Alméric Saurette

A baptismal name nobody used

Alméric was born 13 April 1864 and baptized the next day at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, son of Guillaume Saurette Jr. and Elmire Jourdain. His actual baptismal name was Josué-Armorique — “Alméric” was a call-name he carried his entire life instead, the kind of substitution that makes census records difficult and confirms, once you know to look for it, why the 1881 Canadian census lists a child in his father's household as “Ulderic”: the same age, the same family, the enumerator's ear catching a rough echo of “Armorique” rather than the name the family actually used.

Baptismal record and 1881 Census of Canada · graded Proven

Off the farm, one generation at a time

Alméric was born to a cultivateur's household, but his own working life moved steadily away from it: a clerk (commis) by 1890, a merchant by 1922, recorded as a clerk again at his death. One generation removed from farming, in a family that had farmed the same stretch of the Richelieu valley for a hundred and fifty years.

Baptismal, marriage, immigration, and death records, 1864–1927 · graded Proven

A cousin who stayed, and rose inside the Church instead

Alméric's first cousin, Joseph-Adolphe Saurette — son of his father's brother Jean-Baptiste Saurette and Azilda Vincelette — took a very different route out of the same Rouville farm country. In August 1893 he entered the Congrégation de Sainte-Croix and took the name Frère Philippe, eventually serving as superior of the Scholasticat Saint-Joseph, the order's own formation house for its teaching brothers. He spent his final years at the Oratoire Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal in Montréal, promoting the cult of Saint Joseph and advocating for the beatification cause of Frère André — canonized in 2010, decades after Joseph-Adolphe's own death in 1949 at seventy-four. Two cousins, two directions out of the same parish: one to the mills of Chicopee, the other into the formation houses of the Church his whole family had been baptized into for two hundred years.

Mortuary card, Frère Philippe (Joseph-Adolphe Saurette), Congrégation de Sainte-Croix, d. 9 Sep 1949 · graded Proven

Marriage, and a small correction to the date

Alméric married Alida Morier on 13 September 1887 at St-Damase (St-Hyacinthe), daughter of Isaac Morier, cultivateur, and Marie-Azilda Gaboury. The marriage act itself gives the 13th; an earlier account of this family circulated the date as September 3rd, likely a simple transposition. Seven children followed, all born at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville between 1888 and 1900 — none of them American-born, unlike the Oligny family Marie-Anna would marry into. The entire family crossed into the United States together, with one exception: the eldest daughter, who had already married in St-Jean-Baptiste and stayed behind. Their second child, Joseph-Albéric, carries a third form of his father's own name — Josué-Armorique to Alméric to Albéric, the family's naming habits drifting a little further from the record each generation.

Marriage act, 13 Sep 1887, St-Damase (St-Hyacinthe) · graded Proven

The half of this marriage nobody was working on

Alida is half of Marie-Anna’s ancestry and for a long time this project treated her as a name on her husband’s act. That was a mistake with consequences, because three of the eight shared ancestresses reach the 1912 bride through her mother rather than her father. Marguerite Doucinet comes down through the Moriers; Mathurine Desbordes through four generations of Gabourys; Marguerite Ardion through the Moriers again. The Saurette surname carries the other half. Alida carries this one.

The line behind her is now on parish acts from 1790 to 1861, four generations of it. Her father Isaac Morier was the son of Désiré Morier, baptized at Beloeil on 9 May 1790, the day after he was born; Désiré was the son of Joseph Morier and Marie-Charlotte Robert dit Lafontaine of St-Joseph de Chambly.

Why one man’s parents took four acts to find

Reaching Désiré’s parents was unreasonably hard, and the reason is worth setting out because it is a trap rather than a gap.

He married three times. Marie-Geneviève Gaucher in March 1813, and that marriage lasted twenty-one years. Sophie Degré in July 1834, and that one can now be measured exactly: she died on 23 April 1835, nine months and one day after the wedding, and was buried two days later. Zoé Blanchard in October 1835 — five months and ten days after he buried Sophie — and Isaac was born to them in September 1838.

Her burial act was located in September 2026, and it is the only document this project holds that says anything about her at all. She was «Sophie Dégré dite Prieur… décédée avant-hier, épouse de Désiré Morier, cultivateur», and about twenty-seven years old — which is the only indication of her age anywhere, and puts her birth around 1808. Two men were present, Charles Boin and François Tétro, and neither could sign. She was buried at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, her husband’s parish, not at Beloeil where she had married nine months before.

The act does not say what she died of, and this page is not going to supply it. A marriage that lasts nine months and a woman dead at twenty-seven will suggest an answer to anyone who has read the rest of this site, where childbirth takes two of Guillaume Saurette Sr.’s wives inside twenty-six months. The act is silent, and no child of Sophie Degré is recorded anywhere in this project. A baptism at that parish in April 1835 would settle it. Until one is found, the shape of the thing is not evidence of it.

