Isaie-Gedeon Marotte: 1819-1889

 

Isaie-Gedeon Marotte: The Quiet Trailblazer Who Crossed Borders for a Better Shot

Imagine being born in a small Quebec village in 1819, when Canada was still “Lower Canada” under British rule, French was the language of home, and the future felt uncertain. Your family is big, life is hard, and opportunities on the farm are limited. Then you grow up, get married young, watch several of your own kids die as babies, pack up everything, and head south across the border into the booming factories of New England. You work with your hands as a plumber and tinsmith, raise the kids who survive, lose your wife, remarry, and leave a trail of descendants who still carry your name more than 130 years later.

That was Isaie-Gedeon Marotte (sometimes written Isaïe-Gédéon). He wasn’t famous. He didn’t invent anything or lead a rebellion. But his life is the classic immigrant story that millions of French-Canadian families lived—and it’s your family’s story.

Born into a Big, Tough Family

Isaie-Gedeon arrived on December 29, 1819, in Saint-Charles-sur-Richelieu, a riverside parish in what is now Quebec. His parents were Hyacinthe Germain (Jesse) Marotte and Marguerite Desautel. He was baptized the very next day—common practice back then when infant mortality was high and people didn’t take survival for granted.

He grew up with a crowd of siblings: Georges, Pierre, Marie Emilie, Romuald, Marguerite, Pierre Nazaraire, Apollinaire, Alfred, Marie Malvina, Roch Amable… and several of them didn’t make it past early childhood. Losing brothers and sisters was heartbreakingly normal in the 1820s and 1830s. Disease, accidents, and limited medical care took a heavy toll. Isaie-Gedeon learned early that life could be short and fragile.

Young Marriage and a Growing (and Grieving) Family

At 21 he married Josephte Bourgeois on February 16, 1841, in the same Richelieu region. She was only 16. Together they had eight children over the next two decades: Allemanda, Cordelia, Amanda, Marie Aurelie Malvina, Exilda, Joseph Victor Horace, Antoine Cyrille Theodore, and Celena (Selena Genevieve).

Not all of them lived. Allemanda died at about four. Cordelia lived only a day. Twin girls Marie Aurelie Malvina and Exilda both died within months of their birth in 1850–51. Those losses must have been devastating. Yet the family kept going. The surviving kids—especially Amanda, Horace, Theodore, and Celena—would carry the line forward into Rhode Island, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

The Big Move South

By the 1850s and 1860s, many French-Canadian families were looking across the border. Quebec farms were overcrowded, jobs were scarce, and the factories of New England were hiring. Holyoke, Massachusetts—nicknamed the “Paper City”—and nearby towns offered steady work in mills, manufacturing, and skilled trades.

Isaie-Gedeon and Josephte made the move. Records place them in Burlington, Vermont, by the late 1860s/early 1870s (he worked as a tinsmith), then in Holyoke, Massachusetts. In the 1880 census he appears as a plumber. Plumbing and tinsmithing were solid, practical trades during the Industrial Revolution. Cities were expanding fast. Pipes, roofs, and metalwork were in demand. He was part of the wave of French-Canadian workers who helped build the industrial Northeast while keeping their language, food, faith, and community networks alive in “Little Canadas” that sprang up in mill towns.

Josephte died on June 7, 1872, in Burlington at age 47. Only a few months later, on November 26, 1872, Isaie-Gedeon married Emilie Deroselie in Burlington. Life continued.

Final Years and a Lasting Footprint

Isaie-Gedeon died on September 14, 1889, in Holyoke at age 69. The cause listed in some records was cancer of the stomach. He was buried in South Hadley Falls, Massachusetts. By then his children were grown and starting families of their own. Theodore became a carpenter and lived into the 1920s. Amanda married into the LaChapelle family and lived until 1922. Celena married Daniel LaBranche and lived until 1925. Their descendants spread across New England and beyond.

