 6th rang, including Delvina’s, were the first to begin the long trek. Mass would have been held early, perhaps at 8:00, to shorten the time of fasting before taking communion, but late enough to allow those from the furthest rangs who needed up to an hour and a half, or even two hours, to travel from home to chapel.
In their horse drawn wagons or sleighs, with children and young adults walking alongside whenever the roads were dry (Delvina would later tell her grandchildren that to save on shoe leather, she walked barefoot all the way to the bottom of the steep hill above which the chapel sat before her parents allowed her to put on her shoes), the furthest families would be joined by families who lived closer to the chapel or by those coming down from the 7th and 8th rangs who joined them at the intersection of the Route of the 6th range road with the 6th range road. Later more wagons joined the line at the intersection with the 4th range road and then later still with that of the Gosford Road.
By the early 1870s, the 100 or more families that lived on the furthest rangs formed a long line with those living nearer as they approached the chapel. Especially when the weather was good, children and young adults could socialize along the way, sharing news, and passing it on to the adults who stayed on the wagons. The journey would have been a good way especially for men and women of marriage age to become better acquainted informally with potential future spouses.
Arriving at the church, the number of parishioners would become even larger, with families from the 1, 2 and third rangs and from along the Gosford road joining those from the more remote rangs. A total of perhaps as many as 1,000 people might be attending mass in Saint-Julien by 1870. Before and after mass, more informal socializing took place on the church steps and the yard where the wagons were hitched to posts, stakes, or fences. The mass, about an hour long, would then be followed by baptisms and marriages and confessions.
When she was 10 years old, Delvina would have received her first communion. For that she and others her age may have received some religious instruction from the chapel priest, but the amount of instruction would have been limited because of the small amount of time available to the missionary priest. It seems likely that most of her religious instruction outside of the mass itself would have been received from her mother and other women in the family. Later, around 14, she would have been confirmed. Again, additional instruction for her confirmation would have been given by the priest and family members.
Until the church was built in Saint-Fortunat, weddings would have been performed at the chapel in Saint-Julien. On those happy occasions, such as her brother Télesphore’s marriage to Henriette in January 1869, the journey to the chapel would have especially been a festive time, with sleighs decorated with fir boughs and singing and much laughter along the way.
But there were many times when the journey to the chapel was made in deep grief, to attend funerals of those who died so frequently from disease, accidents and childbirth. For the young Delvina there were two especially painful funerals to attend. In 1865, her youngest brother, Octave-Alexis, only three years older than she, died. We don’t know the circumstances of his death, but he was buried in the cemetery near the chapel in Saint-Julien. And then six years later in 1871 when she was 12, there was another grievous journey from her farm to Saint-Julien when her father died from a farm accident at only 59 and was buried in Saint-Julien the very next day. Before their funerals, the bodies would have been exposed in the best room in the house, attended by family members and friends who recited a rosary every hour, day and night. On the day of the funerals, what solemn occasion the long wagon ride to the chapel must have been: no talking, no laughter, the caskets of the young child or the patriarch of the family placed on a farm wagon and followed silently by the numerous family members and neighbors.
In late 1871 the parish of Saint-Fortunat was established, but a full-time priest was not appointed until 1873, the same year the church was built. Beginning in the summer of 1871, however, a priest from Saint-Ferdinand, Father Francoeur, gave masses in the home of Damase St-Pierre on the 7th range road in the village of the town. Presumably confessions and baptisms were also offered there.
How much easier life must have been after the new church was built in the village in 1873. Now it took only half the time for Delvina and her family to get to the church (still up to 45 minutes to go the two miles from the Demers farm on the 6th rang), and with a full-time priest, both low and high masses were given every Sunday morning, baptisms, marriages and funerals could be offered during the week, and catechism classes were available following masses. And with the church bell installed in 1876, Delvina could now hear the calls to prayer and to mass while working in the farm house or in the gardens and fields.
And with the new church in Saint-Fortunat and the continuing growth of the town, the village center took on the aspect of a more established Québec village center, with a rectory for the priest, general stores, a post office, and a blacksmith. As in all the older Québec villages at the time, Sunday became not only the day to attend mass, but to attend to business in the village stores or blacksmith, or to socialize at a more leisurely pace on the steps of the church, at the post office or in nearby homes.