Two of those three acts enter him as veuf — a widower — and a widower’s marriage act names the dead wife where a living man’s names his parents. So the 1834 and 1835 acts each put a wife exactly where a parentage should be, and neither can be climbed. Three acts were read on this man before anyone reached the fourth: his first marriage, in 1813, where he is fils majeur and the parents are finally stated.

That is a general lesson and this project has written it down as one: when an act names a deceased spouse instead of parents, it is not a failed source. It is a pointer to an earlier marriage. The weakness is invisible until you have two of them side by side.

Baptismal act, Désiré Morier, 9 May 1790, Beloeil (St-Mathieu) · marriage acts, Désiré Morier × Marie-Geneviève Gaucher, 1 March 1813, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville · × Sophie Degré, 22 July 1834, Beloeil · × Zoé Blanchard, 5 October 1835, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville · burial act, Sophie Dégré dite Prieur, died 23 April, buried 25 April 1835, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville — all sighted · Register 03 §3.67, §3.67(iii-bis) · graded Proven as to the marriages, the death, the burial and the intervals; her age, and so her birth year, rests on a burial-act recital and is graded Probable — ages given at burial are approximate. No cause of death is stated on the act and none is claimed here.

1861: the bride signed, and the three men did not

Isaac Morier married Marie-Ezilda Gaboury at the Cathedral of St-Hyacinthe on 27 December 1861, with all three banns dispensed by the Bishop. Both fathers stood as witnesses — Désiré Morier and Narcisse Gaboury.

The bride signed her own name. Her husband could not, and neither could either father. Three men in that church and one woman, and the only hand on the act is hers.

He could not sign eleven months later either. When his own daughter Alida was baptized at St-Damase in November 1862, the act closes «qui ont déclaré ne savoir signer, ainsi que le père» — the godparents could not sign, and neither could the father. Two occasions, two parishes, thirteen months apart, and on both of them the record says the same thing.

It makes a small scene of the baptism above, too: when Alméric and Alida’s eldest was christened in 1888, both godparents were Isaac and Marie-Ezilda, and both of them signed. Somewhere in those twenty-six years Isaac Morier learned to write, or the register began recording him differently. Which of the two is not established, and this page does not choose — two entries of ne savoir signer narrow the window without settling what closed it.

And nothing in the 1862 act says anything about his wife. Marie-Ezilda is not in its signing clause at all, but a mother is routinely absent from her own child’s baptism, and the 1861 act records her signing her name in a church where three men could not. Her absence from that clause is a fact about the custom, not about her hand.

Alida had no birth date on this site until September 2026

The woman who carries half of Marie-Anna’s ancestry had a death year here and nothing else. Two sources disagreed by a year and neither was an act: a family sheet said 24 November 1862, her headstone at Notre-Dame Cemetery in South Hadley says 1863, and her declaration of intention gave only «St. Damas, Canada». Her baptism was named as the thing that would decide it, and in September 2026 it was found.

She was born on 24 November 1862 and baptized the next day at St-Damase — «Marie-Justine-Alida, née le jour précédent, du légitime mariage d’Isaac Morières cultivateur et d’Exilda Gaboury». The sheet was right to the day; the stone is wrong by a year, which is the ordinary drift between a record made at the time and an engraving made a lifetime later.

And the act does something no compiled source could: it shows who was holding her. Both godparents were her own grandparents, one from each side — Justine Ayet dit Malo, her mother’s mother, then forty-one, and Désiré Morier, her father’s father, then seventy-two and eleven years from his own grave. The child was baptized Marie-Justine-Alida, and the Justine in the middle of it was standing at the font.

Worth saying plainly, because it is easy to read backwards: this is a child named for a living woman who was holding her, not a dead one’s name being passed down. Justine Ayet dit Malo was in the room and lived another forty-three years. The mechanism looks like the one Gideon Rock’s own name came by — his father was christened for the godfather at his font, Gédéon Magnon. Two children a generation apart, each given the name of whoever stood holding them. But the parallel is not as clean as this page once said. Alida’s godmother was her grandmother, on the act; Gideon’s godfather this site once called a stranger to the family, and that was an inference, not a reading — a Gédéon Thouin, very probably Octave’s own infant brother, had been buried at Mascouche in 1825, so the name was in that house before Magnon stood at the font. Why it was given in 1852, no act says.

The last detail is a spelling. The act writes the surname Morières three times — in the margin, for the father, and for the godfather. The family is Morier on the acts of 1790, 1834, 1835 and 1887, and Moriez throughout Désiré’s own marriage in 1813. Three clerical forms across seventy-two years in three parishes, none of them a different family, and the practical consequence is the one this site keeps running into: a search for one form does not return the others.