Why This Matters to You (Even If You’re a Teen)

Isaie-Gedeon wasn’t a superhero. He was a regular guy who faced the same kinds of pressures people still face: economic pressure, family loss, the decision to leave home for better chances, and the hard work of adapting to a new place while trying to hold onto who you are.

He crossed a border when it was harder and riskier than hopping on a plane. He worked with his hands in an era of machines and rapid change. He kept going after burying children and a spouse. And because he did, you’re here reading this.

Next time someone in the family mentions “the Marottes who came down from Quebec,” you’ll know a bit more about the man at the start of that journey. He didn’t leave a famous invention or a monument. He left a line of people—your line—who kept the name and the story going.

That’s a pretty solid legacy.

PDF Download of the Isaie-Gedeon Marrotte Family Story.

Another of my 2nd Great-Grandfather!

Anastasie Gosselin: 1825-1883

 

Two Husbands, Twelve Children, One Unstoppable Woman: The Life of Anastasie Gosselin

Every family tree has one ancestor whose life, once you actually dig into it, stops looking like a list of dates and starts looking like a story you can't put down. For our family, that ancestor is Anastasie Gosselin — born in a farmhouse in rural Québec in 1825, married at seventeen, widowed at thirty-four with a house full of children, remarried within fourteen months, and gone at fifty-seven, having buried a husband and at least seven of her own kids along the way. If she were alive today, we'd probably call her a survivor. In 1825, she was just called a mother — and she raised a small nation of them.

A Big Family in a Small Village

Anastasie was born on December 5, 1825, in the parish of Saint-Henri, near Lévis, Québec, to Antoine Gosselin and Anastasie Bilodeau. Her mother was only 19 when she was born; her father was 25. Over the following two decades, that same household kept growing — Anastasie was one of at least eleven or twelve siblings, a new brother or sister arriving roughly every two years like clockwork: Antoine Floribert, Marie-Dina, Hubert Antoine, Marie-Obeline, Jean Louis Elzear, Marie Philomène, Joseph Honoré, Adèle, Elzéar Napoléon, Marie-Démerise, Pierre-Onésime. Not all of them made it to adulthood — her brother Antoine Floribert died before his third birthday — a quiet reminder of just how fragile childhood was in 19th-century rural Canada.

Married at Seventeen

On November 20, 1843, at not-quite-eighteen years old, Anastasie married Anselme Ruel, a young man from nearby Saint-Charles-de-Bellechasse. By the standards of the time this wasn't unusual — but it does mean Anastasie spent essentially her entire adult life either pregnant, nursing, or both. Over the next seventeen years, she and Anselme had twelve children. Twelve.

Here's the timeline, and it's relentless: Séraphin (1847), Malvina (1849), Marie Udace Odélie (1850), a second Séraphin (also 1850 — the first apparently didn't survive infancy), Adeline (1851), a baby boy who died the very same day he was born (1852), Marie Anasthasie (1852), Marie Rose Delima (1853), Joseph (1856), Philomène (1857), Marie Joséphine (1858), and finally Louis Edmond, born in March 1860.

That last birth came just weeks before tragedy struck.

Widowed at Thirty-Four

On April 12, 1860, Anselme Ruel died at Saint-Charles-de-Bellechasse. He was only 37. Anastasie was 34 years old, with a newborn and a house full of children ranging from infants to teenagers, and she was suddenly on her own. Sixteen years of marriage, twelve children, and then — nothing. It's hard to imagine the calculation a widow in rural Québec had to make in 1860: a farm doesn't run itself, and neither does a household of that size.

She didn't stay a widow for long. Fourteen months later, on June 11, 1861, Anastasie married again — this time to a widower named Antoine Philibert Plante, also of Saint-Charles-de-Bellechasse. It was very likely a marriage of practicality as much as anything else: two households, each missing a parent, merging into one. Together Anastasie and Antoine had five more children: Marie Célina (1862), Marie Delphine (1863), Antoine Onésime (1865), Jean (1869), and Julie-Anna (1870). That's seventeen children across two marriages, born over a span of twenty-three years.

