Ancestry.ca

I've been doing research on Ancestry.ca for the past couple of weeks.  It is at once an exhilarating and a frustrating experience.  Exhilarating because I am finding where in France my family comes from.  Granted, I found my father's family 30 years ago and have been in contact with them in the Champagne-Ardennes department. And this exercise is frustrating because although I can find so much information on my first French ancestors, I can find very little on my grandparents and great grandparents...
I have found that most of our ancestors from my paternal grandmother's side and from my maternal grandmother's side are from lower Normandy at Saint-Aubin de Tourouvre.  We are GAGNON descendants in more than one branch of our family.

The three Gagnon brothers left Normandy between 1634 - 1640 to arrive in Nouvelle France not that long after the first immigrants from France.  They established a store in Québec city and later took up tracts of land on the Beaupré shore, at Château-Richer.

A commemorative plaque/painting is located at the spot where the store used to be in Québec city. Had I known, I would have told my sister to check it out when she was there in November...

 

I know that we are descended from Jean, the middle brother but suspect that we are also descended from another of the three.  You see, tens of thousands of people are descended from these three brothers including  Céline Dion, Hilary Clinton, Madonna and the wife of the Prince of Wales.

I think that my triplet plans for 2015 are going to change because of this discovery.  The wheels are turning and along with the treasures discussed by Ina Caro in her book: Paris to the Past, we might be going to the north of France instead of the Pyrénées this fall. Darmannes is where my French family resides and Giverny is the site of Monet's house that boasts huge gardens where many of his paintings were executed. In Tourouvre is a museum dedicated to all the Canadians descended from the Percheron immigrants...

I'm so grateful for the Internet which allows me to learn about anything from soup to nuts, but in this case, to something a little closer to my heart.

Thanks for coming by.

Stella