The Demers Family of the 6th Range Road

Introductory Note:

In 2021, the small, rural town of Saint-Fortunat, Québec (current population 277), celebrated the 150th anniversary of the December 1871 establishment of the parish of Saint-Fortunat-de-Wolfestown. Two years later, the same land area covered by the parish was incorporated as a town, also called Saint-Fortunat.

In the summer of 2020, Charles Bédard, a resident of  Saint-Fortunat, contacted me after reading this blog while doing online research on the history of the parish and town. Charles was a member of the Comité des fêtes du 150e de Saint-Fortunat which was charged with developing activities to celebrate the anniversary year and of the Comité du livre which was responsible for producing a commemorative book.  As a result of many emails between the two of us, some of the material in the blog and from my research made its way into the commemorative book, St-Fortunat 1871-2021: 150 ans d’histoire à se raconter (pub. June 2021). In addition, Charles invited me to write two articles for the section of the book about some of the pioneer families in Wolfestown: one on the family of Damase Demers and Euphrasie Lamontagne who settled there in 1859, and one on the family of Simon Lamontagne and Marie Madeleine Legendre, who arrived even earlier, about 1845.

Needless to say, it was very meaningful for me to participate in this way in the celebration of the establishment of Saint-Fortunat, even if from a distance during this time of closed borders between the U.S. and Canada. I want to give a heartfelt thank you to Charles for making me feel part of the anniversary year celebration.

The commemorative book is entirely in French, so this post provides the first published English translation of the Demers family article. I’ve also posted the French version on the blog. I’ll post the French and English translation of the Lamontagne family article soon. 

As with much of the material that has appeared in the blog over the past several years, I’ve received help for the Demers and Lamontagne articles from several cousins. Anita Demers Olko from Lewiston, Maine, helped with genealogical information and the old photographs. And our two cousins, Jeanne d’Arc and Cécile Leblanc, who now live in Victoriaville, Québec, but who were born and raised on a farm in Saint-Fortunat in the 1930s and 40s, have shared with me their knowledge of family history and the history of the town and parish of Saint-Fortunat, much of which I’ve incorporated in many of the blog posts and in the two articles that appear in the book. They have also helped to improve almost all the French text that I’ve written since meeting them for the first time in 2016. 

Anita, Jeanne d’Arc, Cécile and I are related to each other through the patriarch and matriarch of the Demers family that settled in Saint-Fortunat in 1859, Damase Demers and Euphrasie Lamontagne. Jeanne d’Arc and Cécile, who are sisters, are the great-grand-daughters of Damase and Euphrasie, I am a great-great-grandson, and Anita is a great-great-great-granddaughter. Although the family relationships among the four of us are rather distant, we consider ourselves family and have formed close friendships over the past five years as we’ve worked on family history projects, which have included visits with the sisters in Victoriaville and Saint-Fortunat.

Finally, even more distant cousins - and new friends, too - Suzanne Demers and Johanne Demers, provided invaluable help with the French texts in the Demers and Lamontagne articles. Suzanne and Johanne are very active members of the Association of Demers Families, Inc., based in Québec, and are members of its board. I thank them all, Anita, Jeanne d’Arc, Cécile, Suzanne and Johanne, for all of their help and encouragement in my ongoing quest to learn more about my family's Québec heritage.

Dennis Doiron, Gardiner, Maine, January 2022

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Saint-Fortunat, Quebec, in the Appalachian foothills in late October 2017. The church, with its white spire, is in the center of the photo. It was built beginning in 1872 and the first mass was held around Christmas 1873. This view of the village is from near the beginning of the 6th range road. The Demers family farm was on this road about two miles to the northwest (or to the right of the photo). (Photo: Dennis Doiron)

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The Demers Family of the 6th Range Road

In his old age, the first mayor of Saint Fortunat, Télesphore Demers, often told his grandchildren that his father was the first man to cut down trees by ax on the family lands on the chemin du sixième rang, the Sixth Range Road, in the Township of Wolfestown.  His farmland was on both sides of the road between two ranges, or rangs, of land; one lot on the fourth lot of the fifth range and other land on the fourth and fifth lots of the 6th range. Many of the fields cleared by Damase and other members of his large family along the road are fields to this day, though not a single descendant remains there now. 

Who was this family? And what became of them?

