Benjamin Limoges (1828-1893)

 

The Carpenter With Many Spellings: The Story of Benjamin Limoges

A family history blog article

If you tried to follow Benjamin Limoges through the records, you'd need a lot of patience and a good imagination. He appears as Limoges, Limoge, Limange, Limonge, Limose, Lemorge, LaMorge, and Limorge, and in one record even Lemage. The clerks heard a French name through an English ear and wrote down whatever they thought they heard. Behind the shifting spellings is one man who moved his family across a border, worked with his hands for decades, and ended up the grandfather of a large Rhode Island family.

A boy from Napierville

Benjamin was born in Napierville, Quebec, in the summer of 1828. His baptism was on July 30 at the church of Saint-Cyprien, and one record gives his birth as July 2, so the July 30 date that appears in many places is probably his baptism. His father, André Prosper Limoges, was born in 1785 and was married to Marie Rose Benjamin dit St Aubin, who came from the Chambly area.

Marriage and loss in one spring

On February 19, 1849, at the age of 20, Benjamin married Clémence Langevin at Saint-Valentin, Quebec. Less than three months later, on May 6, his father died, at about 60. Their daughter Clémence was born on October 28, 1850.

The records don't say what happened to his first wife. Benjamin married again on November 25, 1856, this time to Marie Catherine Aubin, called Lambert, who was born in Joliette in 1834. Young Clémence appears in the 1861 census, age 11, in the household with her stepmother.

Life along the border

The next decade moved around. Rosanna was born in December 1857, and Rose De Lima followed in 1859. The family record places Rose's birth on Lake Champlain, and she grew up to be someone who, in a family memory, "loved to be on the water." Emma came in 1860, and Benjamin Napoleon in July 1861 in Montreal, though he was baptized the next day at Saint-Valentin. Marie Marguerite was born in 1863.

Then came a sad chapter. In September 1865, a son named Henry was baptized at Lacolle, a Quebec town near the U.S. border. He died 13 months later and was buried there on September 25, 1866. That fall, the Limoges family was still on the Canadian side.

Becoming a Rhode Islander

Between 1866 and 1870, the family crossed the border. The 1870 census finds them on Lonsdale Road in Smithfield, Rhode Island, with their name recorded as "Limose." Andrew was born around 1870, and Mary Ellen followed in 1873 in Lincoln, where the family lived through 1880.

Benjamin worked as a carpenter. The 1885 Rhode Island census lists him that way, at age 55, and also notes that he was an "alien" who could not read or write English. That's easy to understand, but it's still striking: he built things in a country whose language he couldn't read. His son Benjamin Napoleon followed him into carpentry, as city directories show in the early 1890s. By 1891, Benjamin was living at 132 Harrison Street in Pawtucket.

Two sisters, two brothers

In 1882, two of Benjamin's daughters married into the Theroux family, brothers of the family in the last two articles. Rose De Lima married Michel Alberic Theroux on April 16, and Marie Marguerite married Charles Edward Henry Theroux on September 3. Their older sister Rosanna had married Henry P. Langevin two years earlier, and Mary Ellen married Edmond Chagnon in February 1894.

Rose De Lima became a practical nurse and midwife who, according to family memory, was sent for in emergencies "rather than a doctor." Her descendants, counted in 2022, included 64 grandchildren and 47 great-great-grandchildren.

The last years

Benjamin died on September 15, 1893, in Pawtucket. A researcher noted that she couldn't find a newspaper death notice, but the state death register has the entry. His wife appears as a widow in the 1900 census, living with Rosanna and her family.

One more loss followed. In March 1895, his son Andrew died at 24 of erysipelas, a skin infection. Andrew belonged to the Pawtucket City Band, and Father Garcin, the same priest who officiated at Alberic Theroux's funeral, conducted the service.

A very long life next door

Marie Catherine outlived her husband by 36 years. She died on July 28, 1929, and the Pawtucket Times described her as "oldest Pawtucket resident," saying she was 101. Her baptism record says she was 94, which is still remarkable. Her funeral was held from the home of her daughter, Mrs. Charles Theroux, and four Theroux grandsons carried her.

Why he matters

Benjamin left no writings and no memorial. What he left was a name that survived forty spellings, a skill he passed to his son, and daughters who became nurses and mothers of a large family. If your family tree has a carpenter's branch like his, it's one of the sturdy ones.

Benjamin Limoges, a 2nd Great Grandfather!

