52 Ancestors Week 7: Favorite Discovery

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 7's theme is "Favorite Discovery." What is the neatest thing you've found while exploring your family's history? What makes you smile even now thinking about it?

In hindsight, I probably should have used the Star Trek: Discovery font

I've already written about several of my favorite discoveries in the blog before. This blog might be a little tricky to write because I don't really like to play favorites. Everything I find, to me, is an amazing discovery. Large or small, it doesn't matter. Last year, I wrote about how my mother and I discovered my 2x great-grandmother Caterina Coppola's birth document from San Pietro a Maida in a metal box. I've already written about how I came into contact with family still living in Italy. These things come in threes. What was the third great discovery? Well....

One of my favorite discoveries actually involves the boat my parents own called "Toothfairy". My dad's a dentist. We were bound to have a boat with a tooth related name. It was either that or call it the "The Rusty Molar". For as long as I could remember, my family has had a boat at Rings Island Marina, a marina overlooking the small city of Newburyport, Massachusetts.

When I was a kid, there used to be a candy store there....

The marina was once called "Dawn Mari-na" and was owned by a man named Jim Corbin. Growing up, my family and I would spend weekends in the summer fishing on the Merrimack or even out in the open ocean. Jim would even give everyone coffee and donuts (From Dunkies of course.) and host huge gettogethers. He was, in many respects, a very nice guy. He and his wife were gracious hosts to everyone who docked at his marina and he didn't mind kids getting into trouble. ;-) I've got stories.

Sadly, Jim passed away in 2008. His son took over the business and renamed the place "Rings Island". Which, I admit is odd because the marina isn't even *ON* an island. It made little sense. I'd have kept the pun.....

Years later, my parents were talking to Jim's son about various things that needed to be done for their boat and somehow the topic of his grandmother came up in the conversation. His paternal grandmother was a woman named Irene Evelyn Legault. The bells in my mother's head rang like crazy. Her grandmother was Henrietta Legault, daughter of Antoine Legault. Was there a connection? Only her freelance genealogist son could find out for sure!

Irene Legault in the 1910 census.

When I saw my mother after that meeting, she asked me if I could look up Irene Legault on Familysearch. I was like "Ma, do you have any idea how many Irene Legaults there were?" Legault is a very common French name. She admitted it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. But, she was going to help me out. The new owner gave her some details worth looking into.

I sighed and said I would check things out. What did I have to lose? Pride? A good meal? She told me Irene lived in Haverhill, Massachuetts. I chuckled. Of course she lived in Haverhill. It's the center of the universe! So, I looked her up and saw her living with her parents, Felix Joseph Legault and Alvina Lefebvre in the census records. I still couldn't find a connection. I had my doubts. But, the name "Felix" rang a bell. I ended up looking for him and saw that his parents were Felix Napoleon Legault and Matilde Therrien.

I still wasn't quite there, yet. Felix was born on August 2nd, 1855 in Quebec. What was our connection? What was he doing in Haverhill? Luckily, I didn't have long to wait for the answer. A new DNA match popped up and I checked out the match's tree. She did some research on the Legaults and I saw where we connected. The match found his marriage record and on it were his parents, Jacques Legault and Caroline Delphine Gourgon, my 3x great-grandparents!

Felix Legault, Evelyn Vincent and Matilde Therrien

Jacques and Caroline were Antoine's parents. That meant that Felix here was Antoine's brother. The DNA match was a third cousin once removed. The gears in my head turned. I showed my mom the evidence and all that I found. It then clicked! Jim Corbin, the man who owned the marina and gave the kids a ton of donuts was my third cousin once removed!

This blew my mind. Faster than you can sing "It's a Small World", I rechecked everything and it all added up. I needed to be absolutely sure that this was real.

1. The DNA match was a small 8 cM match with me. But, with my mother she was at 11 cMs. Still counts and is still in the realm of possibility. See the Shared cM project for details.

2. His marriage and baptismal records in Drouin showed his parents were Jacques and Delphine.

3. He lived in Haverhill alongside his brother and his family.

4. DNA does *NOT* lie.

So there you have it. I'm related to the owners of the marina where I spent many summers growing up. This doesn't give us a discount or anything. This was just a really cool discovery. My only regret is that we never got the chance to share this information with James. I'm sure he would have gotten a kick out of it. His son sure did. And now I am going to have "It's a Small World" stuck in my head. I am sure you are as well! Still, talk about a deep cut into my childhood.

The bow of the Toothfairy! Full speed ahead!