{"id":14884,"date":"2018-02-27T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/?p=14884"},"modified":"2022-03-15T04:56:37","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T04:56:37","slug":"solved-circus-family-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/solved-circus-family-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Solved It: A Circus Family, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sarah Dery, blog author and Research Services Coordinator at the New England Historic Genealogical Society<\/a>, has shared this blog as part of our ongoing \u201cHow I Solved It Series\u201d.<\/p>\n

This blog continues the story of Sarah’s first blog<\/a> where she discovered a new resource from Quebec where she managed to find parents, grandparents and other relatives by searching a child’s first name and a wide date range. In this story, Sarah continues with this resource to find the children of her newly discovered relatives and lands many more great finds.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The 1870 census, showing a Caron household in Connecticut.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The weekend after my blog post<\/a> was published in July, I sat down at my kitchen table and knocked down that brick wall. Welcome to part two of my quest to uncover my \u2018circus family.\u2019<\/p>\n

I joined a website called Genealogy Quebec (https:\/\/www.genealogiequebec.com\/en<\/a>) on the recommendation of a co-worker and dedicated a rainy Saturday to my search. I started with the information about which I was confident: my great-grandmother Nora Caron\u2019s birth and death certificate listed her parents as \u201cAlphonse Caron\u201d and \u201cMathilda Gauthier.\u201d<\/span> I had searched previously for information on Alphonse and came up with his death certificate in Rhode Island, which listed his parents as \u201cJoseph Caron\u201d and \u201cZoe Perron.\u201d When searching on the Genealogie Quebec website, you\u2019re able to search for individual names or couples. On an off-chance, I searched for Joseph Caron and Zoe Perron: zero<\/strong> results.<\/p>\n

I moved on to try to find all children named Alphonse who were born 1845\u201355. Alphonse\u2019s date of birth fluctuated in records from 1846 to 1849, so I wanted to make sure that I widened my range to include all records that might relate to him. My search resulted in seventeen promising families!<\/p>\n

I decided to look through each baptismal record for specifics that might lend a clue, like the child\u2019s name, the parents\u2019 names, and any god-parents\u2019 names. I entered all of my research on a spreadsheet to help organize my findings. After deciphering a multitude of bad handwriting, I found one result that possible could be a match: Fran\u00e7ois Coron and Zoe Garault St. Onge.<\/p>\n

My search resulted in seventeen promising families!<\/h3>\n

With a little help from my French-speaking family members, we were able to translate the baptismal record to state that Alphonse, son of Fran\u00e7ois Coron and Zoe Garault St. Onge, was born in the winter of 1847. Also included in this record was a godfather named Clement Coron, and a godmother named Clemence Coron. The one item that stood out to me was the spelling of the surname: Coron<\/em>. All of my previous research listed the surname as Caron<\/em>. So, my new search continued with Fran\u00e7ois Coron and Zoe Garault St. Onge.<\/p>\n

I was able to confirm the children of Fran\u00e7ois and Zoe as Adeline, Zenaide, Clement, Michel, Alphonse, and Alphonsine. My next search continued to find the marriage of Fran\u00e7ois and Zoe. Fran\u00e7ois Coron and Zoe St. Onge were married on 2 February 1840. Also listed on the marriage certificate were Zoe\u2019s parents\u2019 names: Jean Baptiste Stonge Garault and Marie Labossiere. The most pertinent information on the marriage certificate was that Fran\u00e7ois Coron was previously married to a Veronique Guertin on 7 August 1826, but no additional information was provided to link to the previous generation of the Coron family.<\/p>\n

The marriage record for Fran\u00e7ois Coron and Veronique Guertin was legible, which is quite rare in French-Canadian church records! It listed Fran\u00e7ois as the son of Fran\u00e7ois Coron and Marie Josephte Gaudet, who were married in 1782.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to press my luck, since things were moving along smoothly with the help of Genealogy Quebec. So, I turned my search to find when Fran\u00e7ois and Zoe died. Fran\u00e7ois Nicholas Coron was born 12 March 1800 and died in 1849. I suspect he may have died before his daughter Alphonsine was born because I have her baptismal date listed in 1850. Soon after Fran\u00e7ois passed away, his widow married Antoine Gervais (on 24 September 1850) and had two more children: Marie Milvina, born in 1852, and Antoine Pierre Auxias, born in 1855.<\/p>\n

This link tells me that I have found my \u2018circus family\u2019! Can you tell I\u2019m smiling from ear to ear?!<\/h3>\n

In my previous \u2018circus family<\/a>\u2019 article, I mentioned an 1870 census report from Baltic, Connecticut, where Zoe is listed with her children: Alphonse, Alphonsine, Malvina, and Osias. But they are all listed under the surname Caron. This link tells me that I have found my \u2018circus family\u2019! Can you tell I\u2019m smiling from ear to ear?!<\/p>\n

Despite the discovery of my \u2018circus family,\u2019 the process has led to many additional questions, which often happens during genealogical searches. If Zoe was married a second time, her surname should be Gervais, but in 1870 she\u2019s listed as a Caron. What happened to make her keep her first husband\u2019s name? What happened to the first few children of the Coron family, born between 1841 and 1847? They aren\u2019t listed in the Connecticut census at all.<\/p>\n

Although brick-walls can be quite frustrating, it is quite rewarding when you\u2019re able to chisel through the wall a little at a time. Through perseverance and discussions with fellow genealogists, I was able to use a new resource that helped tremendously in finding my Coron family and in unlocking a mystery for my entire family. Stay tuned for part three \u2013 did you think the story was complete?!<\/p>\n

If you have a story idea or a blog that you\u2019d like to share as part of this series, please let us know about it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Dery, blog author and Research Services Coordinator at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, has shared this blog as part of our ongoing \u201cHow I Solved It Series\u201d. This blog continues the story of Sarah’s first blog where she discovered a new resource from Quebec where she managed to find parents, grandparents and other…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":14885,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[17,22,34,35,14],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/How-I-solved-it-Blog-Featured-image-Sarah-DeryCircus-Part-2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14884"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16071,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14884\/revisions\/16071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}