Delvina’s parents apparently valued education as all their sons in 1871 were literate and we know that at least one of them, Télesphore, attended an école du rang in Saint-Gilles. As an adult Delvina could read and write with a beautiful penmanship, so she most likely attended the country school on the 6th rang road for a number of years. We don’t know exactly when the first country schools were established in Wolfestown, but Father Vaillaincourt in his history of Saint-Fortunat states that the “écoles de rang” were present from the beginning of the settlement of what would later become Saint-Fortunat, that is to say since the 1850s. As the chemin de 6ème rang was one of the first roads there, and given the number or children on that road in the 1860s, it seems very likely that a school would have been established there during that decade at the latest. As was typical, the school likely would had a two-story building with living quarters for the teacher on the second floor and a single room on the first floor, with a wood stove of “deux ponts” that would have both heated the classroom and served as a cooking stove.
Delvina would have started the school year in the fall and attended it until the spring, with breaks for holidays. Because attendance at the school was not obligatory, attendance at the school would have fallen significantly during the harvesting, sowing, and maple syrup seasons, and the school may have even been closed during those periods. Her teacher, the institutrice, would have been an unmarried young woman only a few years older than her oldest students and whose own education most likely was limited to an école du rang. (For example, in 1888 one of her niecies, Odelie Demers, was a teacher at 16 years old after having attended only the school on the chemin du 6ème rang.) Typically, her classes would have had more than 20 boys and girls of all ages and educational levels (from the first to the 11th grades). Along with the others, Delvina would have been taught reading and writing, mathematics, geography, and history, and throughout the instruction, beginning with a prayer in the morning, the tenets of the Catholic faith would have been reinforced, if not taught.
Despite the trauma following her father’s death in the summer of 1871, her mother ensured that Delvina’s life remained stable and secure during the long period of years before she married in 1888. Within only weeks of her father’s death, her mother transferred the family farm to brother Télesphore who had remained living there after his marriage to Henriette in 1869. The transfer was not a simple transfer of the farm, which was now owned entirely by her mother. Rather it was a transfer with a number of restrictions on Télesphore’s use of it and with financial and other obligations to his mother (who among other things retained the right to live in the home for the remainder of her life and had to agree before the property could be sold) and to his siblings.
In the case of Delvina, the legal document establishing the transfer, the donation de terre, provided that Télesphore was obligated to care for her as a “Christian and charitable brother” would do, to feed her “at his own table as he would feed himself,” and to provide her clothes and linens. And when she left the home, he had to provide her with a “petit ménage” that would help her to establish herself in a new home. In short, just as she had before her father’s death, Delvina would be able remain living with her mother and brother’s family on the family farm until she was ready to leave.
Although not stated in the donation de terre and not of a legal nature, Delvina would, in return, have her own obligations to help with the family and farm, just as she had always had. Given the mores of the times, it would have been unthinkable for her not to do otherwise. So as she grew up in her brother’s household, she continued to work the gardens, milk the cows, clean the house, cook meals, and even help in the fields during harvests. And as a young adult, she would have provided Henriette and other women in the neighborhood moral and practical support during the many births, illnesses and accidents that often resulted in the deaths of so many children and adults.
When Delvina met Joseph Bourassa for the first time in 1876, she would have been of marriageable age for a couple of years. But we do not have any information about whether she had been courted by anyone yet or if she would do so before the two of them began to court each other. And we don’t know when their courtship started. Was it only for a short period before their marriage or for a period of years? Given that both appeared to have lived very deliberately and methodically, one suspects that it spanned a number of years as they both readied themselves to have their own farm and family.
Courtships at the time were simple affairs, beginning with the man visiting the woman’s home on Sunday afternoons or evenings where family members would have always been present. Later the couple would attend evening parties or veillées together in the neighborhood. The woman’s father would have had to approve of the courtship and marriage, but with her father deceased, it is probable that he asked Delvina's mother to court and then marry her.
As she walked or road to Saint-Julien or Saint-Fortunat during the 1870s and 1880s, Delvina would have witnessed many improvements to the farms along the way and to the road itself: homes expanded or replaced entirely; barns, wood sheds, and fencing built; more land cleared of trees, stumps and rocks and fields leveled; and the road straightened and widened, low spots filled, ditches deepened, small bridges improved. And with new families moving in and so many children being born, the population was increasing.