Damase (1811 - 1871) was part of a family that had settled in 1666 in one of the first seigneuries in Canada, the Seigneurie de Lauzon, not far from Québec City on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River. He was born in the parish of Saint-Nicholas and married Euphrasie Lamontagne (1817 -1890), also from the same parish, in 1838. Before his marriage, Damase had bought farmland in nearby Saint Gilles-de-Beaurivage upon which he and Euphrasie raised their young family for more than twenty years. But at the end of the 1850s, they were attracted to the idea of farming on the newly opened lands in the Eastern Townships. These lands must have appeared more promising than staying on the tired and overcrowded lands on the plains near the Saint Lawrence River. So in 1859, the entire family moved to the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, onto the virgin forest lands of  Wolfestown Township: Damase, Sr., 48 years old, Euphrasie, 42, and their children, Théodore, 20, Marie Euphrasie, 19 (with her husband Hilaire Aubin, 29), Damase, Junior, 17, Télesphore, 12, Louis-Ferdinand, ten, Louis Octave-Alexis, three, and Delvina, one.

During the first years, their new farm fell within the parish of Saint Julien-de-Wolfestown, but later became part of the parish and town of Saint Fortunat. In 1917 or so, Télesphore wrote a brief description of the isolation of the farm during the family’s early years in the township: 

My father sold his farm to settle in Saint-Julien-de-Wolfestown in the Eastern Townships. It was three miles in the forest, five miles from the nearest road, nine miles from the stores in Saint-Ferdinand-d'Halifax and six miles from the chapel in Saint-Julien. The mission priest came to Saint-Julien every two weeks to provide services to the settlers. 

Damase and Euphrasie inspired many other members of the Demers family to settle on the Sixth Range Road, thereby becoming the patriarch and matriarch of a large extended family, which included nephews Honoré and Évangéliste (sons of Germain Demers), and Hilaire and Barthélemy Aubin (step-sons of Germain). Almost all the members in the younger generation listed below farmed their own land and raised families on the 6th Range Road during the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. 

The children of Damase and Euphrasie Demers and their families included: 

• Théodore (1839 - 1938) married Philomène Lamontagne (a second cousin) in 1862. They had 13 children, including 6 at the time of the 1871 Canadian census in Wolfestown, the year the parish of Saint-Fortunat was formed.
• Marie Euphrasie (1840 - 1923) married her step-cousin Hilaire Aubin (1830 - 1903) in Saint-Gilles in 1856. They had 13 children, including six in 1871);
• Damase, Jr., (1842 - 1911) married Rebecca Lantagne in 1864, they had eight children, including 4 in 1871. 
• Télesphore (1847 - 1950) married Henriette Lamontagne (a second cousin) in 1869. They had 13 children, including one in 1871.
• Louis-Ferdinand (1849 - 1942) married Marie-Sabrina Paradis in Saint-Raphaël in 1870. They had nine children and seemed to have lived in Saint-Raphaël after their marriage).
• Louis Octave-Alexis (1856 - 1866) died in 1866 at nine years old. 
• Delvina (1858-1945) married Joseph Bourassa in 1888. They would have seven children.

 The nephews of Damase et Euphrasie and their families were: 

• Honoré (1842 - 1920) married Victoria Lamontagne in 1865. They had 11 children, including three in 1871.
• Évangeliste (1839 - 1892) married Adélaïde Boucher in 1866. They had 10 children, including two in 1871.
• Barthelémi Aubin (1832 - 1903), a step-son of Germain Demers, married Elisabeth Dupere in 1860. They had nine children, including four in 1871.

The members of the Demers family participated actively in the life of the growing community. Many were signatories to the petitions for creating the new parish in 1871 and for forming the new town in 1873, and later were active in parish, town and school affairs. When he was 25 in 1873, Télesphore was elected the first mayor of Saint-Fortunat, then later was elected the chairman of the school committee and became a justice of the peace in the 1880s. Other Demers and Aubins would become members of the town conseil, school committees, and the parish council. 

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This photo of the family of Télesphore Demers and Henriette Lamontagne, a daughter of Simon Lamontagne and Marie Madeleine Legendre, was taken around 1888. After the death of his father, Damase, in 1871, Télesphore inherited his farm. In addition to Henriette and Télesphore, the photo shows their surviving children, all born on the 6th Range Road. Sitting in the first row: Éva (born in 1879); Henriette (born on the chemin du Quince Lots (Fifteen Lots Road), in Saint-Ferdinand-d’Halifax in 1851); Phidelem (born 1887); Télesphore (born in Saint-Gilles-de-Beaurivage in 1847); Donat (born 1885); and Émile (born 1877). Standing in the second row: Lydia (born 1873); Andréana (born 1881); Odélie (born 1871); Virginie (born 1875); and Télesphore, Jr. (born 1869). Children not in photo: Marie Melonie (1884-89), twins Marie Claudia Melonie Regina (1889-90) and unnamed stillborn (1889), and Odias born in Sanford, Maine, in 1894. All the family would live permanently in the United States, except Télesphore, Jr., who returned to Québec, to La Doré in the Saguenay-Lake-Saint-Jean region, and then to Montreal.

