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!