But beginning in the mid-1870s, families began to leave Saint-Fortunat for the United States or elsewhere in Canada, at first in a trickle, then in a flood. In Delvina’s immediate family, the first to leave was Louis-Ferdinand in 1875 when he emigrated to Nebraska. Next was her brother Damasse and his wife, Rebecca, and their family of six children in 1878 or 1879 when they left for Minnesota. [Family oral history says that they left because Damasse was grief-stricken by the accidental death of his second oldest son, Joseph-Théodore, 12, in 1878 when the two were building a barn and a wooden beam struck the boy’s head, killing him instantly; but there were certainly economic factors involved as well that led to the move, as with the case with all those who emigrated.] At about the same time, Delvina’s sister Marie Euphrasie and her husband, Hilaire Aubin, and six of their children moved to Lewiston to work in the factories there. In 1882, cousin Evangelist Demers and his wife and seven children followed the Aubins to Lewiston. In 1884, her oldest brother Théodore and wife Philomène and their nine children, moved to Lewiston. And in the late 1880s, cousin Honoré Demers and wife Victoria and their nine children, moved to work in the factories in Sanford, Maine.
By the time Delvina was married, her mother and brother Télesphore and his family were the only immediate family members remaining on the 6th rang road, and it appears likely that the main reason Télesphore hadn’t moved was because of his obligations to his mother, both his moral obligations and his legal ones under the donation de terre. It seems likely she may have opposed leaving the family farm. (Télesphore and his family would emigrate to Sanford, Maine, within months after his mother’s death in 1890.)
Although it must have been heart-breaking for Delvina to say good-bye to all these families, it did result in several trips by her and her mother to the United States, to Lewiston, in the first half of the 1880s to visit the families of Hilaire and Marie Euphrasie Aubin and Théodore and Philomène Demers. We know of these visits only through the photos below that were taken of the two in a photographic studio there.
It is most likely that they would have taken the Québec Central railroad from nearby Disrael to Lewiston, rather than the Grand Trunk Railroad from Arthabaska. (A convenient road connection between Arthabaska and Saint-Fortunat was not established until after 1888.) One can easily imagine the excitement of leaving the quiet of the 6th rang road to take an all night train ride to the bustling mill town of Lewiston in “les États.” Although we don’t know for sure, the fancy dresses worn by the two in the photos below were likely made by Henriette or with her help. We also do not know whether the purposes of the trips were simply to visit family in Lewiston, or also as a way for Delvina to meet men of marriageable age or as a means to see if Delvina or her mother would want to move there. If for the latter purposes, nothing would come of them. Delvina returned to Saint-Fortunat on all occasions (and ultimately courted and married Joseph there), as did her mother who lived in Saint-Fortunat until her death.
In late 1871 the parish of Saint-Fortunat was established, but a full-time priest was not appointed until 1873, the same year the church was built. Beginning in the summer of 1871, however, a priest from Saint-Ferdinand, Father Francoeur, gave masses in the home of Damase St-Pierre on the 7th range road in the village of the town. Presumably confessions and baptisms were also offered there.
How much easier life must have been after the new church was built in the village in 1873. Now it took only half the time for Delvina and her family to get to the church (still up to 45 minutes to go the two miles from the Demers farm on the 6th rang), and with a full-time priest, both low and high masses were given every Sunday morning, baptisms, marriages and funerals could be offered during the week, and catechism classes were available following masses. And with the church bell installed in 1876, Delvina could now hear the calls to prayer and to mass while working in the farm house or in the gardens and fields.
And with the new church in Saint-Fortunat and the continuing growth of the town, the village center took on the aspect of a more established Québec village center, with a rectory for the priest, general stores, a post office, and a blacksmith. As in all the older Québec villages at the time, Sunday became not only the day to attend mass, but to attend to business in the village stores or blacksmith, or to socialize at a more leisurely pace on the steps of the church, at the post office or in nearby homes.
Delvina’s parents apparently valued education as all their sons in 1871 were literate and we know that at least one of them, Télesphore, attended an école du rang in Saint-Gilles. As an adult Delvina could read and write with a beautiful penmanship, so she most likely attended the country school on the 6th rang road for a number of years. We don’t know exactly when the first country schools were established in Wolfestown, but Father Vaillaincourt in his history of Saint-Fortunat states that the “écoles de rang” were present from the beginning of the settlement of what would later become Saint-Fortunat, that is to say since the 1850s. As the chemin de 6ème rang was one of the first roads there, and given the number or children on that road in the 1860s, it seems very likely that a school would have been established there during that decade at the latest. As was typical, the school likely would had a two-story building with living quarters for the teacher on the second floor and a single room on the first floor, with a wood stove of “deux ponts” that would have both heated the classroom and served as a cooking stove.