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In 1871, Damase, Sr., died as a result of a plowing accident. Shortly afterwards, the exodus of most of the Demers from Saint-Fortunat toward the United States or elsewhere in Canada began. The first to leave was Louis-Ferdinand in 1875 when he emigrated to Jefferson, South Dakota. Next was Damase, Jr., and his wife, Rebecca, and their six children, who left for Minnesota in 1878 or 1879. In the early 1880s, Marie Euphrasie and her husband, Hilaire Aubin, and their six children and nephew Joseph, a blacksmith and oldest son of Théodore, moved to Lewiston, Maine, to work in the textile and saw mills. At about the same time, Évangéliste Demers and his wife and seven children also departed for Lewiston, as did Théodore and his wife Philomène and their children in 1884. At the end of the 1880s, Honoré Demers and his wife Victoria and their nine children, emigrated to Sanford, Maine, to work in the textile and saw mills there. After the marriage of Delvina, the youngest daughter of Damase and Euphrasie, to Joseph Bourassa in 1888, the couple moved to Crystal Falls, Vermont.  When Euphrasie, the matriarch of the family and widow of Damase, died in 1890, the family of their son Télesphore was the only Demers family still living on the 6th Range Road, but within several months of Euphrasie’s death, this family, too, moved to Sanford, Maine. 

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Théodore, the oldest son of Damase Demers and Euphrasie Lamontagne, married Philomène Lamontagne in 1862 in Saint-Ferdinand-d’Halifax. After their marriage, they farmed on the 6th Range Road, then emigrated to Lewiston, Maine, around 1883. They lived there the rest of their lives. Several of their children, though, returned to live permanently in Québec. Their oldest son, Joseph, became a prosperous business man in Auburn, a city near Lewiston, as the owner of the Auburn Carriage Company, established in 1905. In 1908, his uncle Télesphore Demers wrote in his travel notes about a visit to the business: 

At ten o’clock in the morning, we went to Joseph’s business. He had us visit the whole building - the forge, wood and paint shops, as well as the carriage store. It is a building of 85 by 80 feet on four floors.

Théodore, like two of his brothers, had a long life, dying at 98. Louis-Ferdinand lived to 92, and Télesphore to 102.

This photo was taken in Lewiston around 1890. Seated: Philomène, 47 in 1890 (1843-1913); Herménégilde, 11 (1879-1965); Théodore, 51 (1839-1938); Angélina, 9 (1881-1918); and Joseph, 25 ans (1865-1939). Standing: Napoléon, 17 (1873-1916); Pierre (called "Pétrus"), 12 ans (1878-1959); Marie Delvina, 21 (1869-1941), and Exélia, 15 (1875-1967).

Deceased: Marie Philomène (1863-1886), Octave Noël (1866-1868), Amanda (1871-1877), Arthur Adelard (1882-1882), Ephrem Eustache (1883-1884), et Marie Rose Émilina (1888-1888).

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Toward 1890, a reverse migration began. Honoré Demers and Victoria Lamontagne and their children returned to Québec Province (to Saint-Samuel-de-Dorset, today Lac-Drolet) in the early 1890s. A little later, their oldest son, Télesphore, purchased and operated for a long period of time before his death a sawmill that is today the Moulin des Pionniers de La Doré, a living museum in La Doré, a small village north of Lake Saint John in northern Québec. 

Also in the early 1890s, the eldest daughter of Damase and Euphrasie, Marie Euphrasie, returned to Saint-Fortunat with her husband, Hilaire Aubin. They lived there until his death in 1903 (he is buried beneath a large monument in the old cemetery next to his mother-in-law). After his death, Euphrasie lived with her daughter Délienne in Berlin, New Hampshire. Delvina, the younger sister of Marie Euphrasie, returned to Saint-Fortunat in 1891 and raised her family with her husband, Joseph Bourassa, on a farm on the 7th Range Road south of the village. Both lived in Saint-Fortunat until their deaths in the 1940s and are buried next to Delvina’s mother in the old cemetery. In short, after the migrations to and from Saint-Fortunat, very few descendants of Damase and Euphrasie, notably those of Angela Bourassa and Elzéar Leblanc, continued to live in Saint-Fortunat until the middle of the 20th century. 

The descendants of all the members of the extended Demers family that once lived on the 6th Range Road, like so many families of the first settlers in Wolfestown Township, now live in other regions of Québec or elsewhere in Canada and the United States, particularly in New England. Nevertheless, the Demers left behind in Saint-Fortunat a legacy in the establishment of the parish and town government and in the many farm fields that are cleared to this day on the northwestern section of the 6th Range Road.

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