Ondits Saurette & Oligny family history
SAURETTE & OLIGNY · ORIENTATION

France to the Saint Lawrence to New England, drawn once

Every page on this site names a place — a parish in the Corrèze, a fort on Lake Champlain, a port of entry in Vermont — and until now nothing showed where any of them sit relative to each other. This is the whole route on one figure, with each arrow dated by what the record actually holds and drawn dashed where it holds nothing.

Themes2 sources, each graded

Two panels, two scales

The left panel is France, at a scale where the whole country fits: the six places this site can name as an origin, with the people who came from each and the grade the site gives that origin. The right panel is the corridor — the Saint Lawrence from Québec to Montréal, the Richelieu joining it from the south out of Lake Champlain, and the lake reaching south into Vermont, with the Connecticut valley beyond — at nearly twice the scale. It is drawn as one panel rather than two because it is one geography: Montréal to Holyoke is about three hundred and fifty kilometres, most of it along water, and both families used it.

The thing the figure shows that the prose never quite could is where the Oligny line first touches paper in North America. Jean-Baptiste Oligny signed his marriage contract on 18 February 1759 at Fort Saint-Frédéric — a French fort on the shore of Lake Champlain, at what is now Crown Point, New York. That is not on the Saint Lawrence at all. It is a third of the way down the same corridor his great-great-grandson's family would take to Vermont in 1891, on the road the record would take another hundred and thirty-two years to use again.

The route: France to the Saint Lawrence to New England Two map panels. Left, France, with the documented origins of the two immigrant men and six of the eight shared ancestresses: Saint-Mathurin-Léobazel in the Corrèze, Le Mans, La Rochelle, Marans, Paris and Gonesse. Right, the corridor from Québec down the Saint Lawrence and the Richelieu to Lake Champlain, Vermont and the Connecticut valley at Holyoke, with Fort Saint-Frédéric on the lake, the 1891 and 1907 crossings, and the later moves to Lowell and New York. Arrows are dashed where no document records the journey itself. I · WHERE THEY CAME FROM II · THE CORRIDOR Paris Françoise Duval Catherine Fourrier Gonesse Élisabeth Gobinet Le Mans Jacques Saurette La Rochelle Marguerite Doucinet Marguerite Ardion Marans Mathurine Desbordes St-Mathurin-Léobazel Jean Oligny La Manche Golfe de Gascogne FRANCE Loire Seine Québec Trois-Rivières Montréal Chambly · m. 1741 St-Jean-Baptiste-de-Rouville St-Rémi Fort Saint-Frédéric Swanton St. Albans Holyoke Chicopee Lowell New York Saint-Laurent Lake Champlain Connecticut Hudson Richelieu CANADAUNITED STATES NEW FRANCE NEW ENGLAND the Atlantic · no crossing documented for anyone on this map dated by first acts: the eight, 1645–1672 · Saurette 1741 · Oligny 1759 1891 · St. Albans both families, to Holyoke 8 Dec 1907 · Swanton contract 18 Feb 1759 by 1921 27 Apr 1922 200 km 100 km origin graded Proven origin graded Probable a documented crossing or move no document for the journey itself — dated by the first act on the far side two panels, two scales · coastlines, rivers and positions approximate · Mechin and Lecoutre have no documented origin and are not placed
Left, the six documented origins; each name carries its grade as a dot and links to its page. Right, the corridor, with the two documented crossings solid and everything before them dashed. Proven · Probable · coastlines, rivers and positions approximate · the parishes between Montréal and Chambly are on the parish map.

What the dashes mean

No one on this map has a documented crossing of the Atlantic. Not Jacques Saurette, whose first act on this side is his marriage at Chambly on 7 January 1741; not Jean-Baptiste Oligny, whose first is the 1759 contract; not any of the six women placed in France, whose arrival years come from a published compilation and whose first sighted acts are marriages at Québec, Trois-Rivières and Montréal between 1645 and 1672. The site says of the two men, on their own line pages, that neither man's actual arrival is documented, and it is true of everyone here. So the Atlantic arrow is one dashed line for all of them, and it is dated by the far side rather than by any ship.

The two solid crossings are the two the record holds outright. Philorum Oligny, Marie-Azilda Bessette and their two-year-old son entered at St. Albans, Vermont, on or about 15 September 1891, on the Central Vermont Railroad — the son's own Declaration of Intention, sworn in 1914, says so. Alméric Saurette's family entered at Swanton, Vermont, on 8 December 1907, on the same railroad, and the passenger manifest survives. Two families, sixteen years apart, through two ports a dozen kilometres apart, to the same mill town. The later moves are solid for the same reason: Joseph was of Lowell by the spring of 1921 on the divorce decree itself, and Marie-Anna's second marriage is on a New York licence file dated 27 April 1922.

Two of the eight ancestresses are not on the left panel at all. Jeanne Mechin's origin in France is not recorded anywhere this project has found, and Marie-Louise Lecoutre arrived at seventeen with no parish, parents or province on any document; her page says that is itself the finding. Leaving them off is the honest reading. A dot placed for either of them would be a guess wearing a grade.

Marriage act, 7 Jan 1741, Chambly (St-Joseph), sighted — naming the diocese of Le Mans and a parish the act leaves uncertain · marriage contract, 18 Feb 1759, Fort Saint-Frédéric · marriage act, 16 Nov 1671, Notre-Dame de Québec, sighted, for Duval's Paris parish · marriage contract, notary Bénigne Basset, 9 Sep 1658, for Gobinet's Gonesse · Bédard, Les protestants en Nouvelle-France, sighted, and the 1663 marriage act, for the two La Rochelle women · Gagné, King's Daughters and Founding Mothers and Before the King's Daughters, compiled, for Fourrier's Saint-Sulpice, Desbordes' Marans and every arrival year · Register 03 §3.19, Common Ancestors §5 · graded per name, as the dots show: Proven for Duval, Gobinet, Doucinet and Ardion; Probable for Fourrier, Desbordes, Jacques Saurette and Jean Oligny, each resting on a compilation or on a parish the act does not settle

Declaration of Intention no. 4733, 11 Mar 1914, for the St. Albans entry of September 1891 · passenger manifest, Port of Swanton, 8 Dec 1907 · divorce decree, Hampden Superior Court docket 1673, 1921, styling Joseph of Lowell · New York City Clerk marriage licence file no. 10891, 27 Apr 1922 · Register 01 §3.30f · graded Proven for every solid arrow; no route is graded — the lines join documented places and do not claim the road between them

Two hundred and fifty years, one corridor. The families came down the Saint Lawrence in the seventeenth century, settled on its south shore for two hundred years, and left by the same valley — south, past Fort Saint-Frédéric, to a mill town in Massachusetts where a Saurette and an Oligny would marry without knowing they were cousins eight times over.