Delvina would have started the school year in the fall and attended it until the spring, with breaks for holidays. Because attendance at the school was not obligatory, attendance at the school would have fallen significantly during the harvesting, sowing, and maple syrup seasons, and the school may have even been closed during those periods. Her teacher, the institutrice, would have been an unmarried young woman only a few years older than her oldest students and whose own education most likely was limited to an école du rang. (For example, in 1888 one of her niecies, Odelie Demers, was a teacher at 16 years old after having attended only the school on the chemin du 6ème rang.) Typically, her classes would have had more than 20 boys and girls of all ages and educational levels (from the first to the 11th grades). Along with the others, Delvina would have been taught reading and writing, mathematics, geography, and history, and throughout the instruction, beginning with a prayer in the morning, the tenets of the Catholic faith would have been reinforced, if not taught.
Despite the trauma following her father’s death in the summer of 1871, her mother ensured that Delvina’s life remained stable and secure during the long period of years before she married in 1888. Within only weeks of her father’s death, her mother transferred the family farm to brother Télesphore who had remained living there after his marriage to Henriette in 1869. The transfer was not a simple transfer of the farm, which was now owned entirely by her mother. Rather it was a transfer with a number of restrictions on Télesphore’s use of it and with financial and other obligations to his mother (who among other things retained the right to live in the home for the remainder of her life and had to agree before the property could be sold) and to his siblings.
In the case of Delvina, the legal document establishing the transfer, the donation de terre, provided that Télesphore was obligated to care for her as a “Christian and charitable brother” would do, to feed her “at his own table as he would feed himself,” and to provide her clothes and linens. And when she left the home, he had to provide her with a “petit ménage” that would help her to establish herself in a new home. In short, just as she had before her father’s death, Delvina would be able remain living with her mother and brother’s family on the family farm until she was ready to leave.
Although not stated in the donation de terre and not of a legal nature, Delvina would, in return, have her own obligations to help with the family and farm, just as she had always had. Given the mores of the times, it would have been unthinkable for her not to do otherwise. So as she grew up in her brother’s household, she continued to work the gardens, milk the cows, clean the house, cook meals, and even help in the fields during harvests. And as a young adult, she would have provided Henriette and other women in the neighborhood moral and practical support during the many births, illnesses and accidents that often resulted in the deaths of so many children and adults.
When Delvina met Joseph Bourassa for the first time in 1876, she would have been of marriageable age for a couple of years. But we do not have any information about whether she had been courted by anyone yet or if she would do so before the two of them began to court each other. And we don’t know when their courtship started. Was it only for a short period before their marriage or for a period of years? Given that both appeared to have lived very deliberately and methodically, one suspects that it spanned a number of years as they both readied themselves to have their own farm and family.
Courtships at the time were simple affairs, beginning with the man visiting the woman’s home on Sunday afternoons or evenings where family members would have always been present. Later the couple would attend evening parties or veillées together in the neighborhood. The woman’s father would have had to approve of the courtship and marriage, but with her father deceased, it is probable that he asked Delvina's mother to court and then marry her.
As she walked or road to Saint-Julien or Saint-Fortunat during the 1870s and 1880s, Delvina would have witnessed many improvements to the farms along the way and to the road itself: homes expanded or replaced entirely; barns, wood sheds, and fencing built; more land cleared of trees, stumps and rocks and fields leveled; and the road straightened and widened, low spots filled, ditches deepened, small bridges improved. And with new families moving in and so many children being born, the population was increasing.
But beginning in the mid-1870s, families began to leave Saint-Fortunat for the United States or elsewhere in Canada, at first in a trickle, then in a flood. In Delvina’s immediate family, the first to leave was Louis-Ferdinand in 1875 when he emigrated to Nebraska. Next was her brother Damasse and his wife, Rebecca, and their family of six children in 1878 or 1879 when they left for Minnesota. [Family oral history says that they left because Damasse was grief-stricken by the accidental death of his second oldest son, Joseph-Théodore, 12, in 1878 when the two were building a barn and a wooden beam struck the boy’s head, killing him instantly; but there were certainly economic factors involved as well that led to the move, as with the case with all those who emigrated.] At about the same time, Delvina’s sister Marie Euphrasie and her husband, Hilaire Aubin, and six of their children moved to Lewiston to work in the factories there. In 1882, cousin Evangelist Demers and his wife and seven children followed the Aubins to Lewiston. In 1884, her oldest brother Théodore and wife Philomène and their nine children, moved to Lewiston. And in the late 1880s, cousin Honoré Demers and wife Victoria and their nine children, moved to work in the factories in Sanford, Maine.
