{"id":474,"date":"2019-07-17T17:19:48","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T22:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/?p=474"},"modified":"2021-10-28T15:40:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T15:40:10","slug":"the-belangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/07\/17\/the-belangers\/","title":{"rendered":"The B\u00e9langers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here is a photographic exercise for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Augustin, the gentleman pictured here, never worked for the\nBlonger brothers, never drank with them, was never swindled by them, never took\na bribe from them or investigated them. In his entire life he probably never\nheard their names once and he almost certainly never met any of them. But he is\nimportant to the story. Take a few moments to examine the photograph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looks strangely familiar, doesn’t he? The sad eyes, the prominent\nnose, the sloping shoulders and round belly. Does he remind you of anyone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Augustin lived his life as a farmer near the tiny town of\nSaint-Polycarpe in southern Quebec. He’s not famous, except maybe within his\nfamily for fathering 11 children and living to the age of 97. But he may be in\na book someday. He is Augustin B\u00e9langer \u2014 uncle of the Famous Blonger\nBros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have no photo of his brother Simon, patriarch of the\nBlonger family, but the fact that we now have a photo of Augustin signals the\nend of a very long search for Simon’s parents. Work toward that end has been on\nand off (mostly off) for more than 40 years. But once the story of the Blongers\nattracted our attention in 2003, fleshing out their ancestry became a primary goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have speculated about Simon’s\nFrench-Canadian origins<\/a> before on this website. Multiple sources indicated\nthat Simon was born in Canada around 1810, but that was all we had to go on. We\nassumed that his name was originally spelled B\u00e9langer. But there was no record\nof his marriage, nor birth records for any of his children. We could have made\nan educated guess and connected our family tree to one of several potential\nSimon B\u00e9langers living in Canada during that time period and no one would have\nbeen the wiser. But we wanted solid evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ll spare you the details of how the slowly accumulating DNA evidence \u2014 pieced together from fourth and fifth and sixth cousins \u2014 helped us fill in the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. I’ll just say that without DNA testing and the huge database of tests and testers now in place, we would never have been able to make that last link between the Simon we have known for so long \u2014 the husband of Judith Kennedy and father of 13 Blonger children \u2014 and the infant found in the baptismal records of Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu: Simon B\u00e9langer, born December 30, 1814, the son of Antoine B\u00e9langer and his wife Marie Elisabeth Coderre Lacaillade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Simon Belonger’s baptismal record, 1814. How’s your French? <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu is a farm community on the banks\nof Richelieu River near Montreal. We don’t know how long Simon worked the land\nthere, but sometime before 1836 he left Quebec and headed south. We imagine him\nas a voyageur, laying a canoe in the river and paddling the 60 miles upstream to\nLake Champlain, crossing into the United States after two or three days’\njourney. But whether he traveled by canoe, by oxcart, or by foot, Simon ended\nup in northern Vermont, first in the town of Georgia and then Swanton, where he\nraised a family. Perhaps with his migration he had followed his father’s\nexample. Antoine’s decision to leave his ancestral home in the northern village\nof L’Islet and make his way southward put Simon in position to make that\nlife-altering move to America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At L’Islet the B\u00e9langers were one of the founding families of New France. There the immigrant Fran\u00e7ois B\u00e9langer, who had crossed the Atlantic in 1634 with a small group of settlers from Normandy, was in 1677 made seigneur<\/em> of an 18-square-mile tract on the shore of the St. Laurence River. Once a simple mason, now “lord of the manor” of Bonsecours, Fran\u00e7ois administered its affairs, renting long-lot parcels to other settlers, operating a grist mill, and receiving part of their harvest and their labor for his efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
