The Charbonneau Side of Our Raney Family

As you know, Frank and Mary (Smith) Raney had three daughters - Louise, Mary Agnes and Geneva. Two of those daughters married Charbonneau cousins. 

Red and Mary Agnes (Raney) Charbonneau 1946

I don't know how Mary Agnes met Omer 'Red' Charbonneau, but at their wedding in 1940, my mom, Geneva, met Red's cousin Albert Joseph 'Al' Charbonneau. When his Air National Guard unit in Spokane was activated, Al was sent to Gunnery School at Las Vegas. He kept a stack of silver dollars he'd won at a small casino there. When he came home on leave in 1942, they began dating, then wrote to one another, and married when he returned from the South Pacific in 1944. See my blog about their war letters HERE.

Rolette County, North Dakota just below the Canadian border and St. John circled in red.

Red and Al were born in Rolette County, North Dakota, to a pair of Charbonneau brothers, who married a pair of LeBlanc sisters living on the farm across the road. And that makes Mary and Red's sons Chuck, Rich, John (deceased), Tom, Greg, Nick, Paul, Steve, and daughter Sharon (deceased), third cousins to me on our dads' side and first cousins on our moms' side. So, it's easy to trace the Charbonneau line for our two families from North Dakota back to Quebec, Canada, because it is one long line.

St. John the Baptiste Catholic Church in St. John, where Red and Al were baptized (I assume).

Albert Charbonneau (1921-1994), brother Raouel (1920-2000) and sister Evelyn (1918-2012 ) were born in St. John, Rolette Co. ND.  

Dad and brother Raouel c.1940

Dad and sister Evelyn 'Evie' 1942

Evie (Charbonneau) and Joe Mallonee wedding photo. Dad carried his photo with him overseas, including the bit of ink below Evie's eye.

Their parents, Alfred 'Fred' Omer Joseph Charbonneau (1896-1968) and Clara Marie LeBlanc (1894-1974), must have married in 1917 or early 1918 because Evie was born in December 1918. It was not a happy marriage. Clara developed mental illness and was unable to care for her children. 

Alfred 'Fred' Charbonneau

Clara (LeBlanc) Charbonneau

We don't know Fred's mindset when he carried his children from North Dakota to Spokane, Washington, about 1924, where his brother Charles 'Charlie' Joseph Charbonneau (1888-1965) and his wife, Clara's sister, Louise (LeBlanc) Charbonneau (1892-1981)

Charlie and Louise (LeBlanc) Charbonneau, Spokane, Christmas 1959

 lived with their growing family: Omer 'Red' (1916-1987); Leona (1917-2011); Sergius (1919-1992); Edward (1922-1987); and Evelyn (1935-2002).  Charlie had moved his family to Spokane after Edward's birth in North Dakota in1922. Charlie and Louise were unable take on three more children, so Fred placed Evelyn and Raouel in St. Joseph's Orphanage. Al, then about 3, was placed with a young couple. When the woman became pregnant, she no longer wanted Al, so an older childless couple, Ed and Mary Chapot, who lived around the block, became his guardians. At age four, Al suffered from paralysis, unable to walk - a case of unrecognized hysteria. The Chapots asked the Poor Clare nuns to pray for him and eventually he walked again. A miracle all agreed. Traumatized by being removed from two mothers, it's little wonder Al suffered from mental illness much of his life. A genetic tendency for mental illness may have come down through the LeBlanc line. Al flunked the first grade because he spoke only French; in high school he flunked French, that language having caused him such humiliation, he couldn't relearn it.

Al Charbonneau c.1925

Fred and Charlie Charbonneau came from a large family. Their parents, Omer Charles (1863-1913) and Marie Elisa Lumina (Bourassa) Charbonneau (1868-1952), our great-grandparents, were born in Quebec, Canada.  The story goes that a French-Canadian priest, Father John F. Malo, a missionary to the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa in northern North Dakota, sent word back to Quebec for settlers to come there to homestead.

Turtle Mountain in North Dakota

Those who answered his call established St. John near the Canadian border in 1882, the same year the Chippewa were granted their reservation, its size drastically reduced by the government  in 1884. The Charbonneau and Bourassa families appear to have arrived in 1884, and it's likely their farms were homesteaded on land taken from the tribe. 