By the time Delvina was married, her mother and brother Télesphore and his family were the only immediate family members remaining on the 6th rang road, and it appears likely that the main reason Télesphore hadn’t moved was because of his obligations to his mother, both his moral obligations and his legal ones under the donation de terre. It seems likely she may have opposed leaving the family farm. (Télesphore and his family would emigrate to Sanford, Maine, within months after his mother’s death in 1890.)
Although it must have been heart-breaking for Delvina to say good-bye to all these families, it did result in several trips by her and her mother to the United States, to Lewiston, in the first half of the 1880s to visit the families of Hilaire and Marie Euphrasie Aubin and Théodore and Philomène Demers. We know of these visits only through the photos below that were taken of the two in a photographic studio there.
It is most likely that they would have taken the Québec Central railroad from nearby Disrael to Lewiston, rather than the Grand Trunk Railroad from Arthabaska. (A convenient road connection between Arthabaska and Saint-Fortunat was not established until after 1888.) One can easily imagine the excitement of leaving the quiet of the 6th rang road to take an all night train ride to the bustling mill town of Lewiston in “les États.” Although we don’t know for sure, the fancy dresses worn by the two in the photos below were likely made by Henriette or with her help. We also do not know whether the purposes of the trips were simply to visit family in Lewiston, or also as a way for Delvina to meet men of marriageable age or as a means to see if Delvina or her mother would want to move there. If for the latter purposes, nothing would come of them. Delvina returned to Saint-Fortunat on all occasions (and ultimately courted and married Joseph there), as did her mother who lived in Saint-Fortunat until her death.
Delvina Demers, probably in Lewiston, Maine, circa 1880.
This appears to be the earliest photograph we have of Delvina and may have been taken around 1880 when she was 22 years old and still living on the family farm in Saint-Fortunat with her mother and the young family of her brother, Télesphore, and sister-in-law, Henriette. This photo and the photo of her mother below were likely taken during a visit to her sister and brother-in-law, Marie Euphrasie Demers and Hilaire Aubin, who had moved to Lewiston, Maine in the late 1870s.
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Euphrosine Lamontagne Demers, likely in Lewiston, Maine, circa 1880.
Euphrosine, Delvina’s mother, was widowed in 1871 upon the accidental death of her husband Damase, 59. This is the earliest photo, of only three, that we have of her. Her eldest daughter, Marie Euphrasie Demers Aubin, was the second of her children to emigrate to the United States (in her case only for several years). All of her sons who survived childhood, Theodore, Télesphore, Damase, and Louis-Ferdinand, would eventually emigrate permanently to the United States or western Canada. Euphrosine died in 1890 on the family farm that she and her husband carved out of the forest in Saint-Fortunat in 1859.
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Delvina and Philomène Demers, circa 1885, likely taken in Lewiston, Maine.
[This photo has been modified. It combines elements from two copies of the same photo.]
It seems this photograph was taken when Delvina paid another visit to Lewiston, this time to see the family of her brother and sister-in-law, Théodore and Philomène Lamontagne Demers, who had moved there in 1884, as well as the Aubin family who had moved there earlier. Here she stands with cousin Philomène Demers, Théodore and Philomène's oldest daughter, who would die in 1886 at age 22.
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Delvina Demers, circa 1886. Likely taken in Lewiston, Maine.
This appears to be a portrait that was also taken in Lewiston on a visit to the families of her brother Théodore Demers and sister Marie Euphrasie Aubin. It was taken not long before her wedding in 1888.
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Joseph Bourassa's Life Before Marriage
Like so many other early settlers in Saint-Fortunat, the Bourassa family came from one the old seigneuries on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence where Joseph was born in 1860 on the chemin Vire-Crepes in the parish of Saint-Nicolas-de-Lauzon. His mother, Rose Olivier, was a member of the large Olivier family that had ties to Saint-Nicolas dating back to the mid-1660s. His father, Georges Bourassa, came from the neighboring parish of Saint-Joseph-de-Lauzon, where his family’s roots also went back generations.Rose and Georges were married in Saint-Nicolas in 1855 and settled on the farm on the Chemin Vire-Crêpes, lot number 407, where they raised eight children: Marie-Rose (1856), Louis-Michel (1858), Louis-Joseph (1860), Georges-Edouard (1861), Marie-Anne (1862), François-Benjamin (1864), Georges-Edouard (1865), and Felix-Edouard (1860).
