Julien Oligny

Birth, and a farming life

Julien was born 15 May 1824 and baptized the next day at St-Constant, son of Isaac Oligny and Clotilde Beauvais dit St-Gemme. His godfather was Ignace Migou, his mother's uncle; his godmother, Marguerite Beauvais, his mother's sister — a woman who matters more to this page than a godparent usually does, as the section on his second marriage explains. He farmed at St-Rémi for most of his adult life, entered as cultivateur on the acts that give him an occupation at all — his own marriage in 1848, and the 1871 census that finds him at forty-seven with a full household around him.

This page used to say every act that names his occupation, and that was one act too many in one direction and one unread word in the other. In February 1870, at the baptism of his son Wilbrode in the same parish, the clerk entered him as journalier — a labourer paid by the day, not a man described by land. Register 02 logs the discrepancy and does not resolve it, and no document says why the two differ, so this page does not offer a reason. Then there is the 1868 baptism of his son Philorum, where the occupation word is on the page and cannot be read. Its head is illegible even at full resolution; its tail reads «-ant», and cultivateur ends «-eur». Re-read from the full frame, the word runs over the end of the line rather than being cut off, and the tail holds: whatever the act gives him, it is not cultivateur. No occupation is entered from it here, and a better scan of the frame would settle it. See Corrections.

Baptismal act, 16 May 1824, St-Constant (Laprairie) · marriage act, Julien Oligny × Félicité Roy, 6 March 1848, St-Rémi, sighted · 1871 Census of Canada, St-Rémi, family 150/162 · baptismal act, Wilbrode Oligny, 8 February 1870, St-Rémi, sighted, which enters him as journalier · baptismal act, Philorum Oligny, 1 April 1868, Notre-Dame de Montréal, sighted, whose occupation word is unread · Register 02 §3.76, source rows S347, S31 and S308 · Register 01, source row S29 · graded Proven as to the baptism, and as to cultivateur on the 1848 act and the 1871 census; the 1870 journalier entry is Proven as a reading and the two are not reconciled; the 1868 occupation is Unproven and stays unread

The signature, and the man who signed before him

Julien married Félicité Roy dit Lapensée on 6 March 1848 at St-Rémi, and signed the act himself. The act names four witnesses — two friends of the groom, two of the bride — and records that they and the bride could not sign. No Oligny witnessed the wedding at all. That is worth saying exactly, because this page used to call those four “every other witness,” which made the room sound like a family gathering in which Julien alone could write. It was four friends and a bride, and his family was not in the clause.

This page also used to call Julien the earliest documented literate Oligny on this line. He was not, and the correction runs four years earlier and a generation up. At his sister Clothilde's wedding on 16 April 1844, also at St-Rémi, four Olignys signed: Clothilde, her father Isaac, Julien himself, and a fourth hand the act does not identify. Julien's own earliest surviving signature is therefore 1844, not 1848 — and his father's is the same page. See Corrections.

Marriage act, 6 Mar 1848, St-Rémi, sighted · marriage act, Clothilde Oligny × Adolphe Dugas, 16 April 1844, St-Rémi, sighted · Register 02 §3.29 · graded Proven

A widower twice, thirteen days apart the second time

Félicité died sometime between 1871 and 1881 — the record doesn't pin the year more closely than that, despite a full decade's search across St-Rémi's registers turning up a great deal else about this family instead. Julien remarried on 24 December 1881, to Ernestine Beaudin, with his own son Adolphe standing as a witness at the wedding. Ernestine died thirteen days later, on 6 January 1882, and was buried some twenty miles from St-Rémi at St-Romain, Huntingdon County. She was about twenty-six. Julien was in his late fifties. Whether he married a third time isn't established by anything this site currently holds.

There's a second thread worth naming here, and it's better documented than it once looked: Julien's own daughter, Hazilda Oligny, had married a Théophile Beaudin eleven years earlier, on 17 January 1870. Father and daughter married into the same family, a decade apart — and the second marriage wasn't a coincidence of surname. Both acts carry a consanguinity dispensation, and it is the same one: second to third degree, in 1870 and again in 1881. Ernestine Beaudin was already Julien's blood kin before the wedding, and Théophile was already Hazilda's.

For years this page could say that and not say how. It can now, and the answer is one woman. Marguerite Beauvais was Julien's mother Clotilde's sister: her own marriage act, St-Constant, 10 February 1823, names her fille mineure de feu Charles Beauvais et de Rose Bétourné, the same parents as Clotilde's. She married Guillaume Baudin that day. She stood godmother at Julien's baptism the following year. Her son Guillaume married Julienne Gagné at St-Rémi in 1848, and Ernestine was their daughter. Her son Théophile is the man Hazilda married. So Julien and Ernestine were first cousins once removed, and so were Hazilda and Théophile. Counted the way the Church counted, one party stood two generations below Charles and Rose and the other three: second to third degree, which is exactly what the bishop wrote, twice, eleven years apart.

The Beaudins were Julien's cousins, and they married back into his household twice. His aunt held him at the font, and he married her granddaughter. One more instance of the shrinking marriage pool that runs through both lines, and now the best explained of them.