The Cost of a Big Family

Genealogy has a way of flattening grief into a spreadsheet — a birth date here, a death date there — but it's worth pausing on what those numbers actually mean. Of Anastasie's children, at least seven died before her:

• A baby boy who lived only a single day (January 1852)
• Séraphin, who died around age two
• Marie Célina, who died at three weeks old
• Philomène, who died around age four
• Jean, who died before his first birthday
• Marie Rose Delima, who died at 26
• Joseph, who died at just 15 — away from home at school in Montréal
• Marie Catherine "Malvina," who died at 34 on March 11, 1883

That last one is almost unbearable: Malvina, Anastasie's eldest surviving daughter, died just eleven days before Anastasie herself did. Mother and daughter, gone within two weeks of each other, in the same small parish where Anastasie had spent her entire life.

A Family That Scattered Across a Continent

Not every branch of the family stayed in Québec, though. Several of Anastasie's children and grandchildren became part of one of the great untold migrations in North American history: the exodus of French-Canadians into the mill towns of New England in the late 1800s, chasing factory jobs in the wake of Québec's agricultural crunch. Her son Séraphin (the one who survived) married and eventually settled in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her daughter Adeline died in Fall River, Massachusetts. Her son Louis Edmond ended up in Adams, Massachusetts. Her daughter Marie Anasthasie married and later died in Cranston, Rhode Island — her gravestone lists her cause of death with startling clinical precision: "Carcinoma of Duodenum and Pylorus." Grandchildren were born in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Sherbrooke, Québec, before some families doubled back across the border again.

In other words: if your last name traces back through Ruel, Plante, LeBlanc, Hébert, Bibeau, or Larochelle families scattered across Québec and New England — there's a real chance the trail runs straight back through Anastasie's kitchen table.

The End of the Story

Anastasie Gosselin died on March 22, 1883, in Saint-Charles-de-Bellechasse, at the age of 57. She was buried three days later in the parish cemetery — the same cemetery where her first husband, Anselme, had been laid to rest 23 years earlier, and where her second husband, Antoine, would join her six years later, in 1889.

She had outlived one husband, buried at least seven of her own children, survived widowhood in her thirties, remarried, rebuilt a household, and kept going — for another 22 years. She never left a diary, never wrote a memoir, and almost certainly never imagined that a descendant, well over a century later, would sit down and piece her whole life back together from parish records, cemetery listings, and a stack of digitized documents. But there it is: a woman who buried more grief in one lifetime than most of us will ever know, and who is still, quite literally, the reason a great many of us exist.

Another 2nd Great-Grandmother

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Anselme Ruel:1822-1860

 

A Life in 37 Years: The Story of Anselme Ruel

Imagine growing up in a small farming village where everyone knows your family, your church is the center of your world, and by the time you're a teenager, you already know you'll spend your whole life within a few miles of where you were born. That was the world of Anselme Ruel — my ancestor, and a man who packed an extraordinary amount of living into a life that ended far too soon.

A Baby Born to Farmers

Anselme Ruel entered the world on April 22, 1822, in the tiny parish of St-Charles-de-Bellechasse, Quebec, a farming community tucked along the St. Lawrence River southeast of Quebec City. His parents, Jean-Baptiste Ruel and Catherine Marceau, were 30 and 26 years old when he was born, and the family had deep roots in the region — Jean-Baptiste himself had been born just up the road in St. Henri, Bellechasse, around 1792.

Anselme was baptized the very next day at the parish church, a detail that tells you something important about the era: in early 19th-century Quebec, baptism wasn't a formality that could wait. Infant mortality was high, and Catholic families rushed newborns to the church almost immediately, just in case.

This was a world shaped by two forces above all others: the Catholic Church and the land. French Canadians in Bellechasse were still recovering from the tensions of the War of 1812 and would soon live through the Rebellions of 1837–1838, when French-speaking Canadiens pushed back against British colonial rule. Politics happened far away in Quebec City and London, though. For a farm family like the Ruels, life revolved around planting seasons, church bells, and each other.

