Death at Feast

From the Lowell Sun, 30 June 1903, P 7:

"Mother Dies at Her Daughter’s Wedding

Mrs. Charles Pilotte of Kenwood

Succumbed Suddenly to Heart Disease

When the laughter and merriment held undisputed sway throughout the morning hours yesterday at the comfortable house of Mr. Charles Pilotte, the original settler at Kenwood, sorrow and tears were fair’s sad substitute as the day closed. In the morning Mr. Pilotte gave away in marriage the last of his daughters to leave the paternal roof, while in the evening he stood beside the bier of his devoted wife, Mrs. Adele Pilotte, aged 68 years, who was stricken down with paralysis of the heart just as the nuptial festivities were at their height.

Her daughter, Miss Lydia Pilotte, was united in marriage with Mr. Arthur Latour, a popular young resident of this city at 7:30 o’clock in the morning, the nuptial mass being celebrated at St. Joseph’s Church on Lee street. After the ceremony the bridal party repaired to the house of the bride’s parents in Kenwood where a wedding breakfast was served. None was in better health and spirits during the morning than Mrs. Pilotte. It was planned to have a wedding reception at Belle Gueve in the evening to which many friends had been invited, and Mrs. Pilotte jokingly remarked that she would dance at the wedding of the last of her daughters.

But shortly after dinner, about 2 o’clock, she was suddenly stricken down and became unconscious. Medical aid was summoned and it was found that she was suffering from paralysis of the heart and could not recover. A clergyman administered the last rites of the Catholic Church and she passed away at 7 o’clock in the evening.

Mrs. Pilotte is survived by her husband and nine children, five sons and four daughters. One of the sons is Mr. Alfred Pilotte of the Sun mechanical department.”

Charles and Adele Pilotte are the parents of my great-grandfather Maurice Pilotte. A few weeks ago Mom and I were searching church records from Richmond Quebec where Maurice and Claudia Pilotte were married. One of the things that was puzzling to me was the way that all mention of Pilotte family birth, death and marriages vanished from that church after about 1889. The answer was that almost every member of the family moved to Lowell, MA.

This week I found the somewhat sensationalized reporting on the wedding day death of Adele Boivin Pilotte. The newspaper writer made quite a story of the grim irony of the event which juxtaposed the joy of a child's wedding with the grief of a parent's death. The picture became even darker when I located an obituary for the bride of the wedding feast, Lydia Pilotte Latour. She died a short nine years later on February 26, 1912 at the young age of 32, leaving four small children.

Charles Pilotte passed away in December, 1917 at the age of 75. The Sun obituary mentions three daughters Mrs. A Gosselin of Canada, Mrs A. (Amedee) Caron and Mrs. Aime Demers of Lowell; as well as three sons, Maurice, Joseph and Alfred of Lowell. The obituary also said that Charles Pilotte had been a bricklayer.

My research thus far uncovered a marriage record for Charles and Adele Boivin Pilotte on 7 Jan 1862 at Bagotville, QC. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, Bagotville is a good deal north of the banks of the St. Lawrence where Charles was born in 1842. It was an even greater distance (over 200 miles) to Richmond, QC, where most of the Pilotte family lived in the 1860's where Maurice and Claudia were married. Now I find that my great-great grandparents relocated their lives once more to Lowell.

We are still waiting on the Bagotville Church records to find out more about this family. I am sure that they had at least nine children, perhaps more. If the newspaper obituary is right, Adele was born in 1835 and was 7 years older than Charles. She had her youngest daughter, Lydia, in 1879 when she was 44 or 45. Maurice, my great-grandfather, was the oldest child, born in 1862.

The Degree Team of 1918

The following story was published in the Lowell Sun on May 27, 1918:

"The degree team of Court Blanch de Castile, Foresters Franco-Americans, gave a delightful musical at C.M.A.C. hall Friday night. There was a large attendance including visitors from out of town and the program was carried out in a manner that reflected much credit on the participants. The program was as follows:
Opening number by Miss Alice Dallaire; address of welcome by J.H. Guillet, former supreme chief of the order; singing by the degree team, with Miss Hermine Ducharme, soloist; “Joan of Arc,” singing and declamation, with tableau by Misses Louise Herbert, Blanche Bisaillon, Anita R. Robillard, Aurore Parent, Jeanette McCarthy, Yvonne McCarthy, Jeanette d’are Alary, Irene and Dora Faucher: singing by W. Demers, accompanied by Miss Ida Grenier; singing, Miss Delia Thibault; address, Maxine Lepine; drill by the degree team commanded by Alphonse Vallerand; singing by the team with Miss Lucienne Geoffroy as soloist.
The members of the team are Misses Katie Chamberland, Yvonne Perrault, Hermine Ducharme, Maria Ducharme, Anna Topping, Laura Emond, Vitaline Martineau, Georgina Grenier, Mrs. Guerette, Misses Rose Roux, M. Damphouse, Minnie Noval, Albertine Asselin, Eva St. Gelasis and Eva Emond."

The team members included my grandmother, Laura Emond and her sister Eva. Mom and I found a professionally photographed postcard of grandma in a uniform. She is holding what looks like a French tricolor. The postcard has an imprint of the photographer as "Geo. Lemire". We think this is her uniform when she was in the Foresters' Degree Team.

I did some additional research with the library edition of Newspaper Archives online and learned that the French Order of the Foresters was founded in 1905. The first supreme forester was a prominent attorney from Lowell, MA. By 1910 the organization had over 50 chapters and 10,000 members. The Foresters was a mutual benefit society that collected dues and paid sickness and death benefits. It also was a social organization with twice a month meetings, social gatherings and performances.