In 1873, Georges Bourassa died at only 41, leaving his wife with seven minor children (their daughter Marie-Rose had died in 1868), including twelve-year old Joseph. After her husband’s death, Rose and the children continued to live and work on the family farm for several years. Before and after his father’s death, Joseph, the second oldest son, attended a country school in Saint-Nicolas for four years until he was 14. He also helped his mother on the farm with his brothers and sister, and especially after his father died, he accompanied her to sell farm produce at the farmers’ market across the Saint Lawrence River in the lower town of nearby Québec City.
In 1876, still not having remarried, Rose decided to sell the family farm and move the family to Saint-Fortunat-de-Wolfestown, with the idea that she could better establish her sons as farmers in that town where land was less expensive and more plentiful. Saint-Fortunat’s property tax records for 1876 show that Rose, listed as Veuve Bourassa, or the Widow Bourassa, owned two parcels of land on the 7th range, on adjacent lots 5 and 6, of 100 acres and 40 acres, respectively.
On deciding to leave Saint-Nicolas in search of farmland for her six sons, why did she go to Saint-Fortunat and not to another of the developing towns in the Eastern Townships? Like many who settled in Saint-Fortunat, she seems to have followed in the steps of other family members and neighbors from Saint-Nicolas who had already settled there. With their help, the move and the establishment of a new farm would be far easier. And in her case, a widow with seven minor children, being surrounded by family and friends would have been even more of an imperative for Rose.
But did Rose have relatives already living in Saint-Fortunat in 1876? There do not appear to be any Bourassas living there at the time (and none are listed in the 1861 and 1871 censuses, and Rose and her family are the only Bourassas in the 1881 census), but there are two with her family name, Olivier. Benjamin and Joseph Olivier are two signatories of the 1871 petition to the Archbishop of Québec that requested the establishment of the parish that would later become Saint-Fortunat. Benjamin and Joseph Olivier are also listed in the 1861 and 1871 Canadian censuses of the town. In the 1881 census, a Joseph and Alvina Olivier are listed together (Benjamin is no longer listed). Also in the 1881 census there are a Christine Olivier and a Benjamin Demers listed in another household. Are the Oliviers listed in the three censuses and in the petition to the Archbishop in 1871 relatives of Rose Olivier Bourassa who might have influenced her decision to move to Saint-Fortunat in 1877?
As for Christine Olivier (born 1804), she is Rose’s aunt, the sister of her father, Sylvestre Olivier (1801-1878). Sylvestre and Christine were the children of François Olivier and Marie-Rose Demers, both from Saint-Nicolas, where all their children were born and raised. (Marie-Rose Demers was a second cousin to Damase Demers, Delvina’s father, thereby making Rose and Damase second cousins.) Christine married Modest-Basile Demers, also of Saint-Nicolas, and they had a son, Louis-Benjamin Demers, who became a priest and, and as fate would have it, would become the second pastor in Saint-Fortunat.
We don’t know when Christine Olivier Demers moved to Saint-Fortunat (by this time Christine had been a widow for several years), but presumably she would have accompanied her son Louis-Benjamin there when he became the parish priest in 1879, or three years after Rose Olivier Bourassa had already arrived in 1876. Therefore, it is unlikely that Christine Olivier Demers or her son Louis-Benjamin Demers had influenced Rose Olivier’s decision to move to Saint-Fortunat in 1876.
The other Oliviers in Saint-Fortunat, Benjamin and Joseph (father and son, respectively), however, had lived in Wolfestown since 1861. Benjamin, the husband of Desanges Dussault, was a son of Procul Olivier, a brother of Sylvestre Olivier (Rose’s father). Benjamin Olivier, thus, was Rose Olivier’s first cousin, and his son, Joseph Olivier, a first cousin once removed. It was likely, therefore, that cousins Benjamin and Joseph were the primary influences on Rose's decision to establish her family in Saint-Fortunat.