 

Great-grandfather Omer Charles Charbonneau,1913

Great-grandmother Lumina Bourassa, 1913

Omer and Lumina were married by Father Malo in Rolette County in 1887, and Charles Joseph 'Charlie', their oldest, was born in 1888. The children who followed were Oliva 'Oliver' Joseph (1890-1975 King Co. WA), who served in France during World War I, and whose wife Edith and daughter Olive did original research on the Charbonneau line; Angelina (Matthews) (1892-1971 Malta, MT); Etienne (1894-1942 Rolette Co., ND); Alfred Omer Joseph 'Fred' (1896-1968 Regina, Sask. Canada); Merilda Ida (Durocher) (1898-1985 Spokane, WA); Joseph Omer (1900-1971 King Co., WA); Rene Joseph (1904-1974 Rolette Co., ND); Laura Marie (Jalbert) (1906-1990 LaFleche, Sask., Canada); Romeo (1908-1984 King Co., WA). You can imagine all the 3rd cousins we must have scattered about Canada and the U.S.

A farmer who owned 400 acres, our great-grandfather Omer Charbonneau was only 50 when he died in 1913, the year he and Lumina had their photograph taken for their 25th wedding anniversary. He looks healthy enough in the photo, but I can't help thinking he had a bad heart, which seems to run in the family. Lumina lived on until 1952. When the photo below was taken, she lived on the farm.

Lumina (Bourassa) Charbonneau and grandson Raouel Charbonneau (Dad's brother), 1938

Farming near Omer was his older brother Méline Charbonneau (1857-1935 Rolette Co., ND), who might have arrived in Rolette County a year before Omer, but married Grizilia Lemieux in 1888, a year after Omer  married. An even older brother, Bruno Charbonneau, lived west in Bottineau County for the 1900 census, but he and his family returned to Quebec before the 1910 census.

Our 2nd great-uncle Méline Charbonneau and wife Grizilia.

Now that we know how they came to be in North Dakota, I'll take you back to Olivier Charbonneau, the Immigrant. And because of our early roots in what was Nouvelle France, we seem to be related to every present-day descendant of French-Canadians in Canada and the U.S. Olivier Charbonneau and his wife Marguerite are estimated to be the direct ancestors of 35,000 people in Canada and the U.S. born with the surname Charbonneau. Now contemplate the numbers of collateral relatives of the Charbonneau wives.

La Rochelle, France

Olivier Charbonneau, our 8th great-grandfather, was born about 1625 in Maran, a village 12 miles north of La Rochelle, France. Our 8th great-grandmother, Marie-Marguerite Garnier (1626-1701), was his 3rd wife, married in La Rochelle in 1654. They already had a daughter Anne when they set sail from La Rochelle July 2, 1659 for New France on the ship Ste. André. Marguerite's two sisters, Louise and Michelle, their husbands and children, traveled with them. Despite Louis XIV's declaration that the Crown would pay travel expenses for settlers, and provide seed and provisions, Olivier and his brothers-in-law were forced to borrow money for the voyage from noblewoman Jeanne Mace, an early settler in Nouvelle France, who had returned to France to beg for funds and nursing nuns for the hospital she'd founded in Ville Marie (Montreal). The contract bound the men to labor for the hospital until their debts were paid off. After a bad voyage of storms and a sickness that killed many, they sailed up the St. Lawrence River and arrived in late September at Ville Marie, its population less than 500 people.

The Charbonneau family lived first on the Île de Montreal, then settled Laval on the Île Jésus

Olivier and Marguerite and their growing family lived in Ville Marie for some years before moving to Pointe-aux-Trembles de Montreal at the tip of that island on which Montreal was settled. There he built a windmill with a partner and became a miller.  

Windmill at Pointe-aux-Trembles, Montreal, built in the 1700s. Did it resemble Olivier's earlier mill? Was it constructed on the same site as Oliver's mill? Our relative Edith Charbonneau tried to find out, but had no luck, she wrote me in the early 1980s.

Olivier Charbonneau is considered the first citizen of the city of Laval, on the Île Jésus, now a suburb north of Montreal with a population of over 400,000.

The Olivier Charbonneau Bridge is a toll bridge over the Rivière des Prairies, between Laval's Duvernay district and Montreal's Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles borough

Olivier's debt to Jeanne Mace forgiven in 1669, in 1675 he obtained the first land concession at Laval, placing his mark on the grant document. As were most of our ancestors, he was illiterate.

Mark of Olivier Charbonneau on his 1675 land grant.

He and Maguerite had four more children, including our 7th great-grandfather Joseph Charbonneau, born1660. Olivier died in 1687 at Pointe-aux-Trembles de Montreal. His widow, Marguerite, married Nicolas Bourgeois/Bourgeoy the following year. It's likely Nicolas was a nephew to Canada's first canonized saint, Marguerite Bourgeoys HERE. Our Marguerite's sister Louise and her husband were killed by the Iroquois in 1689 at Lachine, Quebec.

Romantic portrayal of a coureur de bois, but what is the moose rack for?

