52 Ancestors Week 10: Worship

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Religion played an important role in the lives of many of our ancestors. Write about how a person's faith impacted their life, how an ancestor was involved with their church, or a discovery you've made in church records.

Going to the Chapel of Love....

   

 The topic of religion, like politics, is a minefield you have to be careful to cross on the Internet. It's one of those topics where if you say the wrong thing, it can be taken the wrong way. The other topics are of course: politics, child-rearing and fandoms. ESPECIALLY FANDOMS! With that in mind, I'm going to go a different route and talk about some cool things I've found over on Ancestry.

    As you may or may not know, I come from a predominantly Catholic family. Shocking, I know. My dad's side is entirely Catholic and my mom's side is too for the most part. I don't really consider myself a practicing Catholic even though I've gone to an Augustinian college. The nuns there were pretty cool and no I didn't find myself on the business end of one of their rulers. It was a yardstick. Church was more or less an option growing up. We'd go for funerals and weddings. That was about it. My ancestors on the other hand were all about the church and lately some of those records were popping up as hints on Ancestry.

    Take my great-grandmother, Henrietta Legault for example. Recently a hint for her showed up on Ancestry and I thought it would be worth checking out. Most hints are. The hint was in the "Massachusetts, U.S., Boston Archdiocese Roman Catholic Sacramental Records from 1789 to 1920" directory. The record, despite not having a scan or anything attached, appeared to be Henrietta's baptismal record when she was baptized in Lynn, Massachusetts.

    Henrietta was born on November 20th, 1892 to Antoine Legault and Lucie Cadran in the city of Lynn. That wasn't news. What was interesting and worth noting was that she was apparently baptized the same day she was born.

    It was a bit of a surprise for me to find that because I thought the practice of baptizing a baby on the day of their birth normally occurred in Italy and in Quebec. It happened in America? Who knew? You learn something new every day! My initial reaction was that it was pretty cool and probably a timesaver if you think about it. I jest. Finding the record of her baptism also gave me a clue as to what her birth name was according to the church.

    Henrietta was baptized Francoise Henriette Legault on November 20th, 1892. This was a bit of a revelation for me because my mother always knew her as Henrietta Frances. In life, she more than likely went by that name and on various censuses she was known even as "Hattie." "Hattie" is of course a nickname for Henrietta. 

    I also thought this document was interesting in that it gave me yet another spelling for the last name "Cadran". I swear that last name seems to have no definitive spelling. Just today I had to edit some Cadrin profiles on Wikitree to "Catrin".  I think I'm up to at least half a dozen spellings for that name. The quest for the definitive spelling will have to wait for another day.

    Unfortunately, the actual scan of the document is behind a paywall on AmericanAncestors.org. That's not too big of an issue because I'm sure there are other ways to finding the record. Aside from paying for a subscription, I could always go down to Lynn and look for the church records myself. It's not that far and it could be worth the adventure now that Covid restrictions are being lifted nationwide.

50th in 1963. So many things in
pop culture happened that year.

    It really shouldn't surprise anyone that my French-Canadian side is very Catholic. After all Henrietta's grandmother, my 3rd great-grandmother, Marie Eulalie Bibeau was heavily involved with the French-Canadian community in Haverhill and that included the church.  I don't like putting words in anyones' mouths but I am pretty sure she was excited to find out that her granddaughter was baptized the same day she was born.

    While the discovery confirmed a few things for me, new questions started to emerge. For example, when Henrietta married Austin in 1913, did they have a Catholic ceremony? To answer that question, one would only have to look at the marriage certificate to find that they were married by a Justice of the Peace.

    That's pretty interesting in and of itself. But, of course it led to more questions. Austin never converted to Catholicism. So, I wonder.... Did they eventually get married in a church? There were several Catholic churches in Haverhill at the time and many are still standing like the All Saints Church, the church my grandma Ollie attended.

    Grandma Ollie's sacramental record was another one I found. For some reason these records from Haverhill were popping out of the woodwork. I'm not sure why. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, either! These records are great!

    Being born in 1920, her record was near the end of the archive. However, unlike Henrietta's there was a slight discrepancies I noticed. The document said she was born in Chelsea when she was definitely born in Haverhill. That might have been where the baptism took place. Her parents were also listed.

    Regardless, I found it and I bet I could find the actual document by either paying for it OR by looking for it somewhere in the archdiocese.  In this case, it might be easier to get it from American Ancestors.

    I've been finding that sacramental records have been helpful in not only understanding their faiths with they were born but those of their parents as well. Of course this is old news to me. But, if you were just researching the families in my tree, you'd find many Catholics and after I added those sources to the tree, I began to get records for others like my grandmothers' sisters. The records also helped to identify where they eventually went to church on Sundays. That's always helpful. I knew my grandmother attended mass at All Saints and so did her sisters. 

    So, if you have Catholic ancestors in Massachusetts I suggest you make use of the great resource. It's not a bad research tool and it's good to see Ancestry work with AmericanAncestors on such a great research project because it helps someone like me who has an overwhelming amount of Catholic ancestors and someone who's just interested in researching Catholics. Check out the sites and see what you can find.

  

    It should be noted that sometimes the documents may be in Latin. You might get the Latin names of the person. But, usually you'll get the anglicized or the Italian/French name of the person you are looking for. And it's also important to keep in mind that the Latin name wouldn't necessarily be the name they used in life. It's the same with Italy and Quebec. They'd use the name on their civic record.

Have fun digging and I'll see ya next time!