Introductory Note:
As mentioned in the previous blog post, The Demers Family on the 6th Range Road, the small town of Saint-Fortunat, Québec, celebrated the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the parish of Saint-Fortunat-de-Wolfestown in 2021. One of the events marking the anniversary was the publication of a commemorative book, St-Fortunat 1871-2021: 150 ans d’histoire à se raconter (June 2021). I was invited by Charles Bédard, a member of the Comité des fêtes du 150e, to write articles on the Demers and Lamontagne families for the section devoted to the town's pioneer families. As might be expected, the book was published entirely in French, so the previous post and this one provide for the first time English translations for the articles I wrote.
For the blog article on the Lamontagne family, I’ve included some additional information and images not included in the book, particularly on the boundary of the parish of Saint-Ferdinand-d'Halifax in 1852, the genealogy of my great-great grandmother Marie Madeleine Legendre’s family, the 1886 land contract between Simon Lamontagne and his daughter Julie and her husband Narcisse Girard, and on the army service of Donat Girard in France during WWI.
I thank Charles Bédard once more for giving me the chance to contribute to the commemorative book and, thus, to be a part of the 150th anniversary of the parish.
Dennis Doiron, Gardiner, Maine, February 2022.
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This tin-type photograph was probably taken about 1868 when Simon was 50 years old and living on the 6th Range Road, the chemin du 6e rang, in the Township of Wolfestown. According to family oral history, Simon was a short-man known for his hunting skills, someone who could move through the forest as silently as an Indian.
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The Family of Simon Lamontagne and Marie Madeleine Legendre
Shortly after the Gosford Road was built in 1843 from St-Gilles-de-Beaurivage into the Eastern Townships of Québec Province, Simon Lamontagne, 25, made a decision that altered the course of his life and that of his family. Likely a day laborer in the parish of Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly in the old Seigneurie de Lotbinière on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, Simon decided to settle on newly opened land in the Appalachian foothills of the Township of Wolfestown.
Simon belonged to a family whose first Canadian ancestor, his third great-grandfather François Baquet dit Lamontagne, arrived in Canada in 1666 as a soldier in the famed Carignan-Salières Regiment, which had been sent to protect the colony against the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or the Six Nations. After his service, François first settled on Ile-d’Orléan and then permanently across the Saint Lawrence River in St-Michel-de-Bellechasse. Through several generations, many of François’ descendants spread out along the south shore of the river, from Saint-Michel to Saint-Antoine, and elsewhere in Canada.
In 1842, Simon, the son of Michel Lamontagne and Magdeleine Marion, married Marie Madeleine Legendre in Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly. Marie was born in 1824 in the neighboring parish of Sainte-Croix-de-Lotbinière, the daughter of Charles Legendre and Marie Magdeleine Bergeron. By the time of Marie’s birth, four generations of Legendres had lived in Sainte-Croix, beginning with her great-great-grandfather Jean Baptiste Legendre who was born in Le Ferré, Brittany, France, in 1699 and arrived in Québec sometime before his first marriage in Saint-Augustine-Desmaures in 1720.
After their first child, Philomène, was born in Saint-Antoine in 1843, the couple prepared for the move to Wolfestown, where they settled sometime before their second child, Victoria, was baptized in the parish of Saint-Ferdinand-d’Halifax in 1846. They settled on lot three, range three, which was one of the 15 lots in Wolfestown that had been ceded to the parish of Saint-Ferdinand. The road they lived on is still called today the chemin de Quinze lots, or Fifteen Lots Road.