The Storyline
Real families. Real discoveries. Real stories.
Joseph Claude Guilbault: Born in the Pays d’en Haut
His father was buried as a mason. His great-uncle as a farmer. Every other man in the extended Guilbault voyageur family had a Quebec identity to return to when the trade years ended. Joseph Claude Guilbault had one word — the only professional identity he had ever brought to a Quebec parish, the only one that was true. Born in the pays d'en haut in June 1797, he entered the North West Company at fifteen, paddled to Peace River as HBC devant in 1820, lived in the Red River Métis community at White Horse Plain in the winter of 1832–33, and died at Oka on January 29, 1833. The Grand Chief of the Algonquins and his son stood witness at his burial. The priest wrote Voyageur. He got it exactly right.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line: Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut
Three Contracts, Twenty Years, One Missing Folio
The original case study documented Paul Guilbault père in the Athabasca at fifty-nine, in two pages of a company ledger, with not a single Quebec record to confirm it. That was the case. It isn't the complete case anymore. Two new servants' contracts in HBCA F.5 move his documented NWC career back twenty years — to age forty, under Roderick McKenzie, paddling to Great Slave Lake. And they raise a question about his brother Gabriel: more account book entries, five years of continuous service, and no contract at all. The missing folio that sits right before Paul's may hold the answer.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line: Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut
From Death Rapids to Saint Paul Mission: Hilaire Guilbault
In September 1838, Hilaire Guilbault of Verchères, Québec, survived the worst disaster on the Columbia River brigades — the bateau capsizing at Les Dalles des Morts that killed twelve people, including the wife of Governor Sir George Simpson. He did not go home. Four years later he gave sworn testimony before James Douglas at Cowlitz Farm. Six months after that he stood godfather at Saint Paul Mission. Three documents tell the arc of a life built from the wreckage of a river crossing.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line: Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut — and the Oregon Country
The Munnick Annotations:Reading Harriet Duncan Munnick
Harriet Duncan Munnick spent decades turning sparse sacramental registers into something no single archive could produce on its own — a record of who the people of French Prairie actually were, where they came from, and what happened to them. The Catholic Church Records of the Pacific Northwest are the essential finding tool for fur trade genealogy in the Oregon Country. This post is a practical guide to reading them: how the B-, M-, S-, and A- annotation system works, how to use transcription and annotation as separate evidentiary layers, how to track a name through its phonetic variants, and where Munnick can be wrong — and why knowing that makes the resource more useful, not less.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line: Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut — and the Oregon Country
When the Research Comes Full Circle
I thought I was checking a single fact in a published case study. I ended up finding a third Guilbault voyageur, untangling two men named Paul across two generations, and arriving — by a completely different research path — in the same Oregon archive where I had been working for weeks on an entirely different family. The pays d'en haut and French Prairie turned out to be the same story, told from opposite ends.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line: Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut — and the Oregon Country
Paul Guilbault père: The Invisible Voyageur
For forty years, every priest who wrote Paul Guilbault's name into a parish register called him something different — maçon, laboureur, cultivateur, agriculteur — but never voyageur. Thirty records. Five designations. Zero mentions of the interior. Then the Hudson's Bay Company Archives told a different story: ledger F.4/37, page 117. Paul Guilbault, 617 livres, Athabasca district — account settled 1821. "By Lieut Franklin — 100." This is the documentary biography of a man whose Quebec parish records said one thing and whose NWC service ledger said another.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line: Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut
The Brothers Guilbault
Gabriel Guilbault's 1798 baptism record calls him "voyageur et maintenant agriculteur." His brother Paul's records never use that word — not once, in any document, across a lifetime of parish records. Yet both men worked for the North West Company at the same posts, in the same years. What two pages in a Winnipeg archive reveal about a man the Quebec parish system completely erased.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line: Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut
The Lieutenant and the Voyageurs
In spring 1820, Lieutenant John Franklin arrived at Fort Chipewyan needing voyageurs. He recruited from the North West Company and paid through the company books. One ledger entry — "By Lieut Franklin — 100" — connects his first Arctic expedition to a Guilbault brother working the Athabasca district that same season.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line: Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut
Finding Gabriel Guilbaut in the North West Company Records
When I searched the North West Company Account Books Name Index for "Guilb," I found Gabriel Guilbault in three separate records spanning five years—1816, 1820, and 1821. The actual documents reveal exactly what Gabriel purchased from the company store, his wages, and the moment his account was marked "Settled" when the NWC merged with the Hudson's Bay Company. A case study in fur trade genealogy.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : A Research Journey From the Index to the Account Book