Alida (Elida) Labbe Theroux 1832-1888

Seven Children, Two Countries, and One Name Nobody Can Agree On: The Story of Alida or Elida Labbé Theroux

Some ancestors announce themselves through newspaper headlines. Alida Labbé Theroux didn't. Her story survives in baptism entries, a few census pages, and the lives of the seven children she raised. Read together, they show a woman who crossed an international border, buried a husband's grief and her own, and kept a growing family together through 56 years. Start with her name. Her baptism says Alida, her death entry says Elida, and the family has gone back and forth on it ever since. In French, l'abbé means "the abbot."In French, l'abbé means "the abbot."

A girl from Yamaska

Alida was born on November 14, 1832, in Yamaska, Quebec, and baptized the same day. Her parents were François Michel L'Abbe and Dorothée Schmid. Her godparents were Denis Schmid and Mariane Catherine Labe. Her father was born in 1782 on the Île d'Orléans, near Quebec City, which means he was around 50 when she was born.

A Wedding and a Very Busy Decade

On January 25, 1853, Alida married Joseph Theroux, a neighbor two years her senior, at St. Michel, Yamaska. She was 20. Ten months later, on November 28, her first son, also named Joseph, was born.

Over the next 16 years she had seven children, five of them in Quebec:

• Joseph, born 1853
• Michel Alberic, born 1855
• Louis George, born 1858
• Charles Edward Henry, born 1861
• Marie Adeline, born 1864

Those are five children by the age of 32, with the youngest still a toddler when the family began the biggest decision of their lives.

Loss came along with the births. Her father died on January 4, 1860, at age 77, when she was 27. Her father-in-law, Theophile, died the following year, in 1861, the year Charles was born.

A Mother with a Lot to Celebrate

Alida lived to see five of her seven children marry:

• 1873: Joseph, the eldest, married Sophie Daniel in Hadley, Massachusetts.
• 1882: Three more sons married that year. Alberic married in April, Louis George in June, and Charles in September.
• August 1888: Marie Adeline married Joseph Albert Parent, just four months before Alida died.

Three weddings in six months in 1882 meant a busy household that year. Her four sons would grow up to be community leaders, and by 1891 they were prominent enough that their father's funeral drew 43 carriages. It's fair to say that much of the character shown at that funeral began with the woman who raised them. 

A Week in December 1888

Alida died on December 2, 1888, in Pawtucket, at age 56, and was buried two days later at Mount Saint Mary's Cemetery. The documents we have state she died of "disease of brain" which could mean multiple things at this time period of limited diagnostic tools (no imaging, no EEG, no reliable lab tests), so when the doctor didn't know or didn't want to specify. It was especially common as a gentler phrasing when the real cause carried stigma, such as syphillis, alcholish, or instanity. So it’s worth keeping in mind that the vagueness may be partly deliberate.

What happened afterward is striking. Six days after she died, her husband Joseph filed his petition for U.S. citizenship. Three days after that, sons Charles and Alberic were naturalized. In a single week, the family buried its mother and became American. We can't know whether the timing was planned or a coincidence, but it fits a family that was deciding to stay.

What her Story tells us

Alida left no diary, no letters, and no portrait. The portrait we have is of the people around her: five sons and daughters married in her lifetime, two more who married soon after, and a husband who went on to be mourned by hundreds. If you want to understand who she was, look at what she built.

Why her story matters to all of us

You don't have to be related to Alida to care about her, because her story answers questions most of us eventually ask: where did I come from, and what did it cost?

Ordinary lives are where history happens. Textbooks cover treaties and wars, but the move from Quebec to Rhode Island was made of people like Alida, packing a household with five children, learning a new place, and having two more babies there. Millions of families made similar journeys, and her story gives that big, abstract migration a face and a name.

You come from something. Nearly everything about her that survives is about other people: her children, her husband, the weddings she saw. Much of what shapes a person is quiet work that never gets credit, and her sons became community leaders partly because someone raised them.

It teaches how we know what we know. Was she Alida or Elida? Did she live in Montreal in 1861, or is that a different woman? Sorting that out is detective work, and it builds skills anyone can use: check sources, notice conflicts, and don't believe something just because it's written down.

It makes the 1880s feel close. She died at 56, and six days later her husband began the process of becoming an American citizen. That's not a distant "olden days" story. It's a family facing grief and big decisions at the same time, which people still do everyday.

In one sentence: she's why we're here, and she did it without ever knowing we'd ask.

Another 2nd Great GrandMother!

Joseph Theroux (1830-1891)

The Man Who Fell through a floor trap in a store, dying from those injuries, and the 43 Carriages That Followed His Body to the Cemetery!