But others from Saint-Nicolas could have also played a part in her decision, particularly Hilaire Aubin and his brother, Barthelemy, and their step-brothers Honoré and Évangeliste Demers, all of whom had grown up on Chemin Vire-Crêpes on the farm of their stepfather and father, Germain Demers. Being of the same generation and distantly related to them, it is certain that Rose would have known all of these Demers and Aubins when she grew up on the Chemin Vire-Crepes. By 1876, these four brothers and step-brothers now had farms on the Chemin du 6ème rang in Saint-Fortunat, as did their first cousins Théodore, Télesphore and Damase Demers, Jr., who had come from Saint-Gilles. So in moving to Saint-Fortunat, Rose would have been surrounded and supported by many family members and old neighbors from Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Gilles.
In 1873, Georges Bourassa died at only 41, leaving his wife with seven minor children (their daughter Marie-Rose had died in 1868), including twelve-year old Joseph. After her husband’s death, Rose and the children continued to live and work on the family farm for several years. Before and after his father’s death, Joseph, the second oldest son, attended a country school in Saint-Nicolas for four years until he was 14. He also helped his mother on the farm with his brothers and sister, and especially after his father died, he accompanied her to sell farm produce at the farmers’ market across the Saint Lawrence River in the lower town of nearby Québec City.
In 1876, still not having remarried, Rose decided to sell the family farm and move the family to Saint-Fortunat-de-Wolfestown, with the idea that she could better establish her sons as farmers in that town where land was less expensive and more plentiful. Saint-Fortunat’s property tax records for 1876 show that Rose, listed as Veuve Bourassa, or the Widow Bourassa, owned two parcels of land on the 7th range, on adjacent lots 5 and 6, of 100 acres and 40 acres, respectively.
On deciding to leave Saint-Nicolas in search of farmland for her six sons, why did she go to Saint-Fortunat and not to another of the developing towns in the Eastern Townships? Like many who settled in Saint-Fortunat, she seems to have followed in the steps of other family members and neighbors from Saint-Nicolas who had already settled there. With their help, the move and the establishment of a new farm would be far easier. And in her case, a widow with seven minor children, being surrounded by family and friends would have been even more of an imperative for Rose.
But did Rose have relatives already living in Saint-Fortunat in 1876? There do not appear to be any Bourassas living there at the time (and none are listed in the 1861 and 1871 censuses, and Rose and her family are the only Bourassas in the 1881 census), but there are two with her family name, Olivier. Benjamin and Joseph Olivier are two signatories of the 1871 petition to the Archbishop of Québec that requested the establishment of the parish that would later become Saint-Fortunat. Benjamin and Joseph Olivier are also listed in the 1861 and 1871 Canadian censuses of the town. In the 1881 census, a Joseph and Alvina Olivier are listed together (Benjamin is no longer listed). Also in the 1881 census there are a Christine Olivier and a Benjamin Demers listed in another household. Are the Oliviers listed in the three censuses and in the petition to the Archbishop in 1871 relatives of Rose Olivier Bourassa who might have influenced her decision to move to Saint-Fortunat in 1877?
As for Christine Olivier (born 1804), she is Rose’s aunt, the sister of her father, Sylvestre Olivier (1801-1878). Sylvestre and Christine were the children of François Olivier and Marie-Rose Demers, both from Saint-Nicolas, where all their children were born and raised. (Marie-Rose Demers was a second cousin to Damase Demers, Delvina’s father, thereby making Rose and Damase second cousins.) Christine married Modest-Basile Demers, also of Saint-Nicolas, and they had a son, Louis-Benjamin Demers, who became a priest and, and as fate would have it, would become the second pastor in Saint-Fortunat.
We don’t know when Christine Olivier Demers moved to Saint-Fortunat (by this time Christine had been a widow for several years), but presumably she would have accompanied her son Louis-Benjamin there when he became the parish priest in 1879, or three years after Rose Olivier Bourassa had already arrived in 1876. Therefore, it is unlikely that Christine Olivier Demers or her son Louis-Benjamin Demers had influenced Rose Olivier’s decision to move to Saint-Fortunat in 1876.
The other Oliviers in Saint-Fortunat, Benjamin and Joseph (father and son, respectively), however, had lived in Wolfestown since 1861. Benjamin, the husband of Desanges Dussault, was a son of Procul Olivier, a brother of Sylvestre Olivier (Rose’s father). Benjamin Olivier, thus, was Rose Olivier’s first cousin, and his son, Joseph Olivier, a first cousin once removed. It was likely, therefore, that cousins Benjamin and Joseph were the primary influences on Rose's decision to establish her family in Saint-Fortunat.