Baptismal act B.97, Marie-Justine-Alida Morières, born 24 November and baptized 25 November 1862, St-Damase, sighted — names both parents, both godparents and their inability to sign · marriage act, Isaac Morier × Marie-Ezilda Gaboury, 27 December 1861, St-Hyacinthe, sighted · marriage act, Désiré Moriez × Marie-Geneviève Gaucher, 1 March 1813, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, sighted — for the Moriez form · family group sheet and headstone inscription, both compiled, for the 1862 ÷ 1863 conflict · Register 03 §3.8, §3.100 · graded Proven as to the birth, the baptism, the godparents and the spellings; the headstone’s 1863 is Disproven

One more thread runs out of that family and into this one. When Marie-Anna was baptized in 1890, her godfather was Narcisse Gaboury — her mother’s grandfather, the same man who had stood as a witness at Isaac and Marie-Ezilda’s wedding twenty-nine years earlier.

Marriage act, Isaac Morier × Marie-Ezilda Gaboury, 27 December 1861, Cathédrale de St-Hyacinthe, 75e feuillet, sighted — both fathers named as witnesses, and the signature clause read directly · marriage act, Narcisse Gaboury × Justine Ayet dit Malo, 21 February 1843, St-Damase, sighted · baptismal act, Marie-Anna Saurette, 1 October 1890, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, sighted · Register 03 §3.67 · graded Proven as to the marriage, the witnesses, who signed and who did not, and the godfather. The 1861 act renders the bride’s mother “Bugel dite Malo”; her own marriage act of 1843 reads Ayet dit Malo, and that is the governing form.

Their first child, and four signatures

Alméric and Alida’s eldest was born on 24 June 1888 and baptized two days later at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville: Marie Azilda Romilda Saurette. A compiled family sheet had her as Donalda; the act says Romilda, and the act governs.

Both godparents were the child’s own maternal grandparents — Isaac Morier and Marie-Azilda Gaboury, whose names the baby carries between them — and both signed the register. That is worth setting beside Marie-Anna’s own baptism two years later, where the generation standing over the font could not.

Baptismal act, Marie Azilda Romilda Saurette, 26 June 1888, St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville, sighted · Register 03 §3.93 · graded Proven as to the birth, the baptism, the forenames, the godparents and their signatures

December 1907, at the Vermont border

The family crossed into the United States at the port of Swanton, Vermont, on 8 December 1907, traveling by the Central Vermont Railroad, and settled in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The manifest names Alméric's brother Philippe Saurette, still in St-Jean-Baptiste, as the relative left behind. Their daughter Marie-Anna crossed with them that December at seventeen — not around 1908, as an earlier account of this family had it, but on this specific date, with the rest of the family.

Manifest, Port of Swanton, VT, 8 Dec 1907 · graded Proven

A death certificate, badly heard

Alméric filed his Declaration of Intention for naturalization on 16 January 1922, at the Hampden County Superior Court — whether he completed the process before he died is not settled from the record in hand. He died 15 January 1927 at Willimansett, part of Chicopee, at sixty-two years, nine months, and two days old — the precise figure on his death record correcting a rounder “63” recorded elsewhere. The certificate itself is a small study in how an informant's memory slips under stress: it renders him “Almeric Laurette,” his wife “Florence Maurier,” and his mother “Azilda Gaubard” — that last name is not his mother's at all, but his mother-in-law's, Marie-Azilda Gaboury, transposed into the wrong slot by whoever was answering the clerk's questions that day.

Death certificate and Declaration of Intention #18815 · graded Proven as to the date, age, and place of death; the naturalization's completion is Unproven

He stood witness at four of his daughters' weddings

The Holyoke parish register puts Alméric's name in the witness column four times in twelve years: Marie-Anna's in 1912, Aurore's to Onil Leduc in 1919, Aline's to Ernest Turgeon in 1920, and Evelyn's to Alcide Chapdelaine in 1924. It is a small thing and an unusually legible one — four daughters married out of one household in a mill city, and the same man signed for each of them. The 1919 and 1920 entries also supply two dates this project did not hold: Aurore was baptized at St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville in November 1895, Aline on 29 December 1896.

Published parish répertoire, Notre-Dame du Perpétuel-Secours, Holyoke, marriages 1890–1991, compiled · Register 03 §3.79 · Register 01 §3.49(i) · graded Probable throughout — a published index of the register rather than the register itself

Alméric was buried in the Saurette family plot at Notre-Dame Cemetery, South Hadley. Alida outlived him, recorded as a widow in Chicopee by 1930, and died there 27 February 1933. Their daughter Marie-Anna, the third of seven children, married into the Oligny family the same decade the Saurette household made its own crossing into Massachusetts.