Marriage act, Julien Oligny × Ernestine Beaudin, 24 Dec 1881, St-Rémi, consanguinity dispensation 2nd–3rd degree, sighted · marriage act, Théophile Beaudin × Marie-Hazilda Oligny, 17 Jan 1870, St-Rémi, the same dispensation, sighted · marriage act, Guillaume Baudin × Marguerite Beauvais, 10 Feb 1823, St-Constant, sighted · marriage act, Guillaume Beaudin × Julienne Gagné, 18 Jan 1848, St-Rémi, naming his mother Marguerite St-Gemme dite Beauvais, sighted · baptism of Clotilde Beauvais, 1804, and of Julien Oligny, 1824, sighted · the cousin degree computed from these acts · Register 02 §3.81 · graded Proven, every rung a sighted act; two joints are matches of both spouses’ names across acts rather than statements, and the bishop’s stated degree independently fits them

A Baudin had married into Félicité Roy's family too, sixty years before. On 19 November 1821 at St-Constant, Marie Roy, Félicité's aunt — a sister of her father Joseph, both children of Joseph-François Roy and Susanne Boire — married Julien Baudin, son of Toussaint Baudin and Apolline Payan. Whether this Baudin family is the same one Marguerite Beauvais married into two years later is not known: the surname and the parish are shared, and nothing else is. (Worth keeping straight: Félicité had a sister named Marie as well, who married Joseph Bourel at St-Rémi in 1855 — niece named for aunt. Two Marie Roys, a generation apart.)

Marriage act, Julien Baudin × Marie Roy, 19 Nov 1821, St-Constant, sighted, naming her parents Joseph-François Roy and Susanne Boir · marriage act, Joseph Roy × Storophile Dupuy, 31 July 1826, St-Constant, naming the same parents, sighted · marriage act, Joseph Bourel × Marie Roy, 16 Oct 1855, St-Rémi, sighted · Register 02 §3.82, §3.83 · graded Proven as to the marriage and to Marie Roy being Félicité's aunt; any kinship between Julien Baudin and Marguerite Beauvais's Beaudins Unproven

A fuller household than this page once held

For years this page named only Adolphe and Philorum among Julien and Félicité's children. A decade-long search through St-Rémi's registers for Félicité's own death, while never finding it, filled in most of the rest of the family instead. A daughter, Delphine, previously unknown to this project entirely, died at six years old on 2 March 1860, at a hospice in Montréal — the circumstances aren't established by the act itself. Two more sons, Théophile (married Claire Lefebvre, seven children) and Samuel (married Mélina Lacombe, five children), are Probable rather than Proven as Julien and Félicité's own — the strongest evidence is a baptismal act naming Théophile outright as "oncle de l'enfant" at one of Samuel's own children's christenings, alongside the same kind of real-kinship godparent pattern already documented elsewhere in this family. A daughter, Hédwige, married Wilbrode Leroux on 1 February 1870, two weeks after her sister Hazilda's own wedding, and signed her name.

And in the 1871 census, the household itself finally comes into view directly rather than through later self-report: a four-year-old entered as Fillerome on the page is Philorum himself, the earliest contemporary record of him that exists anywhere in this project. Five more children appear in the same household, none previously on any family sheet — Jean, Zoïde, Joseph Napoléon, Siméon, and an infant Wilbrod — graded Probable pending each one's own baptismal act. (Worth keeping straight: this Théophile is Théophile Oligny, Julien's probable son — not Hazilda's husband, Théophile Beaudin, above. Two different men, same given name, one generation apart.)

Burial act, Delphine Oligny, 3 Mar 1860, Notre-Dame-de-Montréal · baptismal and marriage acts for Théophile, Samuel, and their children, St-Rémi, 1870–1881 · marriage act, Hédwige Oligny × Wilbrode Leroux, 1 Feb 1870 · 1871 Census of Canada household · graded Proven as to Delphine and Hédwige; Probable as to Théophile, Samuel, and the five children first named in the 1871 census

Two of his sons, and only one of them could write

Julien’s own sons split the same way his father’s generation had, and nine acts from St-Rémi now say so. Théophile Oligny could not sign his name — four separate acts record it of him by name, at his children’s weddings between 1883 and 1900. His brother Adolphe signed his own, twice.

And it stops with Théophile. Every one of his children signs. One of them, Aimé, signed at his own wedding while his father could not, and signed again in 1912 as the father of a bride himself. Two brothers, one household behind them, and the line between writing and not writing runs between them rather than across the generations.

A second thing these acts closed. The marriage act of Hédwige Oligny had a second half nobody had read, and it names Solime Laforce, oncle et tuteur de l’épouse — so a tutorship was raised for the orphaned children of Hedwige Laforce, and the guardian has a name. Adolphe Oligny signed that act too.

Nine marriage and burial acts, St-Rémi, 1883–1915, sighted — four naming Théophile among those who declared they did not know how to sign, two carrying Adolphe’s own signature · Register 02 §3.77 · graded Proven as to who signed and who did not, and as to the tutorship and its holder. The Saurette line shows a similar shape in the same decades; the two rest on separate evidence and neither is offered in support of the other.

Julien died around 24 October 1891 and was buried two days later at St-Rémi. His son Philorum carries the line forward — into a household that, by the time Philorum was a teenager, had already been rebuilt once.