The Blanche de Castille chapter my grandmother belonged to was one of the few that was made up entirely of women. It was organized in 1908. According to the Sun, "A feature with them is the many entertainments held under their auspices."

Jackie Pilot and Daddy

This picture of Mom with Grandpa Pilot on the swing was taken in the backyard of a neighbor on Mendota St., Mansfield. Estimated time of picture was 1934.

Tip Toe To the Cellar

One of the fun things about genealogy research is looking through boxes stored away for years and finding things you have never seen or have forgotten. Mom and I spent a day looking through her house and reviewing photo albumns. She opened some boxes in her basement and found some things I didn't remember. One interesting item was a detailed scrap book Grandma Vogel made about Dad's U.S. Army days. It contains photos, telegrams and letters home and even the grades he received in his classes in Georgia.

This is a shot of Jaquelyn Pilot Vogel's dancing days.

My research continues to focus on the French-Canadian side of the family. More photos of the Pilot and Emond side will follow.

Visitors from New England

Grandpa Joe Pilot visited us with these two relatives who had their picture taken in the backyard at Edgewood Rd. Mom thinks that the lady on the left is Aunt Lumina Lussier, Joe's oldest sister. The lady on the right may be one of her daughters. Another photo found which appears to be taken the same day shows only five of us kids and Mom pregnant with Joyce. That would date this photo in the summer of 1961.

Lumina Pilotte Lussier was Grandpa Joe Pilot's oldest sister She was born in Richmond, Quebec before the family immigrated to Lowell, MA. Mom and I have been a bit confused about the names/identies of grandpa's two sisters because we found the church record of Lumina's baptism which gives her baptismal name as Marie Claire. Grandpa's other sister was Marie Pilotte Michaud. We have always referred to her as Marie Claire. Marie was born in Massachusetts as was grandpa.

I pulled up the Pilotte family portrait from 1910 and cropped out Joe and the sister that I think may be Lumina. Look at the shape of her face in both photos. I also see a strong resemblance in the lady on the right of the 1961 snapshot to the 1910 shot. On Friday I was at Tallmadge Library and used the Newspaper Archive database and found a clue about the mystery of the sisters' names. Lumina's obituary from the Lowell Sun on 23 June 1976 listed her name as "Lumina M.C. (Pilotte) Lussier." It seems likely that this older sister was Lumina Marie Claire. The next item of information I would like to dig up is a birth certificate for Marie, to see what her full name was.

Joe and Laura Pilot at the Mill

Mom did some research on clothing to help date this photo as 1929, based on the cloche hat and the drape of the coat Laura Pilot is wearing. She and Joe are standing in front of what appears to be a typical New England mill. Another photo we have was obviously taken the same day at the same location and has Laura's neice, Grace Fortin. Because Grace lived in Lowell, we feel that the shot was taken there. Laura and Joe did not move to Mansfield, Ohio until 1933.

Joseph Pilot and Laura Emond Wedding

Joseph Pilot and Laura Emond were married at Middleton, CT on November 24, 1927. The people in the foreground of this wedding photo are from left Julia Fortin, maid of honor and Laura’s niece; Joe, Laura, and John Moriarity, best man. Of the bridesmaids in the second row we can only identify the one on the far right as Grace Fortin. Julia and Grace were the daughters of Laura’s sister, Albertine. Albertine was the oldest of the Emond siblings and Laura was the second youngest, so Albertine's children were close in age to Laura.

Pilotte Family Research

Rootsweb.com has a section with family trees uploaded by both amateur and professional genealogists. The web site clearly states that there is no guarantee of the accuracy of the information. I have downloaded and printed a number of these family trees which are known as GEDCOM’s, but I have resisted using the unsupported information in building my own family tree in the Personal Ancestral File I am using as my database. However, these GEDCOM files have been extremely valuable to me in guiding my own research.

This past month I have been working on researching the Pilotte family. I located two GEDCOM’s which mentioned Maurice Pilotte, my great-grandfather. I started out this project with the report from the professional genealogist that listed his parents as Charles Pilot and Adele Boivin. The GEDCOM from a Paul Lareau confirmed the data I already had and traced Charles parents as Nicolas Pilote and Marie Victoire Gobeil, who were married at Malbaie, Charlevoix, Quebec on 7 April 1818.

This month I ordered a microfilm of the Loiselle Marriage Index at the Family History Center in the Church of Latter-day Saints at Tallmadge. This is a microfilm of a series of 3 by 5 cards which record marriages in Quebec. They were compiled from church records and list the names of the bride and groom, their parents’ names and the date and location of the wedding. This information can be used to order the church records, like the ones Mom and I searched from St Bibiane-de-Richmond, where Maurice and Claudia Dionne were married in 1886. We looked back far enough to determine that neither Maurice nor Claudia were baptized in Richmond, which is located between Montreal and the City of Quebec, about halfway between the St Laurence River and the northern border of Vermont.

Maurice’s father, Charles, was born in Malbaie in 1842. In 1862 he married Maurice’s mother in Bagotville , QC, which is some distance due north of Malbaie. Charles and Adele Boivin wound up in Richmond, which was 260 miles away from Bagotville by the time that Maurice and Claudia Dionne were married there in 1886. Prior to the 1840’s it appears that the Pilotte family lived on the north shore of the St Laurence across from Riviere du Loup, where the Emond family was located.

Much of this information comes from research done by others, but it gives me a place to look and make my own confirmation of the details. I am waiting on new microfilm of the St Alphonse Church in Bagotville, where I hope to find the record of Charles and Adele’s wedding and baptism records for Maurice and his brothers and sisters.