Joseph Charbonneau (1660-1722), became a coureur de bois (runner of the woods). It's claimed by some that as a 13-year-old camp boy, he accompanied Father Jacques Marquette and Pierre Joliet on their exploration down the Mississippi in 1673. If, indeed, he started out with the expedition, he likely wintered with the main party at the Great Lakes, for Marquette and Joliet took only two canoes and 5 paddlers with them down the Mississippi. 

Map of New France that includes present-day Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota

Nevertheless, it appears Joseph spent his youth as an independent fur trader, a coureur de bois, canoeing into the interior around the Great Lakes to trade for furs to carry back to Montreal, and thence to France. A glut on beaver pelts occurred in the early 1680s and, to remedy it, Louis XIV awarded licenses to trade in pelts to only 25 merchants in New France. They in turn hired voyaguers to bring in the pelts. In 1686 Joseph may have been in the employ of Henri de Tonty as a voyageur, for in that year he accompanied Tonty (biography HERE) down the Mississippi to its mouth, then along the coasts of Louisiana and Florida on an unsuccessful hunt for Tonty's commander, the Sieur de LaSalle, who had disappeared in what became eastern Texas. Either before of just after Joseph returned to Montreal, his father Olivier died in 1687. Joseph, being the eldest, no doubt inherited the Charbonneau share of the mill and the farm. The following year,1688, he married Anne Picard (1671-1748), a young widow, and our 7th great-grandmother. Her father, hailing from Normandy, and her mother from the Loire Valley of central France, had married in Quebec in 1669.

Joseph and Anne had eleven children, including our 6th great-grandfather, their fourth son, François Baptiste Charbonneau, in 1698. He married Marie Suzanne Rocheron in 1722. Her grandfather Simon Rocheron had come from La Mans in western France, her grandfather on her mother's side from Brittany. Already the peoples of the distinct French regions were well-intermarried in New France.

St-François-de-Sales is 1 mile from Terrebone, on the same island as Laval.

François died in 1775, age 77, in St-François-de-Sales, Quebec. Marie Suzanne died in 1780 at age 77. It appears they led quiet lives, except that they lived through the French and Indian War (1754-1763), pitting the colonies of America, supported by British troops, against the inhabitants of New France, supported by French troops, each side with Native American allies. Great Britain defeated France in Europe, receiving all of Canada and the the American mid-west in the peace treaty. French Canadians call it Guerre de la Conquête ("War of the Conquest").HERE

Acadia had been captured by the British in 1710, although the Acadians never swore allegiance to the British crown; many were expelled, 1755-65. The American colonies didn't extend very far west. French-held Fort Duquesne was in present-day Pittsburgh.

Perhaps some French soldiers remained in Canada at the end of the war, but once Great Britain took control, no new settlers came from France. The population of about 60,000 French-Canadians at the beginning of the war took on no new French blood, which is why I say that we're related to nearly every descendant of that small French-Canadian population.

Should you wonder how we're related to Toussaint Charbonneau and his Shoshone wife Sacajawea, guides for the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-6, here it is: Olivier the Immigrant (8th ggf) had Michel (1666-1724), who had Michel (b.1799), who had Jean Baptiste (b. 1727), who may have been a voyageur (as were many Charbonneau men, who didn't inherit farms), for he died at Fort Detroit in 1794, then a frontier settlement. (Our ancestress Jane Stephenson was captured by the Shawnee in 1792 in Kentucky and taken to Detroit, where she was forced to marry a French-Canadian fur trapper, before her rescue by her brother. HERE ) Jean Baptiste was the father of Toussaint, born 1767 at Boucheville near Montreal, making him our 3rd cousin 6X removed. As a child I reveled in Sacajawea's story and dressed as her one Halloween. I did think we had a closer relationship though.

Statue of Sacajawea

And that brings us to our 5th great-grandfather, Olivier Baptiste Charbonneau, born in 1736 at St-François-de-Sales, died in 1812. He married Marie Josephe Bélanger (1737-1809) in 1757. They had at least six children, including our 4th great-grandfather, Olivier Baptiste Charbonneau (1760-1836), who married Charlotte Gravel (1764-1811) in 1784. These ancestors were farmers, living in Laval and in other sites on Île Jésus, close to Montreal. Numerous generations were buried in the St-François-de-Sales old cemetery. Each couple lost children. Olivier and Charlotte appear to have lost six of their eleven children to infant mortality. In 1962 all remains were exhumed and reburied in a new cemetery. There were no headstones for our early ancestors, anyway, so no need to search for them should you visit Montreal.

Allegedly the ruins of the original St-François-de-Sales church on
Île Jésus where our ancestors worshiped and were buried. Maybe it burned. No ruins now.