A Wedding at Twenty-One

On November 28, 1843, when he was 21 years old, Anselme married Anastasie Gosselin in the neighboring parish of St-Henri. Anastasie was the daughter of Antoine Gosselin and Anastasie Bilodeau, and she was likely around 18 at the time.

Marrying young and starting a family quickly wasn't just tradition — it was practically a necessity. Rural Quebec in the mid-1800s was in the middle of a population boom, and large families meant more hands to work the fields. It also reflected a cultural identity: French Canadians, a minority within British North America, took pride in their high birth rates as a way of preserving their language, faith, and culture for the next generation.

A House Full of Children

Anselme and Anastasie didn't waste any time. Over the next fourteen years, they welcomed at least ten children — an almost unbelievable pace of roughly one child every eighteen months:

• Jean Anselme Séraphin (1847–1920) — eventually moved to the United States, married Sophie Larochelle, and raised eleven children of his own in New Hampshire, Quebec's Eastern Townships, and finally Massachusetts.
• Marie-Catherine-Elvina, known as Malvina (1849–1883) — married Charles Hébert, but died young at just 34.
• Marie Udace Obélie (born 1850)
• Séraphin (born and died in 1850/1852, as an infant) — a heartbreaking reminder of how fragile life could be for babies at the time.
• Adeline (1851–1937) — lived to 85 and eventually settled in Fall River, Massachusetts.
• Marie Anasthasie (1852–1908) — married Laurent Léon Plante and later moved to Rhode Island, where she died of cancer at 56.
• Marie Rose Delima (born 1854) — married Louis Bibeau in Sherbrooke.
• Joseph (1856–1872) — died at just 15 while away at school in Montreal.
• Marie Joséphine (born and baptized March 1858) — her baptismal record survives and explicitly names Anselme and Anastasie as her parents, confirming her place in the family.
• Louis Edmond (1860–1927) — born the same year his father died, later moved to Adams, Massachusetts.

Reading through this list is a little like watching a whole world unfold: baptisms, weddings, and — far too often for our modern sensibilities — funerals for children who never made it to adulthood. Losing a baby or a teenager wasn't rare in the 1800s; it was an accepted, if devastating, part of family life. 

The World Anselme Knew

By the time Anselme was raising his growing family, Quebec was changing quickly. The failed Rebellions of the late 1830s had given way to a new political arrangement, the Province of Canada, and whispers of an even bigger change — Confederation, which would eventually unite Canada's provinces in 1867 — were beginning to circulate. Anselme wouldn't live to see it.

Industrialization was creeping into Canadian cities, but out in Bellechasse, life still moved to the rhythm of the seasons. Farms were passed from father to son, faith was central to daily life, and a person's whole world might be contained within a single parish.

A Life Cut Short

Anselme Ruel died on April 9, 1860, at just 37 years old, and was buried three days later, on April 12, in the parish cemetery of Saint-Charles-de-Bellechasse — the same small town where he'd been born, married, and raised his family. His last child, Louis Edmond, had been born only about a month earlier — meaning Anselme never got the chance to watch his youngest son grow up.

His widow, Anastasie, was left to raise their large family alone. She remarried the following year, in June 1861, to a widower named Antoine Plante — a common and practical response to widowhood in an era when running a farm and raising children essentially required two parents. Anastasie lived until 1883, more than two decades longer than her first husband.

Echoes That Traveled Far

What's remarkable about Anselme's story is how far his children's lives carried the Ruel name after his death. Several of his children and grandchildren eventually left Quebec altogether, joining the wave of French Canadians who crossed the border into New England in the late 1800s looking for work in textile mills and growing industrial towns. You can trace the family's footprints from a quiet Quebec parish all the way to New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island — a journey that Anselme himself never made, but one his children carried forward on his behalf.

Another 2nd Great-Grandfather!