Happy Birthday Nan!

Today is my grandmother's birthday.  She would have been 116!

In honor of her birthday, I thought I would post some pictures of her childhood home, Chateaugay, NY, a tiny town near the Canadian border.  

In 1986, and again in 1987 we took her back there.  In one trip we went with my Aunt Esther and, I think, my Dad.  In the other trip it was me, Paul, Nan, and my Aunt Dot.

I'm so glad we took her there before her eyesight got so bad. 

The farmhouse was still there and the owner was working near the barn.  He stopped to talk to us and then had his wife come out.   My grandmother told them that she and her family lived there when she was young.  I wish we had asked them if we could go in.  

We also went to the cemetery in Malone, at Notre Dame church, where her parents are buried and also two baby girls who died in infancy.  

We drove around the downtown area and Nan told us where one or two of her brothers worked.  I wish I had taken notes because I have forgotten a lot of the things we saw. 

We also met a member of her family who still lives in Chateaugay.  We went to her house and talked with her but I can't remember who she was.  I sure wish I was doing my blog then!

In looking through old pictures I found some pictures that Paul and I had taken in 1998.  I had totally forgotten that we took a trip to Chateaugay then.  And actually, I really don't remember much about that trip, but the pictures show more of the barn and farm area.  

Paul and I have been working on the Bessette genealogy on and off for years.  In 2003 I found a Bessette message board on Ancestry.com and this is some of the information I found (Thomas Bessette is my grandmother's grandfather).  

"Thomas Bessette married Marceline Martin and he had a brother, Francis Bessette, that married Lucie Martin. Marceline and Lucie were sisters. Frank and Thomas came to Malone in the mid 1880s and built houses just outside the Malone Fairgrounds. Those two houses are still there today."

I really want to go back there again some time soon.  I want to find those houses.  I want to see if they have a Historical Society in Chateaugay, or at least Malone (the nearest city).  I want to see if the farm house is still there.  Maybe I can go in this time!

My Grandparents' Wedding

I have been obsessed lately with my grandparents' wedding.  It all started with this picture. 

I was looking through my aunt Dot's slides a couple of weeks ago and came across a group of pictures of a wedding anniversary party that we had for my grandparents.  I called my aunt Ettie to find out what year anniversary it was.  One thing that I don't like about slides is that many of them don't have dates.  Ettie thought it was their 35th, and after some calculations we decided that it was. 

That lead to a long discussion about their wedding.  We have no pictures, no certificates, nothing.  The story, as I remember it, was that my grandmother, who was the youngest of eight and 20 years old at the time of her mother's death, left the farm in Chateaugay, NY to live with her sister Marion and her husband Dewey Barrows in Windsor, VT.  My grandfather was working as a lineman for the Western Union in White River Junction, VT.  They met at a dance and were married in Marion and Dewey's home.  That was it.  That was all I knew and basically that was all my aunts knew. 

So.....I set out on a mission to find out more!

First I went to the Geneology Room at the Springfield Museums on Friday, March 1st.  Using the computers there I found out on FamilySearch.org that they were married on October 6, 1923 in Hanover, NH.  New Hampshire!  Where did that come from?  I thought they were married in Marion and Dewey's home in Windsor, VT. 

On Monday, March 4th Paul and I took a trip to New Hampshire and Vermont to try and find some answers.  I love doing this and, luckily, Paul does too - maybe not as much as me, but at least he goes along with it.  After a lot of back and forth from the Hanover NH Town Hall, the Windsor VT Town Hall, the White River Junction VT Town Hall and the Lebanon NH library (luckily they are all relatively close) this is what we found.  From the 1924 Town of Lebanon New Hampshire Annual Report, we found out that Donald Wait, 23, lived in White River Junction, VT and Lucy Bessette lived in W. Lebanon, NY and they were married in Hanover, NH by a Rev. John W. Sliney. 

We also found out from a Lebanon City Directory of 1919 that Marion and Dewey lived in Lebanon, NH. 

So....now armed with quite a bit more information I went back to the Geneology Room in Springfield on Tuesday, March 5th.  One of the employees there found on-line the Registration Card for Rev. John W. Sliney who was a pastor of St. Denis Catholic Church in Hanover, NH.  I called the church later that day and they said they would check to see if there was a record of my grandparents' wedding at that church. 

On Monday, March 11th we went back to Lebanon, NH to go to the Town Hall.  There we got a Certified Copy of  Donald and Lucy Wait's Marriage Certificate.  We also found St. Denis Catholic church in Hanover, NH, right near Dartmouth College. 

Tuesday morning the receptionist from St. Denis Church called to say that they found the record of their marriage and that she is sending it to me. She said the only "hiccup", as she called it, was that it was not signed by the priest.  She has no idea why.  I asked if the fact that my grandmother was Catholic and my grandfather was Protestant would have anything to do with it and could they still have been married in the church.  I told her how I had always heard they got married in my grandmother's sister's home.  She said that it was not customary for a priest to perform a wedding in a home, and they must have been married in a church.  The fact that the Certified Copy of the Marriage Certificate said that Rev John Sliney performed the marriage must mean that they got married in St. Denis Church. 

So now I have more questions.  Why Hanover and not Lebanon where Marion, Dewey and my grandmother lived?  They filed for a marriage license on October 1, 1923 and were married on October 6, 1923.  Not much time to plan a wedding.  I guess I'll never know the whole story; but need to be grateful for what I know. 

So, if you're still reading this and haven't left thinking "too much unimportant information", now I am on a quest to find out, by going back to the Lebanon Library and looking at another Town Report, information about Marion and Dewey's wedding and what church they were married in.  Who knows, I may discover some more information about my grandparents' lives in the early 1920's. 

Genealogy.  You either love it or hate it.  It's a lot of work, and can be frustrating at times, but I can't tell you how excited I get when I find out bits of information.  I wish I had felt this way when my grandparents were alive.  It would have made things so much easier!

259/365 - Bessette Sisters

This is a picture of my grandmother and her sisters. She is the baby, so this was probably taken in 1901 as my grandmother was born in January of 1901. My grandmother's name was Lucien and her sisters were Aldora, Sadie, and Marion. They were from a little town on the New York/Canadian border, Chateaugay. Coincidentally there is a town not far over the Canadian border, a suburb of Montreal Quebec, named Chateaugay. I'm sure that is where they immigrated from. I wish I had asked her more questions about her childhood when I had the opportunity!

Bernard Wait and Nelson Bessette, my Great-Grandfathers

This is my grandfather Donald's father, Bernard Wait. I am told this picture was taken in Florida. I'm not sure what he was doing down there (or who took that picture and why they wanted to take a picture of him walking down a street) but supposedly he used to stay for periods of time at his childrens' homes (he had six children) after he retired from the railroad. He bought a Morris chair to keep at my grandfather's house and when he was staying there no one else could use that chair.

This is the chair (I think it still has the same cushions - we really need to do something about that someday). I remember this chair. It sat in the hall at my grandmother's house and now we have it in our family room. It is the chair that my father-in-law sits in all the time.


My aunt Dot said that her grandfather Bernard was not a very fun grandfather. She said she liked it better when my grandmother's father visited. She said he was more fun.

This is a picture of Nelson Bessette, my grandmother Lucy's father. He was a farmer from Chateguay, NY.