Our 3rd great-grandfather, Alexis Baptiste Charbonneau, born in 1795, survived until 1883, marrying Marie Louise Larcheveque (1798-after 1861) in 1819 at Longue Pointe, about six miles from Montreal. He was listed in the marriage bans as a 'labour' (plowman), while his father was called a 'cultivateur' (farmer), so Alexis must still have been  on the family farm at the time of his marriage.

St. François d'Assise de la Longue Pointe Catholic Church where Alexis Baptiste Charbonneau married Marie Louise Larcheveque in 1819

Our 2nd great-grandfather, Joseph Olivier Charbonneau, was the eldest child of Alexis and Marie Louise, born in 1820 at Laval. He married Marie Marguerite Therrien (1828-1904) in 1849. In the 1861 census Joseph's parents, Alexis and Marie Louise, were living with his family, but not heading it.  Maybe they were there as a help rather than as a burden, for Joseph and Marie Marguerite had a large family of seven boys, which included our great-grandfather, Charles Omer (1863-1913), who moved to North Dakota and fathered Charlie and Fred Charbonneau. And with that, we've come full circle. Our family story seems monotonous, seven generations of Charbonneaus remaining in the same place for 200 years, but there's a certain charm in belonging to a place. It must have been difficult for Charles Omer, young though he was, to leave Quebec for North Dakota, despite countless collateral voyageur ancestors having trod the Dakota prairies.

After Fred left Dad, Raouel and Evelyn in Spokane, he went up to Canada. In the 1920 Rolette County census, Fred had owned his own farm, but it was mortgaged; perhaps he'd lost it and had no reason to return to North Dakota to live. He did return to visit.  Below is a photo of his mother Lumina, numerous siblings, and his grown son Raouel, taken in 1938 for Lumina's 70th birthday. 

L to R: Rosella Marie Ducatt; Charlie behind Lumina; Joseph Ducatt; Romeo and wife Frances (Schuchard); Angelina (glasses) in front of husband Horace Mathews; Laura in front of husband Elie Jalbert; Ettienne behind wife Marie Evelyn (Croteau); Zenon Durocher and wife Merilda; Oliva and wife Edith Mary (Park), who did so much research. Front Row: Rene, Raouel and his father Fred Charbonneau

The next year Raouel enlisted in the army, spending much of the duration of the war in Panama, commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant before leaving the service. 

Fred married Betsy Otilla Wetterstrand (1909 ND-1997 Sask.) in Saskatchewan and had three sons, LeRoy (1943-), Wendell (1948-) and Perry (1949-1996). They farmed near Simmie, Saskatchewan.

Perry, Fred, LeRoy, Betsy and Wendell Charbonneau, 1961.

I met Fred in the summer of 1962 or '63 when Raouel brought him up to see Dad. Dad and Mom weren't home and I remember the meeting  outside as awkward. "This here's your granddad," Raouel said. We shook hands. Raouel asked that Dad come his house in the valley to see his father, but Dad didn't go. Too much old pain, I suppose, to forgive what Dad viewed as an abandonment. Curiously, in 1968 LeRoy discovered he and his brothers had siblings when he spied a letter to Fred from Raouel. Sometime in the early 1980s, Raouel and Evie brought Wendall up to see Dad, and Mom said Dad was pleased with the visit. 

Siblings Wendell Charbonneau, Evie Mallonee and Al Charbonneau,1983

Fred was an avid cribbage player. So was Dad. A shame they never got together for a game.

Fred playing cribbage.

I met Wendell at Dad's funeral in 1994. Surprised that he'd come down from Canada, I exclaimed that he bore a strong resemblance to Dad, but later Mom said Wendell looked like Betsy. I still see a resemblance. There began an exchange of Christmas cards and letters, and I've been friends on Facebook with Wendell's wife Sandy and LeRoy's wife JoAnn, and through them with Wendell and LeRoy . . . for some time now.  Kinship . . . it can be a good experience.

Fr. Row: Nick, Sharon, Red and Mary Agnes (Raney) Charbonneau. Bk row: Rich, Chuck, John, Tom, Greg, Paul. 1970

Raouel Charbonneau, wife Jackie. Top right: children Garry, Colin, Nadine below them, and Michael 2nd from left. Wives and lots of grandchildren. 1995

Evie's deceased children, Ron and Joanne Mallonee (and kitten), summer, 1962

Siblings Evie, Wendell, LeRoy, Perry and Raouel, May 1989

 Many thanks to LeRoy and JoAnn Charbonneau up in Saskatchewan for contributing photos and information on our family.

We'll close with a French-Canadian-Métis fur trade song: "À la Claire Fontaine," HERE