Some people leave behind diaries or famous inventions. Joseph Theroux left something quieter: a paper trail of baptisms, marriages, census pages, and one very large funeral. Put together, it tells the story of a Quebec farm boy who became a Rhode Island mill-town citizen and raised sons who, by the time he died, were military officers.

A Quebec beginning

Joseph was born on November 26, 1830, in Yamaska, Quebec, and baptized the same day. His father, Theophile, was 33 and his mother, Julie Bernier, was 29. He grew up in the French-Canadian countryside along the Yamaska River, in the years around the Rebellions of 1837-38. He would have been a small boy when they broke out.

On January 25, 1853, he married Alida Labbé (some records say Elida) at St. Michel, Yamaska. She was 20, a neighbor born just two years after him, and the daughter of François Michel L'Abbe and Dorothée Schmid. The name confusion follows her through the records. Her baptism says Alida, her death entry says Elida, and the family still hasn't settled it.

A Family Built in Sixteen Years

Ten months after the wedding, their first son, Joseph, was born. Six more children followed:

•         Michel Alberic in 1855

•         Louis George in 1858

•         Charles Edward Henry in 1861

•         Marie Adeline in 1864

•         Clara in 1868

•         Rosanna in 1870

That makes seven children in about 16 years. Joseph's father, Theophile, died in March 1861, the same year Charles was born.

The Move South

Marie Adeline was born in Quebec in 1864, but Clara, four years later, was born in Rhode Island. So somewhere in those four years the family crossed the border. Records show the children's immigration as 1866, which fits. Like thousands of French Canadians in those years, they were likely heading for the textile mills of New England. That is my inference from the history, not something the documents say. The 1870 census finds the household in River Point, Warwick, a mill village, though the census taker, in the family's words, badly misspelled their names.

There's a small puzzle here. Joseph's Ancestry timeline lists an "arrival" in St. Albans, Vermont, in November 1876, ten years after the children came. Maybe he went back to Quebec for a visit and returned. The documents don't say.

Becoming an American

The most striking stretch of Joseph's life came in December 1888. His wife Alida died on December 2 and was buried in Pawtucket on the 4th. Four days later, on December 8, Joseph filed his petition for U.S. citizenship. Three days after that, sons Charles and Alberic were naturalized too, with Joseph and George serving as witnesses for one another.

We can't know what was in his heart. But after 35 years of marriage, in the same week he buried his wife, he made his commitment to his new country official.

A Sudden End

On October 7, 1891, at age 60, Joseph died after a falling through a trap door to the basement in Central Falls, Rhode Island. His death was covered in the Providence Evening Bulletin the next day.

His funeral is where the story gets remarkable. The Pawtucket Gazette and Chronicle reported that his four sons carried him and that he had belonged to the Lafayette Guards, a French-Canadian society. The service at St. John's Church drew hundreds of people, and many couldn't get in. The paper called it the largest funeral ever held among the city's French people, with 43 carriages in the procession. He was buried at Mount Saint Mary's Cemetery in Pawtucket.

A man who arrived as an immigrant laborer was mourned, by that account, by a good part of his community.

What became of his children

His sons carried the same civic energy forward:

•  Joseph Theroux was millright for Crocker-McElwain Paper Company for     many years. He married twice and has two children and was settled in     Holyoke, Massachusetts.

•     Michel Alberic was a loom fixer at the Lorraine Mills for 23 years, and a skilled yachtsman. His granddaughter recalled that early in his marriage the couple lived aboard a friend's yacht, which he captained on Lake Champlain. He belonged to several French societies. He died in 1902 at 46, leaving a wife and eight children, and roughly 1,000 people attended his funeral. Newspapers and family accounts say he died of a stroke or paralysis, while another record says he was hit by a trolley.

•     Charles Edward Henry became a major in the Battalion of Jacques Cartier and later worked as a chauffeur, a very modern job for 1910.

•     Louis George was a major in the Guard of Honor of the Union St. Jean Baptiste, and lived to 1944.

•     Marie Adeline Theroux married in and settled in Smithfield Twp, Rhode Island and lived till 1926.

•     Clara worked as a spooler tender and weaver, and died in 1913.

•     Rosanna lived in Pawtucket into her 90th year, until 1960.

Why He Matters...

Joseph's story has no battles or fortunes. Its power is in what it adds up to: a move across a border, seven children raised in a new language, citizenship claimed in a week of grief, and sons who grew into community leaders. If you're a descendant, that's a lot to be proud of.

Another 2nd Grandfather!