The Seven Fires: Understanding Marie Josephte’s Ojibwe Heritage
Before French traders arrived at the St. Mary's Rapids, before the fur trade reshaped the Great Lakes, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe's ancestors had already completed a 500-year journey guided by prophecy—from the Atlantic coast to the land where food grows on water. To understand who she was, we must understand where her people came from.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: From Research to Story
Following the Canoe Routes: How the Fur Trade Families Moved Between the Interior and Quebec
Genealogists researching French-Canadian voyageurs often encounter a puzzling pattern: a man appears in Quebec records, disappears for years, then resurfaces—sometimes with a wife and children who seem to have materialized from nowhere. The explanation lies in the geography of the fur trade. Understanding how these families traveled helps you know where to look for records.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series: A Storyline Genealogy Research Guide
The North West Company: A Genealogist’s Guide to the “Pedlars from Quebec”
From 1779 to 1821, the North West Company employed thousands of French-Canadian men as voyageurs, paddlers, and laborers across a network stretching from Montreal to the Pacific. Their records survive—and they can tell you where your ancestor worked, what he earned, what he purchased, and who he may have married in the pays d'en haut.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series: A Storyline Genealogy Research Guide
Gabriel’s World: Life as a Voyageur in the Pays d'en Haut
What was it actually like to be a voyageur? To paddle 18 hours a day, carry 180 pounds across brutal portages, sleep under an overturned canoe, and spend years in the wilderness waiting to be paid? This was Gabriel Guilbault's life—and understanding it helps us understand the man behind the records.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Baawitigong: The Place of the Rapids
At the St. Mary's River, where Lake Superior tumbles twenty-one feet into the lower Great Lakes, two worlds met. For the Ojibwe, it was Baawitigong—the gathering place. For the voyageurs, it was the strategic gateway to the fur trade interior. Somewhere at this crossroads, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe and Gabriel Guilbault's lives first intersected.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Abitakijikokwe: The Woman Behind the Name
On January 26, 1801, Father Leclerc at L'Annonciation in Oka did something extraordinary: he recorded the full Ojibwe identity of an Indigenous bride—her personal spirit name Abitakijikokwe ("Half-Day Woman") and her tribal affiliation as Saulteaux of Lake Superior. This rare documentation preserved both identifiers when most priests simply wrote "Sauvagesse." Discover what her name means and why this record matters for Métis genealogy.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: When a name carries centuries of meaning.
Saint-Paul-de-Joliette : Where the Story Begins
On October 10, 1798, a voyageur named Gabriel Guilbault brought three children to Saint-Paul-de-Joliette for baptism. They had been born and "ondoyé" (emergency baptized) in the pays d'en haut—the upper country of the fur trade. Their mother was identified as "Josephte Sauvagesse de la nation des Sauteux"—the first documented reference to her Indigenous identity. The story of Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe begins here.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
Sainte-Madeleine-de-Rigaud : Where Her Name Was Lost
In 1801, Father Leclerc at Oka carefully recorded her full Ojibwe name: Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe de la Nation Sauteuse. Twelve years later, when she was buried at Rigaud, she had become simply "Marie Josette Sauvagesse de nation"—an Indigenous woman, unnamed. The contrast tells the story of colonial record-keeping and the erasure of Indigenous identity.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Spaces
L’Annonciation d’Oka : Mission of the Lake of Two Mountains
For three centuries, this Sulpician mission has stood at the confluence of Indigenous and French Canadian cultures. Here, on January 27, 1801, Father Leclerc did something extraordinary: he recorded the full Ojibwe name of an Indigenous bride—Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe de la Nation Sauteuse sur le lac Supérieur—preserving her identity when most priests simply wrote "Sauvagesse."
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Spaces
Ojibwe Baskets, Beads, and Art
When I discovered my Ojibwe 4th great-grandmother, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe, I wasn't prepared for how profoundly that discovery would change the way I understood my family's history. For generations, she had existed only as a shadow in the records—"Sauvagesse," a generic French term meaning "Indigenous woman." No name. No story. No identity.
Then, in a marriage record from 1801, a priest had written her full Ojibwe name: Abitakijikokwe. After 200 years of silence, she emerged from the records with her Indigenous identity intact.
And so began my journey into the world of Ojibwe art—searching for tangible connections to the woman who founded my Métis family line.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies — From Research to Story
The Guilbault Line: Charles Gabriel Guilbault
Before Gabriel Guilbault paddled canoes into the pays d'en haut and married an Ojibwe woman, there was his father—another Gabriel, born Charles Gabriel Guilbault in Quebec City in 1731. This Quebec patriarch married twice, raised four sons to adulthood, and established the family in L'Assomption that would eventually bridge French and Indigenous worlds. His 53-year life span encompassed the British Conquest and the transformation of New France, setting the stage for his son's frontier adventures.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story