L’Islet’s location north of Quebec City. Fran\u00e7ois B\u00e9langer’s first land holding was at Ch\u00e2teau-Richer on the opposite side of the St. Laurence River.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Map of the manor at Bonsecours (L’Islet). The “domaine” in the center was reserved for Fran\u00e7ois, the seigneur<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Generations of cultivateurs<\/em> followed. Louis B\u00e9langer was\nborn at L’Islet in 1652, as was his son Pierre in 1700, and Pierre’s son\nJean-Gabriel in 1736. The first two were also titled seigneur<\/em>. But by\nthe time Antoine was born in 1775, the land may have been become too crowded to\nsupport a fifth generation of B\u00e9langers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Antoine was prolific, fathering eight children by his first wife at L’Islet before heading south toward Montreal. He remarried at La Pr\u00e9sentation, to Marie Elisabeth (Isabelle), who bore Simon, Augustin, young Isabelle, and then in 1820 an infant son, whom she followed into death five days later, just 23 years of age. Antoine carried on, marrying once again and returning to L’Islet to father one more child. He died sometime between 1839 and 1842. Curiously, his passing was not recorded in the church books of Quebec, perhaps indicating that he followed his son to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is more to Simon’s family tree than the six ancestors we have mentioned. Much more. The record keeping system of the Catholic Church in Quebec was remarkably robust. It allowed us to fill Simon’s tree in every line out to four generations and in most lines out to six generations or more. Surprisingly, even though the French-Canadian population is characterized by long-term endogamy, none of Simon’s nearly 200 identifiable ancestors appears on the tree more than once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With one mystery solved, another remains: the ancestry of\nJudith Kennedy, mother of the Blonger Bros., raised in an Irish nunnery,\nimmigrant in the 1830s. DNA has allowed us to make some progress there\nrecently, but that story must wait for another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Simon now has ancestors…and this is just the first page.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Thanks<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Many thanks to the genealogists in the family: Pam Cote, my sixth cousin, for shaking her own family tree, which includes B\u00e9langers in three separate lines, and suggesting that Simon of St-Denis-sur-Richelieu was the most likely candidate; and Louise Lalonde McDonald, fourth cousin once removed and a descendant of Augustin, for posting his photo on Ancestry and giving us permission to repost it here. Thanks also to Jim Belanger, a descendant of early settler Nicolas B\u00e9langer, who may or may not be Fran\u00e7ois’s son, for his excellent summary of Fran\u00e7ois’s life on the B\u00e9langer Family Site<\/a>. And to several distant cousins hither and yon: you may never read this blog post, but the contribution of your DNA was essential in cracking this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tribute<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As I note this important milestone in our research, I would\nlike to remember two family members who contributed immensely to our research,\nboth of whom passed away during my long hiatus from this site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2003, the very first person to answer my request for help\nin a genealogy.com forum, 18 days after my discovery of Lou Blonger’s criminal\npast, was Carolyn Conrad Salsman. Carolyn was the Belonger family genealogist, collecting\nphotographs, obituaries, and copies of vital records long before Ancestry\nprovided instant access. Carolyn knew a lot about the descendants of Michael\nBelonger, but like apparently everyone else in the family knew nothing about\nthe fate of his brothers, who left Wisconsin for the Wild West. Like us, she\nwas astounded by the details of their lives and eager to learn more. One\ndocument Carolyn provided was especially intriguing: we called it the Armstrong Account<\/a>.\nIn it, Joe Blonger spins tall tales about his life \u2014 many of which later proved to be\ntrue<\/a>. Carolyn and I talked on the phone many times, but despite living less\nthan 100 miles apart we never met in person, much to my regret. I had not heard\nfrom Carolyn for a few years when she died in 2013. She would have loved knowing\nabout her B\u00e9langer ancestry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Swinbank was not a genealogist, and I don’t remember\nexactly how we ended up corresponding. But as a descendant of Mary Catherine,\nlittle sister of the Blonger Bros., he was interested in their story and provided\na single document of enormous value: a transcription of the Swinbank family\nBible<\/a> that contained vital information (names, dates, and places) for Simon\nBelonger and his children. Joe died in 2010 and his daughter Barbara wrote to let\nme know soon afterward, but my posts had already become infrequent and his\npassing was not noted here at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Carolyn, my second cousin once removed, and Joe, my\nsecond cousin twice removed, you have my eternal gratitude, and may you both rest\nin peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 SJ \u2013 7\/17\/2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a photographic exercise for you. Augustin, the gentleman pictured here, never worked for the Blonger brothers, never drank with them, was never swindled by them, never took a bribe from them or investigated them. In his entire life he probably never heard their names once and he almost certainly never met any of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blongerbros.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}