But others from Saint-Nicolas could have also played a part in her decision, particularly Hilaire Aubin and his brother, Barthelemy, and their step-brothers Honoré and Évangeliste Demers, all of whom had grown up on Chemin Vire-Crêpes on the farm of their stepfather and father, Germain Demers. Being of the same generation and distantly related to them, it is certain that Rose would have known all of these Demers and Aubins when she grew up on the Chemin Vire-Crepes. By 1876, these four brothers and step-brothers now had farms on the Chemin du 6ème rang in Saint-Fortunat, as did their first cousins Théodore, Télesphore and Damase Demers, Jr., who had come from Saint-Gilles. So in moving to Saint-Fortunat, Rose would have been surrounded and supported by many family members and old neighbors from Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Gilles.
In 1876, the Bourassa farm at range 7, lots number 5 and 6, and Delvina’s family farm at range 6, lots number 4, 5, and 6 backed up to each other, with the small Bulstrode River roughly separating the two. The map shows the approximate location of each. Source: Google Map Data, copyright 2019. The two farms would have only been about a mile from each other by road along the Chemin du 6ème rang, the Route de la Grand Ligne, and the Chemin des Pointes. The 1881 census in Saint-Fortunat, in which the census taker went in sequence from farmhouse to farmhouse, gives a good indication of how close the Bourassa and Demers farms where; it appears that only two other farms stood between them along the three roads.
Joseph Bourassa, son of Rose Olivier and Georges Bourassa, in a photograph that appears to have been taken before his marriage to Delvina Demers in 1888, perhaps about 1884 when his mother transferred a farm to him on the 13th lot of the 7th range south of the village center in Saint-Fortunat. We don’t know where the photo was taken, most likely someplace in Québec province. His daughter Angelina would later describe him as “physically strong, with curly blond hair and a pale complexion, and a man with moral qualities.” (« physiqement fort, aux cheveux blonds, frisées, au teint clair, présentait des qualités morales . . . ») [Leblanc 318.] During the years before his marriage, he worked on farms in several towns in the eastern townships, apparently to earn money to establish himself on his own farm.
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As neighbors, Joseph and Delvina would have seen each other often as the months and years went by and, at the very least, would have had a chance to meet at mass and other church activities each Sunday and on the many holy days. We don’t know when they started courting, but it would take 12 years after they first met before they married in 1888. Throughout this period, Delvina continued to live with her mother and brother Télesphore and his family on the Demers farm. Prior to his marriage, on the other hand, Joseph worked on a number of farms in the Eastern Townships, including in Colebrooke, Ayers Cliff, Eaton Corner and Barston, to earn money needed to establish himself on his own farm. This would have been in addition to helping on his mother’s farm.
In 1884, Joseph acquired his own farmland for the first time when his mother transferred to him land that she had acquired in 1881 from her first cousin, Louis-Benjamin Demers, the parish priest. This land, located on the 13th lot of the 7th rang, about a mile south of the village center, would later become the farm where he and Delvina would settle and raise their children.
In the land contract, dated November 21, 1884, the land is described as: "A piece of land being the northwestern part of the southeastern half of lot number thirteen of the seventh range of the said township of Wolfestown, containing two arpents in front of the lot depth, less three arpents of depth that the said transferrer reserves to herself, to take near the band of land between the seventh and eighth range, bounded, the land above-given one end to the band of land between the six and seventh range and the other end to three arpents of the band of land of the eighth range, circumstances and dependencies. " (Translated by Dennis M. Doiron.) The deed doesn’t describe any buildings on the land. His assets at this time totaled several cows, a pig, some chickens, and a maple sugar grove of 500 maple trees.
In addition to farming, Joseph was an accomplished singer of church music and took an active role as a singer and teacher in three parishes. When the Bourassa’s arrived in Saint-Fortunat in 1876, the church in Saint-Fortunat was only three years old. Before his marriage and perhaps after as well, Joseph sang the mass both in Saint-Julien-de-Wolfestown and in Saint-Fortunat. When the parish of Saint-Jacques-de-Majeur, also within the bounds of the old township of Wolfestown, was established just south-east of Saint-Fortunat in 1910, he taught church music there as well.
To be continued: The Married Life of Delvina and Joseph
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