The Storyline
Real families. Real discoveries. Real stories.
The Lieutenant and the Voyageurs
In the spring of 1820, Lieutenant John Franklin spent four months at Fort Chipewyan trying to hire French-Canadian voyageurs willing to paddle him toward an unmapped Arctic coast. Some agreed. Some refused — sensibly, since a North West Company crew had recently been killed in the same country. And in July, before the party went north, Franklin discharged three Canadians and paid them off. He named the sixteen who went. He did not name the three who didn't, and one line in a company ledger may be all that survives of one of them.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: From Research to Story
What Happens When A Fille du Roi Dies in Childbirth?
On May 30, 1694, the curé of Pointe-aux-Trembles wrote two entries on one page: a burial and a baptism, the same family, the same ink. The woman was Françoise Baiselat, a Fille du Roi of 1668. The child was her son François. What came after — three estates, children from three marriages, a widower who could not sign his name, and a priest still chasing the funeral bill three years on — is recorded in the notarial acts, and it is the part the register does not tell you.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: From Research to Story