The Storyline
Real families. Real discoveries. Real stories.
Joseph Ménard: The Winter He Was Away
In February 1820 a forty-six-year-old farmer from the Lac des Deux-Montagnes signed on to winter in the North-West. Two months later he married again. By the time he was paid off in Montréal the next August, the parish priest at Rigaud had twice written the same words beside his name: Voyageur Hivernant — father absent.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line
Fur Trade Places: Fort William
If your ancestor went west with the North West Company, the name Fort William is probably somewhere in his papers — in the contract he signed, in the ledger that kept his account, sometimes as the last place the books record him. Here is what happened at the company’s Lake Superior depot, 1801–1821, and how to read it in a voyageur’s records.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: The Guilbault Line